Five people, plus one Nissan Maxima, supplemented by a six-hour
drive equals discomfort.
Add a mean case of Puzzles’ revenge courtesy of a chili
cheese dog and you get misery.
Throw in Berkeley as your final destination and you are two
horns and a tail away from hell.
For those of you who road-tripped up to Berkeley in support of
the UCLA football team, bless your souls. Thank you for helping to
clean up Berkeley. Your mere presence, assuming you shower on a
regular basis, had a cleansing effect on that cesspool of the
bay.Â
I myself made the trek up north, which reminded me why I did not
go to Cal. Indeed, I still would not go there. I would not go there
if they paid for my tuition. In fact, I would not even go there if
they paid me. It was that bad.
Yes, the land of dreadlocks and Stanford rejects was in rare
form this weekend, sports fans. Despite the fact that the Bruins
lost, please realize that you are all better off attending UCLA and
losing football games than going to Berkeley and being dirty.
Period.
Our ride up started in the Maxima packed with Bruins and gas.
Not gasoline. Just gas.
We had fun messing with Berkeley supporters. If you have the
opportunity, I strongly recommend carrying out the following
sports-inspired pranks on supporters of opposing teams.
1) The Hidden Ball Trick:Â For those of you familiar with
Coalinga, skip a few lines. For those who are not familiar with it,
Coalinga houses the largest cow farm I have ever smelled. It reeks
so badly you can taste it. Anyway, here’s what you do: pull
up next to a car with Berkeley stickers on it and, pretending you
want to tell them something, make a motion for the driver to roll
down his/her window. When they do roll down their window (idiots)
the smell should knock them out “¦ they will never know what
hit them. Unless they live in Berkeley, in which case their
tolerance will be super-human.
2) The Rope-a-Dope: Cut off a car with Berkeley stickers. You
must be going more than 70 miles per hour. Spray your windshield
wiper fluid. At that speed, the dirty fluid will go over the top of
your car and land on the car behind you. That’s Cal-speak for
“car wash.”
3) The Fumble-rooskie: Pull up next to a car full of Berkeley
supporters. Leaning out an open window, point to their tire and
look concerned. Then make a round motion with your hands and shout
“Your tire! Your tire! It’s round.” I guarantee
you they will pull over. Then they will spend twenty minutes trying
to figure out what is wrong with their tire. See why Stanford did
not accept them?
If there are any other road trip pranks that I did not include
““ and no, I did not forget about the group moonings that are
a staple of road trips ““ please let me know.
Now, I like freedom as much as the next guy, but let’s be
serious. Someone could make a lot of money by marketing bras and
close-toed shoes at the prestigious UC Berkeley campus.
That said, let’s discuss their “fans.” If
you were there, you probably heard the Cal student section giving a
hearty ovation to the first band performing prior to the game.
The band’s formations were flawless; their songs perfect.
The home crowd was going nuts. The thing is, it was not the Cal
band. It was the UCLA band wearing colors similar to those of the
Golden Bears and playing songs akin to the Cal band. Luckily, the
intellectuals sitting on the 50-yard line realized this as the
Bruin marching band was wrapping up their performance.
We all know how the game turned out, but I want to talk about
what happened after the game. The fans stormed the field.
That’s right, the student section, after a heroic victory
against UCLA’s third-string quarterback, ran onto the field
in a wild celebration.
This is an action usually reserved for upset victories over
top-ranked opponents. UCLA is not in the top 25. In fact, they
earned zero votes in the Associated Press poll this week. Cal
earned 26. What an upset.
One of my fellow road trippers and former eighth-grade flag
football coach Marc Steinberg put it best when he said this:
“The best part about going to Berkeley is going
home.” Period.