Sunday was a very sad day at my alma mater The University of Florida. One of the real monuments of Gainesville, the UF bathouse collapsed. If you’ve never been to the bathouse, I feel sorry for you. If you’ve never dropped acid and gone to see the nightly flight to feed, I feel real sorry for you.

The campus at the University of Florida used to have a little bit of a bat problem. The little fuckers were everywhere, especially at the athletic facilites, during the late 1980’s. One time while at James G. Pressley Stadium at Percy Beard Track for a track meet, then Governor Bob Martinez famously complained about the smell of bat guano. It was due to this problem that the Bathouse was constructed, with money from the University Athletic Association, in 1991. Its goal was to provide the perfect type of structure to convince the bats that it was the best place to be. It was sort of a hedonism resort for bats. The Bathouse became home to over 200,000 Mexican free-tailed bats.

The Bathouse also contributed to the local economy, as all the pounds and pounds of bat guano that fell to the floor was donated to organic gardeners to use as fertilizer. The Bathouse really contributed nothing but good to everyone. That’s why what happened on Sunday was so sad.

One of perhaps the most tremendous experiences of my life was the first time I went to see the Bathouse. I had heard about beforehand but had never been out there before. I was sitting around with some friends doing acid when my buddy, WAKEBOARD BEARD, turned and said “It’s getting close to dusk, we should go see the bats.” This would become one of my favorite lines, and I’m definetly going to work it into a screenplay before my time here is done.

For those that don’t know, every night the bats leave the Bathouse to go out and feed on the insects around Lake Alice for the night. They all leave at the same time, its really quite a mesmerizing experience. It takes about 10-15 min for all of them to leave and its just a mess of fluttering flying little hell demons, its fantastic.

The first time you see it is just really incredible. I had such a great time, that I made it my goal to spread the joy of the experience to anyone that had never had it. Every year I’d find some new students and I’d provide the acid and the life changing experience. Its really the closest to nature that you can possibly feel. Especially if their a novice tripper, the look on their face when you turn and say “I think it’s time to go see the bats”, is just priceless. I’ve had people afterwards get down on their hands and knees and thank me for the experience.

That’s one of the things that makes it so ironic that the collapse happened on Sunday. Sunday was also move-in day for all the new students. I feel sad for those students and hope that the plans to reinvigorate the Bathouse come to fruition. They say that its going to take about $10,000 dollars to repair the existing one, and $60,000 dollars to construct a new one which they were already thinking about doing before the collapse.

These numbers seem like nothing, and I don’t really see anyway the University does not get right on. After all we pay Urban Meyer $4 million a year to coach the football team. I’m not saying he doesn’t earn every penny of that, but the money for the Bathouse should be no problem.

It should be mighty interesting the next few days in Gainesville as well, as now these 200,000 bats are searching for a new home. I implore anyone that spots a bat, to just leave it alone. If you leave them alone, they usually leave you alone. My dad was not so lucky as a child. One time while cleaning out the chimney where he lived in Cedartown, GA. A bat swooped down and bit him, right on the big toe. He jumped around with that bat latched right on his big toe and it wouldn’t let go. Eventually they got the bat off, but my dad then had to go and get rabies shots. If you’ve never had rabies shot, I can assure you that their something you want to avoid.

To UF officials, I must say get off your asses and get the dam Bathouse fixed. All those new students are missing out on one of the most important experiences of being a Florida Gator. I’d really like to try and raise the money myself. Imagine if I got it together and they named it after me. The Frank Fitton Bathouse, oh my god.

The stuffed shirts up at The Princeton Review released their rankings of the top party schools recently, and my University of Florida came in second. God, I hate coming in 2nd in anything. The #1 school according to these rankings is Penn State University. Florida was #1 last year, so that means either we partied less or those dam Nittany Lions partied harder this year. Florida administrators are happy about it of course, but I think I can speak for all of our alumni when I say Fuck That.

I don’t understand how we could possibly lose out to the people at Penn St. What the fuck is there to do in Happy Valley, I guess they can just sit around and drink all day, but that’s not really a “party” in my mind. When I think Penn St. I think blue blazers and getting hand jobs from your prude girlfriend. Certainly not the way we roll up in Gainesville.

I don’t want to sound like an old man or anything either, but they partied much harder in Gainesville during my day. I was actually there for the beginning of the curbing of the rocking era.When I first got there, a 2 am closing law was unheard of. That law was passed in about my 3rd year up there, and it was pretty much totally aimed at shutting down this awesome rave club Simon’s. Anyone up there during that time, or living anywhere else in the state knows about Simon’s. That place was usually going until about 9 or 10am. Its main problem was a geographical one. Simon’s was located downtown basically right across the street from the courthouse. That meant that when all those lame ass government people were heading in to work at 9 am, people would be stumbling out of Simon’s with that lovely perpetual smile.

The guy that owned Simon’s rocked too, he was this crazy Russian guy named of course Simon. I remember when they were playing around with the 2 am closing role at the city commission meetings he would always be there. These meetings were on local TV up there, and I would watch just to hear what Simon had to say. When they passed the law, he picked up a chair and threw it at the head commissioner, it was awesome. He then opened up Soulhouse, but it wasn’t anywhere near the debauchery level of Simon’s.

Another initiative they pulled while I was up there was banning halftime re-entry at football games. This was a tremendous policy they had, it meant that at halftime you could leave and then re-enter the stadium. Anyone that’s been up to that little slice of heaven in north-central Florida for a Saturday service, knows that right across the stadium are a whole bunch of bars. So at halftime everyone would run across the street to The Purple Porpoise (now sadly defunct and the much less rocking Gator City), The Swamp, or The Grog House and you would get there and they’d already have shots lined up and waiting. You’d down a bunch of shots in succession and then run right back to the stadium without missing a thing. I think that law was pushed through by the local liquor store and Ziploc bag lobby, which is strong, as it just meant that know you had to sneak a whole lot more booze into the game.

Losing to those prissy Penn St. boys is just not acceptable. I’m tempted to just scrape this whole being sober thing and enroll in grad school so that I can make it my mission to return us to our deserved place at #1. It might be taking the idea of Gator Nation a little to far, but I am tempted. At the very least I can implore the people up there to man up and crank it up a notch this year. When you feel like just drinking beer, make it a Jager-Bomb instead. When you feel like just having sex with one freshman girl, make it a threesome. When you feel like rolling to class stoned, suck it up and eat some mushrooms. Show a little school pride.

You can see the top 20 on the Princeton Review’s tainted list here

When the news came out that some coach in the SEC had left Tim Tebow off the preseason All-Sec team, everyone knew who it had to be. Lane Kiffin was immediately branded as the prime suspect. If the sports-books would have set a line on it they would’ve made a killing. It became The Story at SEC Media days this past week, Tebowgate was the first thing on every one’s brain. One by one each coach came out and declared, I’m not the idiot. Public enemy #1 Lane Kiffin even brought his filled out ballot with him because he knew no one would believe what his lying mouth had to say. I still didn’t believe him as the first thought that came to mind was that the ballot is a fake. I wasn’t and I don’t think anyone was prepared for who the real culprit was.

The culprit it turns out was not that bumbling fool up in Knoxville, or that power mad psychotic in Athens, but rather Gator legend Steve Spurrier. Say it ain’t so Steve, say it ain’t so the people cried. Spurrier looking like a shell of his former swaggering self was left to meekly apologize left and right. It didn’t even seem like the same guy. I don’t remember Steve Spurrier ever apologizing for anything he did or said while at Florida, even if he was wrong.

It brings to mind the question, has Steve Spurrier lost his fire? Steve was never built for losing and perhaps maybe just being average is not something he can live with. I think South Carolina’s a whole lot better know than before he got there. South Carolina was a miraculous blocked FG by Jarvis Moss away from taking away Tim Tebow’s first National Championship.For Spurrier though this is just not good enough. Coupled with his disastrous stint with the Washington Redskins, it seems that fun and gun is gone from Spurrier’s personality.

Spurrier was always a guy to take all the responsibility and shoulder the load, come at me with whatever you got he used to sneer at media and other coaches. Now he immediately went and threw his director of football operations Jaime Speronis under the bus. He blamed him right away for picking the team saying that he just glanced at a few of the positions and signed off on it. Now were expected to believe that one of the few positions that he glanced at wasn’t quarterback. This from the former quarterback himself who micromanages that position like its going out of style. I’m not really buying it. Go sell crazy someplace else Steve.

I do buy that he didn’t fill out the preseason poll himself, as Spurrier has never been big on that sort of thing. He’s also always taken plenty of time for golf, but now he’s getting the heat for those things. Now people are questioning whether he has lost his drive. Its fine and dandy to leave early to go play some golf when your ripping through the SEC like a wrecking ball, but when your just an average coach that’s not good enough. Spurrier even admits that he’s just this average coach. He seems defeated when he whispers about his 7-6 record. He seems like the guy who hates his job and just goes there everyday like a zombie.

This is not the Steve Spurrier I know, and not the Steve Spurrier I want to remember or even chose to remember. I just wish this whole past week could be washed from my brain. I’m the proud owner of a Steve Spurrier Gators throwback jersey and always used to have a bit of a swagger and confidence when I put it on. I just hope I can trick myself into still feeling that way.

So I’m really quite amazed that up until this point I haven’t written a single story about the Gators yet. Don’t expect that trend to continue as I’m a huge Florida Gators fan. I was born in Gainesville, FL while my parents were attending UF, and I also ended up going to UF. One of the earliest pictures of me has me just out of the hospital and rocking a shirt that says “I’m a Baby Gator.” So expect me to show a lot of Gator love on here.

What I want to talk about today though is our university president Bernie Machen and his crusade to curb alcohol abuse at anything associated with the university. Now I used to have a major alcohol problem, and consequently I don’t drink anymore, but I think the majority of people can just fine. I don’t condone drinking during class like I used to do or anything, but a football game is a whole  other story.

Mr. Machen’s  latest pet project is to try to cut back on alcohol at the Florida vs Georgia game. Now this is a game that is known as “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” and for good reason. A few years ago they asked the TV stations to stop using that nickname, but your not gonna wipe out years of history and an ingrained nickname with the fans. It most certainly is still “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.”

The reason the game got that nickname is of course for the tremendous amounts of alcohol consumed by fans before, during, and after the game. Not to say that is really any different than any other football game at UF, but here they are actually allowed to sell alcohol inside the stadium as its not located on a college campus and rather played at a nuetral site in Jacksonville. Although that didn’t really change anything for me when I went. I’d still rather smuggle in a couple of ziplocs filled with bourbon rather than pay those ridiculous prices.

In a letter to the mayor of Jacksonville, Bern the Worm requested that the number of locations selling alcohol inside the stadium be cut in half. This isn’t really that unreasonable, but I don’t think it would really have any effect. The only thing that would cause would be longer lines and cause people to miss more of the game. The best way I’d think to satisfy Mr. Machen here would be to cut the # of locations in half, but just make those locations larger and able to serve more people. See, we can all win.

Machen’s 2nd request though is the one that is just insane. He wants the city to ban all shot sales at Jacksonville Landing bars and restaurants. This is just crazy. Your going to go and tell these business owners that they can’t sell any shots on their busiest weekend of the year. That’s pure and simple crazy talk, and you can go sell it somewhere else. This is America and we should have a right to drink our booze in whatever form we wish. If this crazy rule was adopted it wouldn’t have any effect either. If bar owners are anything, its inventive. They would surely find ways to make drinks that are just as strong and get you just as drunk without it being in shot form. Hey, since shots are banned I guess I’ll just have to buy a whole glass of Jager instead. Cheers Bernie!

This is just so typical of the way things have been heading in recent times. Since a couple of years ago when “binge drinking” became a big buzz word among administrators, all sorts of plans have been made to try and curb this massive problem. Though all their doing is making different kinds of problems. This is SEC football at its finest and with that is always going to come a whole lot of drinking. That’s just how we do football in the South.

I can remember that my first couple years at UF there was no 2am closing law and there was a lovely system called “halftime reentry”. Oh god how I loved that. What that meant was that at halftime you could run across the street to The Purple Porpoise or The Swamp, where the lovely bartenders would already have shots lined up and waiting, down a few (or ten in my case) shots and then run back to the stadium and not miss a snap. Now I don’t really have any stats to back this up, but I swear in those times we’d always come out and play huge right at the start of the third quarter. I swear the team fed off the crowd’s increased drunkenness. Now sadly this is no longer allowed during halftime.

We didn’t win the halftime reentry battle, but we can’t lose the cocktail party as well. That’s what Florida vs Georgia is all about and who the hell is Bernie Machen to mess with all this tradition.

Now you know I couldn’t write all this without mentioning the Gators complete and utter dominance of Georgia in recent times. Since 1990 the Gators are an amazing 16-3 in this “rivalry” game. Its even been sweeter since that idiot Mark Richt took over the Georgia program as I really can’t stand that dumbass.

My personal favorite cocktail party that I attended was in 2002. In that game the Dawgs came in rolling at a perfect 8-0 and ranked #4 in the country. My Gators on the other hand were struggling. Spurrier had left and we limped into this game at 5-3 and unranked. Needless to say, Georgia was a fairly solid favorite. Georgia scored first then we answered with a TD pass from my boy Rex Grossman. Gus Scott later added a tremendous interception return for a TD, but we missed the extra point and trailed by that extra point 13-12 in the 4th quarter. Rex than led the Gators on a drive for the ages. That drive ended with him hitting Ben Troupe on 3rd and goal for the go ahead score, Rex added the 2 point conversion himself for a 20-13 lead. Our defense held and that’s how the game ended. Georgia came in riding high and we snuffed their National Championship hopes. They did go on to win the SEC title that year, but they got no further. Hey, if we weren’t gonna have a great year, at least we got to ruin theirs.