The Cougar Lounge - The Hippie Dippy Shake

"Folks, stay tuned. There are hippies sitting in the trees here in Berkeley. Anything can happen."

- Television commentator Brent Musburger, during the Cal-Tennessee football game earlier in the season, pointing out one of the most-recent Berkeley tourist attractions.

"They're saying we're endangering trees when they're planning to chop them down. It's a big joke."

- Tree-sitting hippie, Zachary Running Wolf, who have established forts in the trees protesting plans to build a new athletics center.

"It turned out I had more dumbass opinions than places to air them publicly, so here we are."

- Media critic Larry Dobrow, touting, among other things, his new online presence at LarryDobrow.com - scheduled to debut early next month or "whenever Mr. Dobrow's check to the web designer clears".

At first, the Lounge was skeptical. How could anyone in their right mind not like Halloween? There's the costumes. It's the one day out of the year where one can walk down the street dressed as a banana and not be questioned – well, not be interrogated down at the police station, perhaps, would be a better way of putting it. There's the candy. Unless one has allergies to acquiring free candy, it is incomprehensible to the Lounge how this can be viewed as anything but a positive. Then there are the decorations. Apparently, this is where some people have problems - like this guy. Now, we can understand if he had issues with the logic of ghosts emerging from a pumpkin because, c'mon, if a ghost were going to hide, would it hide in a gourd? Maybe, but three of 'em? Naw, defies the laws of ghostly physics, plus it cuts down on their scarifying abilities. Three ghosts are better than one on Halloween, but only if they are scattered about – the better to pop up unexpectedly and scare the bejeebers out of grade-schoolers. But he was out of his own gourd so it seems like maybe that might be a better Halloween decoration – crazy drunkard guy. Now that would scare the kiddies.

But there is something scarier than that. Much scarier. Yes, we are talking about leprechauns. Leprechauns don't just lose football games, they do unpredictable things too, like turn your furniture upside down, get drunk and do nasty things to your boxes of Lucky Charms and steal all the pots o'gold at the ends of all the rainbows. But if they can't find those, then that's when they go after car stereo speakers - or hypnotize their accomplices to take off their pants and do their dirty work for them [because stealing car stereo speakers goes so much quicker when you are not wearing any pants].

When people take off their pants in Arkansas, it is generally perceived as a sign to run very fast in the opposite direction of the pants-less individual – the overriding genetic implications can be very obvious. So, to distract them from taking their pants off, the Lounge sent in an Aussie barmaid who had a somewhat unique talent. But the morality cops nabbed her and that's when Virginia Tech stepped up and and sent in their crack team of bass fishermen to win the national championship in bass fishing earlier this month. Yes, the Lounge is like everybody out there – completely and blissfully unaware that a bass fishing national championship even existed and still not sure if we care now that we know it exists – but it also took our minds off the giant colon that Father Lotto was considering as his Halloween costume that most every member of the Lounge clientele was trying to talk him out of.

All we know is there is going to have to be liquor involved in Father Lotto's Halloween decision-making process, which pretty much rules out that it will be held in the state of Utah, where some people get intimidated and frightened just at the mere sight of liquor. So we figured we would do it the old-fashioned way and hold a poll because you can find out anything you want if you have a poll, like, your favorite team won because of the blue toothbrush you used. But before the poll could even be conducted, Father Lotto beat them to the punch and decided to be a member of the Myanmar ruling military junta beating down a Buddhist monk for holding negative views – allowing him to act with impunity and horde all the Reese's peanut butter cups. Because that is the true spirit of Halloween – getting as many Reese's peanut butter cups as you can.

"Well, I was beginning to think I would never see another Pac-10 win in my lifetime, but that was sweet!" says Mrs. Sequitur who is interrupted by her husband, Mr. Non-Sequitur while he points out that "the geese crap is pretty thick this year" and resumes building his replica of Great Wall Of China out of mashed potatoes.

The Sequiturs are speaking, of course, of the Cougars' first football win in over a month, coming at the expense of their personal whipping doll, UCLA. Wazzu has beaten the Bruins six of the last seven times they have played while head coach Bill Doba – thanks to good luck, he says, has won four out of five against Ursa Minor. Running back Dwight Tardy took out his personal demons on UCLA – all 214 of them – and gave the Bruins their first conference defeat of the year whilst getting the first conference win of the year for the Cougars. The win is a gigantic load off the backs of the Cougars, who faced the very real possibility of going winless in the Pac-10 coming off their annihilation at the hands of Oregon. Realistic bowl hopes are still out of the picture but a few more wins might not be, since the Wazzu's win and Washington's loss put the Huskies in sole possession of last place as the only winless team in the conference and both them and Stanford remain on the schedule.

"That scrimmage was great – I just wish there was a real game this week so I could have a good reason to keep my Halloween costume for a few extra days," says a melancholy Night Al after returning from the Wazzu men's hoop scrimmage at Bohler Gym this weekend.

There was much to be excited about this week in men's hoop as the first scrimmage pitting Wazzu against Wazzu was played and, well, Wazzu won, naturally. Perhaps the best part for head coach Tony Bennett and the team was that four digits' worth of Cougar fans and well-wishers packed the Bohler Gym rafters to witness the 2007-08 version of the men's hoop team and see what new faces might take them on a return trip to the Big Dance. That may sound over-confident but the first ESPN/USA Today pre-season men's hoop poll was released last week and it found the Cougars in the Top 10 – at #10 – with 464 points, garnering more than such traditional basketball luminaries as Duke [11], Arizona [17] and Kentucky [22]. That's the good news, the bad news is that German big man import Fabian Boeke was determined, by the NCAA, to be ineligible for the year due to playing on a club team in Germany where two members – but not Boeke – were paid, therefore, making the entire team a professional outfit in the NCAA's squinty eyeballs. Since Boeke was not one of those who was paid, WSU will appeal the ruling and hope that Boeke will only be ineligible for a portion of the season.

The Lounge realizes it is important to put yourself in the right frame of mind before the upcoming basketball season, so we heartily recommend that you immediately go down to the local supermarket, buy a can of pork and beans, come back home and sit in front of the computer while watching PoliceCatHQ where you can be inundated with laughter. The Lounge endorses these as our personal Top Four – The Report [sample line – "last down and you're at the goal line"], Pool Party Do's and Don't's [Berg is "not respecting personal space"], Bukowksi [starring Charles Bukowski as The Vet, The Children's Entertainer, The Therapist, The Obstetrician and The Hallmark Card Writer] and perhaps the best – The Draft ["Jared's brother got drafted and he went off to the Arena League and no one ever saw him again!"].

Finally, if something is not going the way you would like it, the Lounge Scientists may have discovered a solution to avoiding the offending problem – sleep your way through it like some mammals do. If the problem is particularly persistent, try sleeping through it for up to a year like the Scientists found that a certain Australian eastern pygmy possum can do – hibernating for a record 367 days.

"It used just 1/40th of the energy it does while awake, which probably allows the possum to survive lean times in Australia's unpredictable climate," says Lounge Scientist #15, Fritz Geiser, a researcher at the University of New England in New Southa Wales, Australia, who reportedly was nodding off as he was speaking.

What could be more unpredictable than the Cougar football season? It is the perfect solution for the 2007 season - first, dress up as a giant colon, then stuff yourself full of Reese's peanut butter cups and finally, sleep it off until next September when the new season begins.

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