The Debut of the 1994 Time Machine

The original plan this fall at Defiantly Dutch was to celebrate all things 1994-95, not just that year’s Flying Dutchmen football team. So of course here I am debuting that feature a full six days before October dawns! Hooray chronic attention deficit disorder!

Anyway, I arrived on campus in late August 1994 determined to make up for some lost time. Going away to college a year earlier was a particularly big deal for someone who attended community college for two years and, at almost 20 years old, still hadn’t spent a whole lot of time outside of a hometown in Connecticut that was about as far removed from the hustle and bustle of Long Island as humanly possible.

I was just beginning to overcome my natural shyness (I know, I know, nobody else believes it either) and was in the process of really getting comfortable at Hofstra in the fall of ’93 when my sister was involved in a serious car accident in October. She was OK, thankfully, but even after she got out of the hospital and went back to school (where she made the honor roll while I had to drop a math class to maintain a 2.5), I found the pull of home harder and harder to resist. I went home almost every weekend the rest of the fall semester and every other weekend or so in the spring.

But by the summer of 1994 I knew I was ready to dive in. I was comfortable at the newspaper, had established a familiarity with the campus as well as the sports I was covering and was prepared to immerse myself in Hofstra. I had great friends and I figured this might be the year I finally met Her.

Those were high expectations to meet, but the 1994-95 school year—and the fall of 1994 in particular—was everything I thought it’d be and a whole lot more. The success of the athletic department and the football team in particular provided plenty of inspiration and fuel for an aspiring sportswriter. I came to understand that the friends I’d made at Hofstra were as loyal and ever-lasting as the ones I had at home.

Popular culture seemed to understand the magnitude of the moment, as well, and provided incredible sights and sounds that served as an unforgettable soundtrack. I am a firm believer that college provides that Time for everyone, that perfect era in which everything is intertwined and related. But as good as your Time might be, you’ll just have to trust me when I tell you the fall of 1994 was the best time ever to be a music fan, a moviegoer and a fan of “The Simpsons.”

Don’t believe me? Within a three-day span 15 years ago this week, R.E.M. released Monster and the movie The Shawshank Redemption hit theatres. And it only got better from there.

Who knows what kind of tricks my memory is playing on me, but I’d swear on a stack of 1994 media guides that the video for R.E.M.’s “What’s The Frequency Kenneth” had its world premiere the day classes began. I remember watching the video in my dorm room and thinking that the soaring opening licks and the odd yet inescapable buoyancy of the song summed up the immediacy of the moment and the grand potential of the year to come. Or maybe it was the perpetually dour R.E.M.—fresh off one of the most depressing records ever, Automatic for the People—rocking out that proved anything was possible, I don’t know.

(I know, I know: The last thing R.E.M. ever wanted to do was inspire some hair metal-listening kid from an idyllic home in the suburbs, but that’s what Michael Stipe & Co. did there.)

The song would also become a defining one for our group of friends. One late night at The Chronicle, as we cranked the song, the news editor blurted out “Leavitt”—the last name of his top writer—instead of “Kenneth.” It made syllabic sense and, at 3 am, the type of hilarious sense that is unexplainable outside of a newsroom.

Leavitt was also the last name of the girl on whom I was beginning to develop a mad crush. A couple weeks later, we had our first date, and a couple weeks after that, I made her a mix tape (look it up, you damn iPod-listening kids) that I dubbed “What’s The Frequency Leavitt?” You may have guessed by now she is in fact Her.

The farther back 1994-95 is in the rear-view mirror, the more fond the memories become, because adulthood is a constant reminder of how often seemingly perfect moments and opportunities turn out to be something far less than that. Hopefully, these occasional forays into the pop culture world of 15 years ago will remind you of your Time as well, even if it wasn’t the fall of 1994.

And you also get my humble apologies if this bores you to tears, but I can assure you, even if this sucks in a really large way, it’s still better than 1994 eyesore Natural Born Killers.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

C’mon TP. I know what you have to say to everyone else, but I’ve been there from the beginning. All I want is one ticket.

“It’s a two-party system! You have to vote for one of us!”

Here’s something you don’t get everyday: Multiple Hofstra news links. The men’s hoops team gets some national pub from Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com (am I the only one who still writes http://www.sportsline.com/ into the address window at Internet Explorer?), who writes about the presidential debate displacing the Flying Dutchmen starting next week. Some amusing stuff from Tom Pecora about being housed at Margiotta Hall, practicing at Adelphi and fielding phone calls from friends who want one of the golden tickets wrapped in a chocolate bar Hofstra was allotted. (Seriously, only 200 tickets? That’s a joke)

Bryan Savage’s hometown newspaper has an interesting and extensive piece on the former Hofstra quarterback, who had big hopes for the UConn game as well as his senior season but was instead sidelined with a career-ending injury mere moments before kickoff.

And thanks to loyal reader Anonymous, who sent along a feature from the Albany Times-Union in which Albany coach Bob Ford ranks the win over Hofstra as one of the top 10 games he’s ever experienced in his 36 years at the school. I also learned I was wrong earlier this week when I wrote Albany does not have 30 scholarships. It has one. Seriously, one scholarship? Why even bother at that point? And how do they determine the recipient? Albany Idol? And do they have someone who is barely lucid consoling those who fall short?

Also got some entertaining comments and/or emails recently from Loyal Readers, including Rob, who chimed in with memories of Wednesday night dining at Hofstra. “The sad truth about Steak Night was that the Chicken Cordon Bleu was actually better than the steak—the only two good meals they serve all week, and they served them on the same night? WTF?”

I don’t even remember the chicken cordon bleu. That’s how much I loved steak night: I wouldn’t even ponder another entree. But that sums up Lackmann, doesn’t it? Feed us crap six days a week and then make us choose from two glorious selections on the seventh.

Sully Ray writes in and wonders if the chipped tooth that I referred to Wednesday was the “…same chipped tooth that took a backseat tour of the southeastern US and wound up at 50 cent wiener night in NO?”

Yes it is. In the spring of ’95, Sully Ray, Rob and fellow Chronicle alum Adam asked me to join them on a cross-country spring break road trip…a decision they regretted by the time we reached the George Washington Bridge, I am sure. I don’t travel well, at all…especially when the car is a stick shift and I failed Manual Transmission 101, as taught by my mom (it’s not her fault, my sister aced it).

So I sat in the back, read newspapers from around the country, listened to a mix tape (it’s like the iPod shuffle, except with careful attention paid to the ebb and flow as well as a handwritten song list…you kids these days have no idea what you’re missing) generally acted like a grump and slept a lot. I also apparently snored every sleeping moment, something my so-called friends were only too happy to capture via dozens of shots of me, my agape mouth and my chipped tooth deep in REM sleep.

It’s OK though. I’m the one with the blog. And I’m the one with photos of Sully Ray wolfing down hot dogs at 50-cent hot dog night in New Orleans as well as shots of Sully Ray, Adam and I keeping score during the game. If I could only be the one who also had a working scanner, those photos would be up here. So revenge—for the sleeping shots as well as all my losses in T-Shirt Derby—will eventually be mine, Sully Ray.

And any T-shirts that are fired my way tomorrow will be mine, too, since Sully Ray once again has better things to do than join us. Sniff. So if you see the wife and I, stop by and say hello. I’ll be the guy yelling about Michael Doto.

Jerry is still waiting to hear from Rick, Ted and the rest of the Loyal Readers at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.