My ten-year college reunion is this weekend, and while fraternities didn’t exist at Harvey Mudd College, I did spend two years living in our campus’ closest approximation. North Dorm was a mostly male dormitory (to be fair, HMC was a mostly male college) that featured initiation rituals, fairly intense camaraderie, and relied on freshmen to perform most of the manual labor. We even had our own set of Greek symbols (πoe), which represented an activity that I was later banned from campus for engaging in. The dean has graciously given me permission to return to campus (the fool! Muahahaha!) although I can genuinely pledge that I have no evil intentions. And I say this not because I expect my feelings to change once I set foot on campus, but because it’s important for me to make a written record of this now, while I’m sober.

Animal House (1978) is by far the most influential college movie of all time. The concept of filling a dilapidated house with a motley collection of misfits and rejects has been enthusiastically imitated in such films as Revenge of the Nerds (1984), PCU (1994), and Old School (2003). The idea of a “toga party” has become part of our national lexicon. I’m quite certain that at some point Martin Amis, aghast at some of the incomprehensible garbage spewing from the pen of Christopher Hitchens, took aside his fellow writer and told him “my advice to you is to start drinking heavily.” And one can only wonder how many times Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray have trudged home after an unsuccessful night at the clubs and called up Pat Buchannan to complain, “the Negroes took our dates.”

The Film: Animal House

The Song: “Louie Louie”

The Artist: The Kingsmen (more…)