Wrapped Up Like a Blog

So... College Daze, eh?

What? Never heard of it?

Not surprising. Unless you worked on the project, or were the two confirmed fans we had, you'd have no reason to have heard it. Sure, we "broadcast" on WRTV, talk radio station of GWU, but it had about a watt of power, and transmitted through the power lines. And Jason, our producer extraordinaire, put us on the web, but back in 1998, who listened to radio dramas on the Internet?

Nevertheless, when people ask me my greatest accomplishment, I tell them, without hesitation, that it was creating, directing, producing, writing and (just once, under duress) acting in a radio drama. And I like to think that the others who were with me on that journey had a good time, and were proud of the product- in spite of the lousy equipment we had at the station!

The show starred 5 fantastic actors. Zach played Barry, disowned son of a fishstick magnate who is forced to act in a terrible TV show (Alma Matters) in order to pay for college. Michelle was Vanessa, the one-named star of the show her producer uncle had created just to give the spoiled starlet something to do with her days. MJ (Mike) played Schultzy, the requisite whacky character, a perpetual college student who changed his major more often than he changed his underwear. Megan was Lisa, the girl-next-door, the one sane voice in a sea of insanity (at least initially). Jenna was Farkas, the director of the show-within-the-show and owner of the world's biggest ego.

The writing staff consisted of me and my friends- Swamp Thing, Mike, Jenna (Farkas herself) and later Jaime. Our production team had more friends- Jason, Dave, Bijal, and others. We had a blast, making the show in our little bubble. We had a writer's room (my apartment), production meetings, read-throughs, auditions- we ran it like we were professionals, even though we had little more than dented tin cans and frayed string. Still, the show had humor, drama, and maybe even a little pathos to boot.

If you're lucky, I may even take the episodes I have on cassette and upload them for the world to hear. Who knows, maybe people will finally listen to broadcasts on their computer in this day and age?

I imagine that visual artists tend to view films through a certain lens. Perhaps a visual artist would look at a movie like Avatar and analyze the design of the aliens or the machinery. I like to look at the names of things. Like the planet, Pandora- I imagine that Mr. Cameron had in mind a Pandora's box that humanity had opened and was trying to contain. And perhaps he just liked the sound of Na'vi.

But here's how I imagine one aspect of the plotting: Mr. Cameron decided he needed a macguffin, something that the humans would be trying to obtain. A valuable mineral, perhaps, one that was unobtainable on Earth. All he needed for it was a name, something to call this unobtainable element. I can only imagine that he said to himself: "I'll call it 'Unobtainium' until I can come up with something better. The problem is, it looked like he never did.

The same thing happened to me, once, with my radio drama. I gave it a name, fully intending to come up with a better one, and I never did. But I am getting ahead of myself.

As I mentioned, I was unable to get one of my plays produced in college. So, lacking the ability to put on a play all by my lonesome, I looked to the one resource that had given me full access- the radio station. I had hosted a radio show by the name "None of the Above" at WRTV- one of two campus radio stations, the one that specialized in talk radio- news, sports, politics and humor. My show, which I hosted with Matt and Kathy, was a comedy, of sorts, and I also worked on the news and was an announcer for many basketball games. Senior year, though, I became the Program Director of the station, and when I asked the Station Manager, Terry, if I could give myself a time slot for a radio drama, he gave me an enthusiastic "yes."

All I needed, then, was an idea.

I spent most of that summer kicking ideas around. I had an outline for a show much like what Roswell would become, where a couple college students helped an alien get back to his spaceship. But I didn't think I would be able to get enough people on board for that idea. Then I thought we could do a Twilight Zone style anthology series, but I decided that would be too difficult, needing fresh ideas every week. What I didn't want to do was to make a corny college drama, along the lines of 90210 or Saved by the Bell: The College Years.

And then it hit me.

I would do a show that parodied those types of programs, which would allow me to skirt the edge of melodrama while still being hip and referential. I would create a show set at a fictional college, populated by students who acted on a show-within-a-show that was an exaggeratedly corny version of the shows I despised. The show-within-a-show would be called "Alma Matters," a title I found suitably groan-inducing. After wracking my brain, the best I title I could come up with for my actual show was "College Daze," a title I decided to use as a placeholder.

Little did I know...