Beacon of Hope

My Accidental Rise up the College Newspaper Ladder


With zero journalism experience, halfway through my junior year I applied to be assistant Arts and Entertainment editor of Emerson's school paper, The Berkeley Beacon. Okay, I lied – I had some experience with the paper – I wrote a single semesters worth of terrible comic strips for the purpose of including secret coded notes to a girl I liked. It's hard to believe something equally intricate and nerdy didn’t work out. My newspaper career was over as quick as it had started. The attempt to reboot my journalistic self was due to the paper constantly getting free movie passes and the pretentiousness (and expense) of the film department. I figured as a film major it would be okay to lend my opinion to some movie reviews.

As I spent winter break staffing a USY convention in Orlando, major things were brewing at the newspaper office. It seems that the current Arts & Entertainment editor decided to transfer to a school closer to home, vacating her position. Nothing could have caught me more off guard than receiving a call I thought was about the assistant position and being offered section editor.

I accepted the position, ruffling a few feathers among the current staff, what with me not being a journalism student. Others were upset because they didn’t even know the position was open (neither did I). I switched one of my electives to be an introductory journalism course to learn the basics. Twenty-four eager freshmen and one out of place junior.

Once I got comfortable, I awarded myself a weekly column entitled "My Cleverly Titled Column," where I wrote about such important issues as television, what I wanted for my birthday and the state of professional wrestling. I went to a lot of press screenings, even those I had no intention of reviewing. There were meetings with celebrities in town promoting movies. I went to for personal reasons. Jack Black wished my sister happy birthday on the phone. Ridley Scott autographed a copy of Black Hawk Down for a friend. I was in a good place.

The semester flew by. Every Wednesday night we worked late hours in the office for the Thursday morning publication. The school paid for ten of us to attend a week long collegiate journalism convention in Seattle for spring break. I attended equal number of information sessions and press screenings. Most of the week focused on real news. The trip turned out to be more fun than learning, but when we came back to Boston it was back to work. By the time summer arrived, it was a much needed break from the weekly deadlines.

Three weeks before the summer ended I got a call from the new editor-in-chief. Both of the previous managing editors had graduated and the rest of the staff was all going to be sophomores or juniors. She offered me the position because I was going to be one of the only other seniors and I had come highly recommended from the previous editor. Now I was perfectly content to stay on and have another easy going semester watching movies and writing about anything I wanted. In the end, I took the position on the condition that I could still write for A&E when I wanted.

It was a lot more work, having to edit every article before it went for the final review with the chief. I wrote articles for news, editorial, sports, comics and lifestyle - basically every section that needed a fill in that week. When I moved to L.A. for my last semester, I wrote a few columns giving the west coast Emerson perspective, but eventually my involvement faded. A lot of my writing, including this blog is strongly influenced by the inexplicable year of my life where I accidentally became a journalist.

Art Wars

Each year at ECA, the visual arts department students were required to complete one two dimensional class, one three dimensional class and one media class. For one of the quarters, you could do any of those a second time.


The problem here was that if you took two media classes and a two dimensional class then only one three dimensional class was offered, then you were stuck. My senior year that's precisely what happened in the third quarter.

Almost all of the seniors had taken the nude art class. Many of my friends and I took a video class after that. Since we couldn't do video twice, a lot of us got stuck with a mixed media design class in which we all work with the dance department for their upcoming recital. For some reason, the visual artists and dancers did not get along. It was just two different kinds of kids. Smiling, outgoing dancers and moody, cynical artists were not meant to befriend each other.

One time I was carrying a bucket of paint down the hall and a dancer, who happened to be flamboyantly swinging his arms, knocked into my bucket. He saw the tiny amount of paint that had gotten on his hand and began snapping at me that I better watch where I'm going and continued skipping down the hall. I just stared and waited for him to leave so I could laugh.

The goal of the class was for the dancers to create the choreography while we, the visual artists made costumes, set pieces and props. There were no real rules - the dancers would work with what we gave them. The paint bucket guy was in the class and I could not wait to make him look stupid.

The first costume idea was to have them look like flying squirrels. Full arm to leg leotards were equipped with excess spandex that was attached at the wrists and ankles. When the performer lifted their arms or kicked out their legs, the fabric would created a winged appearance.

One set piece involved giant plastic rectangles. Large wood frames were made with clear plastic wrap surrounding them. A performer would enter through a slit in the narrow side and push around the giant box from one end of the stage to the other.

For set design, I took large sheets of cardboard and cut them out free hand to create random animal shapes. Once they were done, I outlined them and painted them in a color that was not exactly spot on. There was a maroon monkey and a teal armadillo with a silver head. These were tied on strings and hung from the catwalks above the stage.

On the subject of the catwalks, the biggest and most outrageous piece dealt with that as well. My friend Trevor sketched an 10 foot robot that was hung from the grid above the stage. I'd say that 75% of it was the robot torso. The dancer would put on these wire framed pants and climb into the bottom of the robot, making the legs tiny in comparison. The robot had two 6 foot long arms that swung on pulleys which were also controlled by us from above.

I'm sure there was more to the class than that, but I remember this as the culmination of the departmental rivalry. The recital actually got canceled because of a blizzard and when it was rescheduled for a Sunday afternoon and I didn't even go. From what I heard, almost nobody did.

Minnie's Case of the Madness

My former roommate Alicia was friends with a girl named Heather who in turn was roommates with another girl named Becca. Our two apartments were basically extentions of each other as we shared many similar interests and fun times together. No time was more fun than when the four of us teamed up to take on Minnie's Moonlit Madness.

Minnie's Moonlit Madness (or MMM for short, in order to preserve my dexterity) was a Disney company based competition that takes place every May on the hollowed ground of Disneyland. Only one of the team members needed to be a mouse house employee - Heather was our in, working in their DVD department. MMM combined a team's knowledge of trivia with the experience of a scavenger hunt inside the gates of the happiest place on earth.

Did I mention that all four team members were tethered together at all times using a rope? This added the unique challenge of being forced to stick close together. The only time people could unclip was for one of the designated restrooms or if a task required it. The bathrooms were monitored by a Disney employee. Any team caught unattached would be disqualified. The whole event was timed, which caused people to move at speeds that shouldn't be attempted while dragging three people with you. It was serious.

Anyone who knows me knows how much of a Disneyland maniac I am. I have read countless books on the park, I have the whole park soundtrack on my I-pod and went there at least a dozen times during my last full year living in southern California. Needless to say our team was excited for the competition - enough so to make matching team shirts with one of the "Lands" on the front. Heather was Frontier, Alicia was Adventure, Becca was Fantasy and I was Tomorrow.

In the pre-game application each team would choose the difficulty of their ten clues, ranging from hard to easy. Being novices, we opted for two or three hard and the rest were easy. The hard ones brought in more points, but well, they were also harder and we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

The Disney company closed the entire park at 6:00 for the event. We might have been at a disadvantage being from the Burbank offices, since many of the competitors were employees from the park. They would have the clear advantage of knowing more. Team captains signed in at the designated ticket booths and received their team packets. The envelopes contained team numbers, pens and pencils, a lanyard, a blank standardized testing bubble sheet, maps of every Disney park in the world and a flag of a foreign country. Our bib number was 216, which I thought was lucky, because at the time I had just started dating Lindy, and this was her Cleveland based area code.

Opening session took place in the Snow White theater. Minnie and a cast member explained the rules, followed by 50 rapid-fire multiple choice trivia questions ranging from theme parks to ESPN, basically anything that resided under the Disney company. Each question was only on the screen for a few seconds, so we tried writing down ones that we didn't know right away. A sample question: "Disneyland opened to the public on July 17, 1955. What day of the week was it?"

Disney voluntEARS (their pun, not mine) collected the answer sheets and all of the teams were instructed to head outside to Small World plaza. Each team was instructed to rope up as we were greeted by a video projection on to the front of It's a Small World. There was a long introduction which featured random clips of hundreds of Disney movies. The facade went dark and random International flags appeared on projected in various bubbles. We were given no instruction aside from "your first clue is at this location," just the flags. In front of each flag was a clue written in that country's native language. We had an Italian flag, so when I found that on the screen, I noticed two key words in our clue - "rosa" and "pizza". I didn't know what the other words meant, but I my context clues told me we should go to Red Rocket's Pizza Port, located in the center of Tomorrowland.

At this point it's important to mention there were nearly 300 groups, totalling 1200 people all jammed into one big Disney cul-de-sac. We attempted to navigate towards Tomorrowland, but there were at least 25 flags, so people were headed in every direction possible. Clusters of four were running into each other and getting tangled together. If another group was headed towards us I'd yell out which direction we'd take, in order to avoid a collision. When we made it, taped to the front of the restaurant door was a box with clues in it. We grabbed it and it had the answer, which we had to return to clue central, at the central hub of Main Street USA.

Each answer was only one word. These were figured out by completing a task or solving a complex puzzle. You wrote this word on an envelope and turned it in to clue headquarters to get the next clue. Some required you to venture into the park, others were mind puzzles you could sit down and do right there.

From there the night took off and everything was a blur. We darted all over the park, mostly in the Main Street/Fantasyland/Tomorrowland vacinity, never too far from the Matterhorn or Castle. Some of the more insanely detail oriented clues included:

• A musical clue where teams were given sheet music and access to a keyboard. Thankfully Becca retained enough of her childhood piano prowess. She played the notes and we had to identify the movie which the song belonged in and take one indicated letter of the movie title. After doing this ten times, we had to unscramble all of the letters. The whole thing felt like when Andie had to play the giant bone organ in Goonies.


• Walking up and down Main Street and looking at every single window display. Each display had a characters from a Disney movie with a book opened next to them. We had to read the paragraph on each book, answer a comprehension question and unscramble the clue from the fourth letter of each answer.


• One clue said go to "Where 13 is lucky." We went with our first hunch and high tailed it to the Haunted Mansion and there was nobody there but a very confused janitor. It turned out we needed to find the place on the map numbered 13, which was the Coca Cola pavillion.


• All of the International maps were used, including having to trace lines between landmarks located around EPCOT's lagoon. These lines would form certain letters which spelled our an answer. The clue only said "Italy, France, Mexico, Canada," which meant put your pen down at Italy, trace to France and so on. This one took us so long to figure out, the woman at the station practically gave us the correct method after we kept asking for hints.


• Another clue took us to the Mad Tea Party, better known as the Teacups. We had to dash from cup to cup (not easy to do while tied together) and read a trivia question about Alice in Wonderland. The questions were written in a spiral, so we had to keep rotating in order to read them.

In the end, only the top 3 teams got prizes, which ranged from a cruise to hotel stays to dinners. If you weren't one of the winning teams, your results wouldnt be released until a few weeks down the road. We were all very shocked to learn that our team had come in 23rd place, the highest finish ever from someone in Heather's department. To this day her co-workers still talk to her about it.

We returned to the Madness in 2007 and came in 34th (or something close to that). I blame the drop in rank on the fact that it took place across the way at Disneyland's less popular cousin, California Adventure, and the theme was High School Musical.

The State of Autograph Seeking

In the spirit of the recent DVD announcement, I thought I would share some experiences I had personally with each of the members of the mid-90's MTV comedy group, The State. My friend Jay gave me a copy of the groups book "State by State with the State," when we graduated college.

Late Late Show, Michael Ian Black's guest hosting - Various days in September 2006

• Michael Ian Black, Ken Marino, Kerry Kinney, Thomas Lennon

The idea of autographs first popped into my head during the Late Late Show host audition process. Craig Kilborn had abruptly left and the vacant job would be decided after a series of test runs. When I found out one of the auditioners was Michael Ian Black, I knew I had to try and get him to sign the book. He did well in his first try and got invited back for the final process, in which four candidates did an entire week of shows. Thomas Lennon and Kerry Kinney came in to bits on the show, acting as fake experts in their fields. I believe Lennon brought out a kitten, or a similar animal but would only identify it as a tiger, or something it clearly wasn't. Kerry Kinney told me how people in Reno wrote nasty letters to the Reno 911 offices, saying they were upset it wasn't actually filmed in their city. The people knew it wasn't because of the palm trees that appeared in many shots, and there were no such trees in real Reno.

Ken Marino was on the production guest list, but just to visit and hang out in the green room. He was very outgoing and excited to be there. There was an X-Box and Playstation 2 in the green room, but he was one of the only ones to ever play it, even challenging me to Tiger Woods golf. When he saw I was in possession of the book, he offered to sign it before I could even ask. Then he sat down and re-read it, saying "I haven't seen a copy of this in years." Michael Ian Black was very busy doing work for the show, but right at that moment he came into the green room and Ken showed him the book. Michael said "I suppose you want me to sign it too," while looking just as shocked as Ken to see an actual copy of the book.

I had only thought I would get Michael Ian Black this week, but with four members of the group, my new goal was to get all ten who helped write the book (the eleventh member, Tood Holoubek left the group before the book was made).

Reno 911! Miami Movie Premiere, Mann's Chinese Theater - February 15, 2007

• Joe Lo Truglio, Michael Patrick Jann, Robert Ben Garrant

Through a website that gave away tickets to advanced movie screenings, somehow I landed two tickets to the Hollywood Premiere of the Reno 911 movie. I thought it would be just another screening, but when the tickets printed out, they said Mann's Chinese Theater. After working in the promo screening business I knew people normally showed up early, and since this was special, I left work at 3:00 to get in line, State book in tow.

The line for the regular people was across the street from the theater, while the bigger names got to walk the red carpet. When they had all gone in, we were shuffled in through a security check point and then in a small side door. After that, we were on our own. Sure, our seats were assigned, but there were celebrities in the lobby, at the concession stands and in the theater. People were everywhere to the point where it probably deserves a separate blog entry, but as I was getting popcorn, I saw Joe Lo Truglio and Ken Marino walk in with their dates.

I didn't waste any time, walking right up to Lo Truglio and asking if he'd sign the book. He graciously did, but afterwards Ken Marino had a look on his face that said "what about me?" Sensing this, I opened to the front inside cover and said "Look, Ken, you already signed for me!" He noted this and said, "That's okay, I'll initial and date it to prove you met me again." In the midst of this, Michael Patrick Jann walked in, and while he was exchanging pleasantries with Lo Truglio and Marino I was able to get him to sign the book as well.

Right before the movie was to start, all of the Reno cast members were going to come in and do a speech. My seat was far enough back that I could see Robert Ben Garant waiting to walk in. I snuck by their security saying I had to go to the bathroom and handed him the book. This ambush led to one of the most regular notes any of the members wrote, "Nice to meet ya." Most of the others either just signed their name or wrote something funny, but catching Garant off guard may have startled him.

My autograph total now stood at seven. Three to go.

Wet Hot American Summer screening, NuArt Cinema - July 28, 2007

• David Wain

The night of my ex-roommates birthday I saw there was a Wet Hot American Summer midnight screening at the NuArt Cinema. It was taking place a week before the release of David Wain's new movie, The Ten, hit theaters. The web site for the theater advertised Wain would be appearing, along with other special guests, so we had to go.

While waiting in line with several friends, Ken Marino walked out of the theater with flyers for The Ten. He stopped and talked to everyone in line, telling them to go see the movie. Though we were not allowed to go in the theater yet, Lindy and I went into the lobby to "use the bathroom," where we saw Marino standing with David Wain and Peter Salett (guitar dude from the movie).

Lindy was very excited because David Wain is from Shaker Heights, Ohio, just like her. When we walked up to him, she mentioned that and the fact that his father did the voice over work for her fathers radio ads when he ran for judge. David Wain did not really know what to say to this, but clearly was not as excited as she was. Nonetheless, he signed the book, took a picture with us. Marino sort of remembered the book by this point, and decided to initial it a second time, bringing his total to three.

Right as we took the picture, Marino let out a huge, raspy laugh, causing Lindy to crack up.

Wain complimented my shirt, which said "Rodeph Sholom Day Camp." I never went to this camp. I got the shirt at a thrift store years ago and decided it would be good for the screening.

Eight down, two to go.

The State Reunion Show, UCB Theater Los Angeles, March 19, 2008

• Kevin Allison, Todd Holoubeck

By the time I heard about the State reunion show at UCB West, it was already sold out. Truth is, that theater is so small, there would be no way to get tickets unless you knew someone on the inside, especially for an event like this. I heard through the grapevine that there would be a small number of stand by tickets available. The two shows were at 8:00 and 10:00. I got to the line at 3:30 in the afternoon, and there were five people in front of me.

I met a girl named Sara and her friend while waiting in line. Sara had flown in from Chicago. They were huge fans and we had some good conversation while waiting for them to let people in. When the ticketed people began showing up for the 8:00 show, things looked grim. There was not room for a single person in the stand by line, so we would be outside in the rainy weather for another two hours. We did see several known comedians and "Weird Al" Yankovic go in to the show, which was pretty awesome.

When the crowd exited the first show, everyone loved it. The ticketed people for the second show began to go in. At that point, the stand by line went all the way around the corner. One guy tried to draw his own hand stamp on and got past the door man, causing the stand by line to go ballistic. All of us had seen him do this and knew he could be taking our seat away.

In the end, the first ten or fifteen people got in to the show, and it was great. The whole group, aside from Showalter and Black were there, but they sent in a video skit to play. Since we were in the later show, there was no rush to leave afterwards. We stayed in our seats and the cast began to hang out on stage drinking some beers. I casually walked up on to the stage and chatted with a few of the cast members before making a direct path to Kevin Allison. I told him about my quest and he said he would gladly sign. He had been especially difficult to get because he rarely leaves New York. Todd Holoubek even signed it, even though he had nothing to do with the book. Before I left, I went up to Ken Marino one last time. He initialed and dated the book for a third time.

Stella Live, Comedy Connection Boston, December 11, 2008

• Michael Showalter

This was it, the white whale. It had been 9 months since my last autograph and I was losing hope. Days and weeks before the show, random facebook photos had been popping up for other stops on the tour which showed the three guys signing autographs. I knew I had to bring the book.

At this point in the history of my book, everyone had signed one page, making it kind of cluttered. The page opposite it was completely blank, so I would tell Michael to sign there, rather than squeeze in somewhere else.

The minute the show ended, I jetted out to the autograph table and was the first one in line. People began to line up behind me as we waited for the guys to push through the crowd. They sat down and I walked right up to Showalter and said "You're the last one I need," and told him he could have the entire page. He drew a large picture on it and wrote "From Mike S."

So there it is, in all it's glory. My quest was complete, three years after it began. I would have never been able to do this without living in L.A. and having some of the jobs that I did out there. Maybe my new quest will be to get them all to autograph the DVD when it comes on July 14th.

Putting Her Best Foot Forward

When you’re dating someone long distance every aspect of the relationship gets put into a time warp. Sometimes the only times you’re able to see each other can overlap with other events. Since seeing the other person is already so rare, you’ll take what you can get. I guess that’s how Lindy ended up meeting my parents after only having been dating for five months. Even as I say we had been dating for five months, I have to clarify that during that time we had only been together about five or six times. The whole first year was a whirlwind.

I had already been planning to come home for Rosh Hashanah and I invited her to come home with me. The logic behind it was that a trip from Chicago to Connecticut would be a lot cheaper than going to Los Angeles.

The visit went fine. Everyone loved her. On our last night there, the conversation somehow moved to my high school art projects. I started talking about a couple of them and Lindy wanted to see. My mom told us they were stored up in the attic.

Lindy had been in attics before, but only ones that were furnished. My parent’s attic was far from furnished. It was a glorified storage space, a museum of childhood relics and old clothes. It was arranged so there is a small pathway around perimeter of the floor, with all of the stored items in the center. To get to my artwork, we had to walk the entire pathway to the furthest corner.

Among my work was my six foot Pez dispenser, some paintings and the main portfolio, which was what we were searching for. I showed Lindy a few items, stopping to remember and retell the stories behind them. I turned back to further rummage through the portfolio for one specific painting. After finding it, I turned around and Lindy was gone. I looked left and right, but didn't see her until I looked down.

There she was, sitting down with her left leg stuck through the attic floor. I hadn't noticed whatsoever because she did not make a sound. Even when I grabbed her and pulled her back up to a standing position, she was still in a silent shock. There was a foot wide hole in the floor and we could now peer into my sisters bedroom.

After making sure she was okay, I whispered in her ear "someday, people will tell this story at our wedding," as I laughed outloud. I then turned towards the staircaise and yelled "Daaaaaad!" while still hugging her, unintentionally screaming in her ear. My dad ran upstairs and yelled out as soon as he stepped into my sisters room.Everyone's initial reaction was to find out if she was okay, which she was. One step further to the left and she would have gone through completely, most likely dislodging my sisters ceiling fan and landing on her bed. The events of that night led to Lindy's mom and my mom speaking on the phone for the first time. Lindy's mom offered to pay for the damages, but my mom wouldn't let her because it was just a simple accident.

Once things calmed down, we watched Glory Road, but I don't remember anything about the movie. Everyone was too busy making comments about the hole, and Lindy was a tremendous sport about the whole thing.

"Nice of you to drop in," said my sister.

"That's putting your best foot forward," said my father.

"You really made an impact," said my mother.

Looking from the attic to Lindy and my sister, in her bedroom.

The full view under a ladder.

My dad ended up temporarily patching the hole using a piece of wire tied to a ruler. He thread the ruler and then pulled the wire to close the two pieces of sheetrock that were sticking down into the room. After shaking all the dust from my sisters comforter, it was good as new. You can see the handywork in the following photo:

Today is the three year anniversary of when we realized that this whole thing was just crazy enough to work. Sure it was long distance for over two years, but now we're living together. The waiting excruciating but it was also worth it and I could not love her more. If you have doubts about long distance relationships, please know that it can work.

Just stay out of the attic.

A Few More Eggs

Growing up, Passover was always about time with family and food. There were so many great things that we only had once a year, but there were also times when we didn't look forward to it. When I was 3 and my sister was 5, we didn't care for any of the breakfast options provided for us. My Mom tried to create breakfast foods for my sister and I - eggs, Matza Brei , cream cheese on Matza - we wouldn't eat anything. We were used to having cereal every day, or occasionally waffles, pancakes or eggs. How were we supposed to last a whole week without our precious breakfast treats.

This was back before the days of boxed cake mix being plentiful. The cereal options were disgusting and we were finicky matzoh-ed out children. My mom was able to get past all this and figure out a solution. She took my Grandma Betty's beautiful sponge cake, sliced it up and soaked it in egg and turned them into Passover french toast.

What you have to understand about this recipe is that like many items cooked over the week, it already contained twelve eggs. The idea of soaking the cake in more eggs and frying it was delicious, but hardly the healthiest idea. That didn't matter at the time - we were kids and we weren't eating anything, so she did what she had to do. In less than a week the entire cake was gone and everything was fine.

Until my Mom casually mentioned to Grandma what she had done.

"You did WHAT?"

Grandma was not happy that her precious sponge cake had been defiled, no matter how ingenious the idea was. She was shocked that it was used to "make breakfast". These were famous cakes that were baked in mass. My father, aunt and uncle used to come home from school to find dozens of them laid out on their beds. In the end Grandma Betty got over it, probably because my Mom was able to recreate the cake so well on her own. She continued to make the cake for us each year, and we loved it in it's original form as well. To this day my mother makes the cake using Grandma Betty's recipe and her cake pan.

How Many Times Can I Use the Word Balls?

Freshman year in college by its nature is a time where you do a lot of stupid things. My freshman experience was no exception to the rule. I lived in a suite with four other guys. I shared a double with Dave, the other double was occupied by Rob and Chris, and in the rare freshman single was Josh.

One afternoon I was up in my room and got a phone call from Josh. I was still a year away from owning a cell phone, so it was on our dorm land line. He said he needed help with a couple of packages he received today. In college it's a great feeling to open your mailbox and have a package slip inside. It's a feeling of knowing someone cares about you enough to send something big. This happened so infrequently that it was always a big deal when you got one. I didn't think anything of it because his birthday was that coming weekend, but when I got down to the mail room, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

Ball pit balls, as it turns out, is the official name for them, and we had five full boxes. (This picture is a little inaccurate as his came in groups of 50, but it's the best I could find.) That's two-hundred and fifty little plastic balls of various colors.

When we got to the common area of our suite, we opened all five boxes at once and poured them amidst our living room. Our hopes of a thick sea of plastic balls, a la a McDonalds Play Place were quickly dashed. Our college-issued couch had large wooden sides that went from the arm rest to the ground, leaving a big gap underneath. Many of the balls rolled free and resided below it, making it hard to retrieve them. The dream of being able to hide or sit in amongst the balls was nothing like the reality, a sparsely covered linoleum floor.

The two lounge chairs provided to were one cushion replicas of the couch. By angling two of them agains the wall and having their armrests come to a point, we were able to create an isolated triangle to store the balls. The main problem with this was that it was entirely too small for any college aged male to fit in, except maybe Chris.

For the most part the balls were just in random places in the living room, but playing with them lost its luster very fast. This soon resulted in us throwing the balls as hard as they could at each other, which resulted in us all having welts. Random people from our hallway would come into the room only to turn right around, fleeing from the assault of plastic balls whizzing at them. The balls didn't look like they'd hurt, but we all had marks to prove that they did.

Little by little the total began to diminish. Some were bitten into because they "looked delicious". Others were stabbed with forks or popped in other ways. By the end of the semester nearly all of the balls were gone except for one of each color that I hid away in my room. I actually found one of each color tucked away in my old bedroom at my parents house last time I was home for a visit. They're still fun to have around, even not in mass quantity.