Shaq's your mom, that's a fact.

this is where i post University of Chicago Scav Hunt stuff: current year's items, items from past years, and things in daily life that bring sweet, sweet scav memories. i'm not a judge, i'm not [nor have i ever been] a captain...i'm just a random GASH Fogey who really likes going on Road Trip.

[rogueclown]

my name is foal and wen its day i nap in gras or jump and play the foto box coms to the fens- i run up clos. i lik the lens.

[wowmuchshiba]

So now that “Weird Al” Yankovic has released all 8 videos in the #8videos8days release for his album Mandatory Fun, I thought it’d be fun to have a series of faceoffs to determine the best video of the 8. The videos have been seeded in single-elimination, tournament-style bracket based on their...

[rogueclown]

so parody.  such vote.  very mandatory fun.  amaze.

[everythingwrongwithfrozen]

This frame does not feature Shaquille O’Neal.

[rogueclown]

i can't argue with everythingwrongwithfrozen's logic.  i also wouldn't be surprised if whoever writes this blog is a scav judge.

because, Shaq.

[scavjudges]

After a long day of constructing Shaq-in-the-Boxes, Shaq o’Lanterns, and battleShaqxes, only a big bowl of Shaqaroni and Cheese can fill a scavvies stomach. And that’s a fact.

[rogueclown]

Mama Shaq, Mama Shaq, Shaq's your mom, that's a fact.

[fyuchicago]

How safe is it to go south of cottage grove in the day?

Well, Cottage Grove runs north-south, so…

[rogueclown]

LOL!  this cracks me up...it's a common misconception for someone who doesn't live here or know the city well, and Cottage is well known for being a Street Not To Cross.  though, they either have to be thinking west of Cottage or south of 63rd...both of which can be a bit dodgy?

i never took the green line from 63rd and Cottage during my time at U of C, and actually only made it down to that corner once during my time there.  of course, since i'm mentioning it here, that was during Scav.  it was during the 2004 Hunt: one i haven't written about much, but should delve into at some point soon, because it has overall been my favourite hunt so far.

there is (or, at least, was when i was there) this completely ramshackle hardware store that we went by to get some parts...PVC pipe, if i recall correctly.  the only things i do recall correctly were that they did not have what we need, and that absolutely everyone who saw us around that corner gave us really, really funny looks.

it was inexcusable that a hardware store didn't have the common object (i swear, it was PVC pipe...) that we were looking for.

it was totally excusable that people were looking at us funny, though:

133.  Does their relationship lack trust?  Bring two non-Apprentice, non-Captain, non-All Star teammembers to the center of the Quads at 10:00AM on Thursday and let us test this friendship.  [the strength of this friendship will determine the points.]

as often happens during Scav, the item didn't quite go off as it seemed, as least for us, the ragtag band from Shoreland.  i volunteered to do this item, but the only other person from the team who volunteered to do it with us was someone i didn't know.  so, we went to the quads, and kept trading a bunch of trivia about ourselves, since we were afraid it would be a trivia quiz.

we were quite relieved when Head Judge Kaury came to the middle of the quad, pulled a certain implement out of a bag, and told us we'd be handcuffed together for the duration of the weekend.

that?  TOTALLY doable.

what's funny is to prevent us from removing the handcuffs, they put wax in the keyhole and sealed it.  it's funny in retrospect, because i eventually (circa 2009) learned how to pick handcuffs, and you usually do it by shimming through the latch mechanism, not going through the keyhole.  oh, well...i didn't know how to pick handcuffs in 2004, so i didn't know any better.  we were stuck together for the weekend, and caused much absurdity...which shall be covered in an upcoming post.

not to mention, we got lots of funny looks at 63rd and Cottage Grove during a simple hardware store run.

[rogueclown]

170.  Using stop-motion animation and the tangible medium of your choice, demonstrate that a donut or a coffee mug is homeomorphic with a human.  [15 points for a donut, 20 points for a coffee mug]

this is so mesmerizing.  this is also so U(C).

[rogueclown]

stop the presses?!

my plan was to now go to the 1994 list, since i am finished hitting the highlights of the '93.  alas, the copy of the 1994 list in the archives is corrupted.  so, until i can find a copy, either in paper or in uncorrupted electronic format, that bit of my romp through the history of Scav Hunt items will have to wait.

[maybe they're archived at the Reg?  i know that was an item one year, though it would be a sad, sad thing if the lists weren't archived in dead-tree format in some publicly accessible location...]

so, on to '95!

2.  Bring in a local television or radio station to cover the Scavenger Hunt, bonus points if you bring in national media. (60 pts for local, +50 bonus points for national)

media attention?  what media attention has Scav Hunt ever gotten over the years?

also...with respect to the point values?  i don't know if this was new for '95 or started to rear its ugly head in '94, but wow.  these are some inflated point values.  it'll be interesting to see if they fluctuate, or if they continue to be this inflated until 2003, The Year They Cut The Fat.

[rogueclown]

we all <3 Hanna Gray.

i love poetry items.  i love (as you can probably tell from this blog...) Hanna Gray items.  of course, it amused me to see this on the final page of the 1993 list:

306.  Write a limerick about the old and new U of C President, using both of their last names. (6pts)

1993 was the year that Hanna Gray [she of the relatively short name, rather easy to slip into a limerick] stepped down from the University of Chicago presidency.  of course, the real trick of this item is getting the name of the then-new President in there: none other that Hugo Sonnenschein.

i don't back down from a challenge, even if it's the middle of September and there are no points at stake...so here's a bit of ridiculous doggerel.

Let us now drink the sweetest of wine As a new figurehead we enshrine It's the end of the day For our Hanna Gray And the morn for Hugo Sonnenschein

...something tells me i could have gotten far more details in about these particular past presidents had they picked a different (read: longer) form of poetry.

[rogueclown]

Population: Tire

ah, hello again, repeat Road Trip items...or, at least, locations.  from the '93 list:

279.  What is written on the big tire off I-94 in Allen Park, MI? (3pts)

i'm familiar with that tire since i've been out to metro Detroit many times over the last three and a half years or so.  it's definitely "Uniroyal" written on that tire...easy to remember, since i frequently refer to it as the Huge Uniroyal Tire Off The Highway.  however, that giant tire made an appearance in the 2010 list:

93.  While inflating a flat tire along I-94, Skeletor accidentally enlarges it to world-record size. [6 points]

i remember this item well not only because i did it, but also because my familiarity with the giant roadside tire saved us from missing an item.  the morning we left, Grandpa Sam had plotted out pretty much everything on the road trip, but i remember there being a note by the tire saying that he wasn't sure what that was, or where it was.  fortunately, since i knew there were other items in Metro Detroit, it was pretty clear to me that they meant The Huge Uniroyal Tire Off The Highway.

alas, this isn't one of the pictures archived on facebook from that year.  however, i remember it being a little harrowing to do...there wasn't really a good place to pull over, just a little shoulder to pull into.  [i guess it's not a roadside attraction that's meant to be visited, so much as marveled at from the car.]  so, we pulled over there, and it was a bit scary getting out of the car since we were so close to the other speeding vehicles.  it was fun, though, to pantomime pumping up a tire to such ridiculous proportions.

[stainedglassboots-blog]

Let’s say you wanted to glue fabric to wood, but what do you use? What about glass to paper? This to That lets you choose two things you want to glue and lists what types of glue is best. (Because people have a need to glue things to other things!)

[rogueclown]

OMG.  useful scavvie information is useful.  i had no idea this website existed, but this must be filed away and brought out next Scav, because i can only imagine there will be large amounts of gluing ALL THE THINGS.

[rogueclown]

ring around the field house...

still on the '93 list:

257.  A chain of paper clips going continuously around the Field House.  (50 pts)

this made me curious...about how many paper clips would this take?  taking a look at Google maps for a back-of-the-envelope sort of calculation, it looks like Henry Crown is about 90 feet by 220 feet around the outside.  this would put the perimeter at 7440 inches around.

it would make sense to do this with larger paper clips, which run about two inches long; the more common ones are more like 1.4 inches long.

this would mean that, to get around Henry Crown, you'd need approximately 3720 of the larger paper clips, or 5315 of the smaller ones.  (hence, why it would make sense to use bigger clips!)  you'd also need...lots of patient scavvies who thought ringing the Field House with paper clips would be a hilarious story.

[rogueclown]

these don't pertain to any particular item.  however, this is how GASH introduced itself at its very first list release, back in 2008: as Fogies, complete with canes and wigs and sharp commands to the undergrads to abscond from our greeneries.  we made sure to get to Ida Noyes before the rush of teams, just to make sure we had time and space to make our ancient, raving presence known.

(photos taken by Eric.)

[rogueclown]

twenty years, and...

back to the 1993 list:

194.  Any comic strip with a homosexual character in it.  (8 pts)

the item makes perfect sense as something topical in that list, though...since it was in 1993 that For Better or For Worse came under fire for having a character come out as gay.  basically, the relatively mainstream options in those days would have been threefold -- that one, Doonesbury, or Dykes To Watch Out For. 

[and, i had no idea that Dykes had been around that long until reading up for this post.  i don't know if it was published in Chicago, though i would have been surprised if it weren't, since i know there were gay papers in Chicago in the early nineties.]

i'm glad we've come far enough in 20 years that this would be absurd as a Scav Hunt item, absurd in the sense that there's far more of it now than there was in 1993.  maybe i'm biased, since nowadays i find web comics to be at least as relevant (and maybe, i'd assert, moreso...) than traditional comic strips.  i'm not completely sure how much more prevalent gay/lesbian/bisexual/queer/alphabet-soup-of-sexuality characters have become in mainstream comic strips, but the beautiful thing about the internet is that there are corners of it for everyone.

[rogueclown]

hey, that's not kosher!

in reading more of the '93 list, in which i already saw the item looking for an extremely non-kosher meal, i then saw this:

190.  A rabbi.  (25pts+ 30 bonus points if he can dunk OR +5 bonus points if she tries)

the judges missed an opportunity here.  instead of the obvious attempt to tie it into the previous item (189.  A white male who can dunk a basketball. -- though, fortunately, the item does not specify that the rabbi must be white and/or male...), they really should have offered the bonus points for the Rabbi to be the one who points out everything that's non-kosher about that extremely non-kosher meal.  that would be far more...fitting.

[rogueclown]

bed of nails

back to the '93 list...

186.  A bed of nails with someone lying on it.  (15 pts)

i've done this, although not for scav.  in fact, i probably did this not too long after this was a scav hunt item, since i know it was in middle school when i got to lie on a bed of nails.  it's really not that scary -- it was for a science demonstration at school.  they were demonstrating distribution of weight, and explaining that if you were lying on hundreds and hundreds of nails, you'd have so little weight on each that you wouldn't get poked.

still, classmates of mine were scared to do it.  i, on the other hand, totally understood what they were getting at -- and was able to lie down on the bed with no fear, and no scars.  hooray, science!

i can understand this, as a scav hunt item, potentially being a very tedious one if no one knew a performing organization (or a science teacher, ha) who had a bed of nails handy to lend out for the greater good of Scav.  you'd have to put in a lot of nails to do a proper bed of nails -- so that would mean finding a scavvie who really liked to hammer, or letting scavvies go in shifts until the bed was completed.

me?  if i were not on Road Trip that year, i don't think i'd mind, or at least i don't think i'd mind being one of the people taking the lead on this.  i don't usually do Big Projects kind of stuff, but i do like hitting stuff with a hammer.  :-)

[rogueclown]

Presidential Pin-Ups...

the sun rises in the east, it sets in the west, and U(C) folks love putting Hanna Gray in silly situations.  in '92, it was oatmeal boxes.  in '93?

174.  A Hanna Gray pin-up.  (5 pts)

i can't even begin to imagine what was submitted for this item.  the thing is, i'm not even sure there was the infamous pastel-toned picture in Hutch yet, since she was president of the University until 1993.

i can't lie, though.  part of me can only dream that The Painting came from this item.  i know it didn't...it was done by a modern artist, not by a Scavvie.  however, there's a certain level of moxie that makes The Painting totally appropriate for a distinguished Ivory Tower pin-up girl.

[rogueclown]

oopsy? nope. don't belive it.

from the 1993 list:

140.  accidental duplicate item deleted

i don't believe it for a moment.  there's no way that the judges, even twenty years ago, would put something like this on the list without expecting anything.  it's pretty clear, given the LaTeX format of the list, that they did have access to a computer...after all.

if nothing else...if i were the page presenter for this, i'd have had in my back pocket a duplicate of a high-pointed item, a ridiculously hilarious item, or both.  maybe, two people doing this one:

144.  The "Mythical" Ohio drunk driving test performed perfectly by a team member.  Close your eyes and lean back on one foot with your arms outstretched and count backwards from thirty.  (30 pts)

...and, preferably, two people doing this one with a beer in their hand, or having taken a healthy swig of beer before their performance.