Hamilton College Admission Journals: Andrew Whalen

Aretha Franklin

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:02:25 GMT

The Sacerdote Fund, which brings a high-profile speaker to campus every year, brought an unparalleled opportunity to campus. Aretha Franklin played a full concert to the 1,775 students of Hamilton College. She didn't play my favorite song, "Only the Lonely," but I found myself clapping through most of her set. Fog, bright lights, projectors pushing her onto giant screens, a small army of back-up performers, and crowds bussed in from all around Central New York made for a memorable evening. During "Respect" the entire audience stood and students stormed the aisles, smearing an organized seating chart into a dance party. As a performer, Aretha's energy seemed drawn from an unlimited font. She tap-danced, told jokes, and introduced every member of her back-up. When Aretha played in Columbus, it was in the hockey stadium, where you might as well be watching the concert from a Google Earth satellite. When she played Hamilton College I could see her uvula. I can now tell people I've seen Aretha Franklin's uvula.

Study Abroad Reunion

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:30:32 GMT

Last Tuesday my friend Chris Rand and I drove to New York City to witness the spectacle of Ya Ho Wa 13. The Source family, lead by father Yod, lived a multi-faceted existence as simultaneous restaurateurs, cultists, polygamists and rock stars. In the early 70's Father Yod's Source Family began to hold guitar and drum freak-outs in a sound-proofed garage after hours of meditation to their god, Yahowa. They would record the sessions and sell the EPs at The Source restaurant in LA. Now these records are items of legend and have high value for collectors. So, when three-members of The Source family (Sunflower, Octavius, and Djin) announced a reunion concert in New York City, I knew I had to be there. It was too strange an opportunity to pass up.

Their music was fine.

More importantly, I was able to meet a friend from my study-abroad program in Prague. Chris, who attended the same program the semester after me, called up some of his friends. It really demonstrated to me the enduring friendships that study abroad established. My roommate, Alex and I slipped right back into our old ways, which tends to involve lots of impugning the other's character. So now, as I approach graduation, my undergraduate experience may not have guaranteed me a job, but it has guaranteed me a full selection of couches on which to sleep. Networking with fools-at-other-schools is truly priceless.

Zombies Vs. Humans

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:12:01 GMT

Whenever I am running by tour groups of potential students I often pause in my ferocious snarling, consider my lust for man's flesh, and question what the bystanders to my undead rage could possibly be thinking. You see, I am currently involved in a high-stakes, high-risk, high-fun, campus-wide game of Zombies Vs. Humans. The full rules are complicated, but the basics began last Saturday, when registered humans, indicated by a bandanna on the upper arm and NERF gun in hand, went on-guard against a possible zombie menace. The zombie plague spreads with a zombie's mere touch, but they can be put down, temporarily, with a NERF dart to the face. My treacherous roommate ate me. So I had 15 minutes to say goodbye to friends and family, then, in unbearable agony, moved my bandanna from arm to head.

Now I am a zombie. I run around campus trying to eat other humans. My bandanna is bright red, so I imagine myself to be Zombie Rambo. While much of the fear is lost after becoming a zombie, the role requires a more offensive pursuit of the surviving humans. So, after turning into a loathsome zombie, I pack-hunted through the long, narrow corridors of Milbank and Babbitt Residence Halls. Coming around a corner, hearing the late-night jollity in the suite common-room, I was confronted with a banquet. It was a room full of human women, with the tell-tale arm bandanna. We had stumbled upon a hidden enclave of the Human Resistance! Amazingly, they were all entirely unarmed. I charged into the room, grabbing one girl by the upper arm. I snarled in her face.

"What are you doing?" she asked me with quizzical horror.

"Aren't you human?" I was confused.

"Well yeah...wait...what?" She was confused.

Then another girl stepped in, "oh no, we're not playing your game, this is a camouflage party, everyone was supposed to wear a bandanna." Apparently, in the biggest coincidence of my college career, I had consumed a room of non-players, who just happened to be wearing the tell-tale banner of the surviving humans. My tell-tale zombie swagger deflated, I backed sheepishly out of the room.

A Marching Band Surprise

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:51:17 GMT

Until yesterday I had never seen an Asian marching band crossing Martin's Way Bridge. Turquoise and pink cloth dangled everywhere, while the earthy tom-tom of real drums, made of leather and wood, reverberated around the Howard Diner. The experience produced some new and strange emotion in my head. The chemical rush was probably akin to the strange euphoria experienced by witnesses to UFO landings. I felt as if I had dropped into some benign world of perfect, overlapping multiculturalism, wherein all elements of an experiential spectrum occurred simultaneously. Of course this was nonsense. The squirrel I spotted was not also a lemur, howler monkey, and tanuki. But the band...that I could not reconcile. In my vague bewilderment I passed the band on the bridge, staring into every face as I passed. Many were people I thought I recognized. However, I couldn't be sure, as many of the marchers were wearing tremendous fake beards. Coming out in front, I walked backwards for a time, not sure what to do or what strange institution of learning I had woken up in the midst of. Then I ate an omelette in Commons, dripping with hot sauce as usual, and listened to the heavy tom-tom pass, growing as loud as my thoughts, then fading away.

Alum Art

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 06:51:25 GMT

This past weekend two alums from the class of '07 came for a reunion concert of their band, Sponge Fingers. While the show was broken up by an unfortunate fire alarm (unrelated), other events played out a 2-D drama on my walls. Missing in action for a period of hours, I returned to my room to discover a gallery's worth of sketches on my walls. Alumni guests had stripped flyers (kept up to remind us of our triumphs), stolen paper reserved for my movie project, and torn down those fliers beloved of our refrigerator, all in order to create their own art. Streamers hung from the roof, bizarre, vaguely Buddhist sketches of amalgamated lifeforms sprouted on our doors, and the unquestionable stench of creativity lingered in my room. They had been and created.

Most telling was the presence of a brand-new, stolen red paper, portrait series. All of the major figures of my life, sketched in broad-eyed depictions that defied any conventional sense of portraiture, yet captured some semblance of true-to-life nevertheless. I found Ali and Chris's portraits suitably convincing, while Will, my roommate, who has recently been addressed by his new nick-name, Clown-Hands, has a reasonably accurate depiction displayed over his own doorway. Of course, being Hamilton alums, they have their own bizarre, yet professional, outlook on contemporary life, delivering one portrait, of Alex, a friend abroad, as a soaring Pterodactyl. I may not understand the drawing, but I like its place on my wall.

Now we have a brand new gallery of fine art. May each picture stay taped on our wall forever, as a reminder to subsequent generations of the bizarre cavemen who once inhabited the Keehn Faculty Apartment.