Then We Sent a Spirit Into My Dorm-Mate's Stereo

If he looked more like this Hurley, we
would have played different pranks.

So there I was, blogging about the time I conspired to nearly disintegrate the digestive and colorectal systems of one of my college dorm-mates, whom I'm calling Hurley due to his physical resemblance to the Lost character, when I remembered another prank we pulled on the guy, which I'll share with you now.

TRUST ME, HE DESERVED IT
I haven't even really begun this post, and I feel like I'm turning Hurley into some kind of poor martyr, but believe me, the guy could dish it out as good as he could take it. There are a couple of incidents I can mention but I won't, mainly because I like the guy and this blog is The Anthony Show, not The Guy Known On The Anthony Show As Hurley Show, that would assure you that he wasn't always the poor victim.

BUT ANYWAY
Unlike the Ex-Lax brownies incident, which required a small amount of planning, the next prank came about completely by accident when Hurley purchased a very expensive sound system for his room.

A quick word or several about The Way Things Used To Be In My Day: It's hard for me to believe — and I lived through that era — that when I was in college, no one owned a cell phone, the only people who had computers in their dorm rooms were either geeks or gamers (if you can call a Commodore 64 a "computer"), and a television measuring more than 25 inches cost maybe 500 bucks and weighed about 80 pounds.

CELL PHONE DIGRESSION

Meet "Jake" and "Kurt"!

I actually did know a guy who owned a cell phone back in 1992. I'll call him Kurt, and I knew him only because he lived off-campus with a friend of mine (I'll call him Jake). Kurt bore an unpleasant resemblance to Oliver Hardy (the fat, mustachioed half of Laurel & Hardy) and liked to have unpleasantly loud sex with his troll girlfriend. At least that's what Jake told me; fortunately I never had to listen to that aural abortion.

But I was lucky enough to see the desktop wallpaper on Kurt's computer, which was an pornographic scene that was as non-erotic as you could get in "traditional" (that is, nothing illegal or involving bizarre fetishes) adult entertainment. I'm thankful that my brain was able to blur out most of the action from my memory, but I do remember that it was a scene involving a pair of supposedly heterosexual couples, all rather attractive in a "traditional" porn way, and one of the men was pulling on...something....and his face was a tight mask of strain as if he was trying to summon the torque required to loosen a bolt from the hull of the Titanic.

Just...no.

What does all this have to do with early 90s cellphones? Well, Kurt drove a Mazda RX7 and was an arrogant know-it-all and for reasons I'll never remember, Not Yet Mrs. The Anthony Show and I went to dinner in downtown Buffalo with Kurt and Jake, where Kurt ordered Chambord liqueur straight up like a bloated fop and took calls from lord-knows-who on his cell phone, which was the size of a healthy newborn and probably charged him twenty bucks just for a dial tone.

I wonder what Kurt's up to now. Hmmm...oh wait, where was I?

Cell phones...gadgets...televisions! That's it!

ANYWAY
My point is, the only gadgets my roommate Eric and I had, by sophomore year, was Eric's record player, my JVC boombox, Eric's tiny microwave that we used to cook the brownies filled with Ex Lax, my little plug-in teapot to boil water, and Eric's 13-inch Magnavox television that was able to receive transmissions from the few over-the-air non-cable stations in western New York.

Hurley showed up to brag about the new stereo system that he just purchased, likely with the proceeds of some kind of scam (he once received an duplicate scholarship check, which he used to stock up on music CDs). It was a pretty sweet setup: loud, with a turntable and probably the ability to accommodate three or five CDs.

It was not even an hour after Hurley finished setting up the stereo when Eric informed me that he discovered that the remote control that worked the teeny Magnavox television was on the same frequency that controlled Hurley's stereo.

So, with my urging, Eric went to work.

THE INVISIBLE HAND
Hurley was seated comfortably in a chair, admiring his purchase, probably while eating something, likely something that wasn't his. His door, which was directly across from ours, was open. From our view we could see the large unit, which was dotted with a variety of LEDs. Without getting up from his chair, Eric pressed the mute button on his TV remote.

Hurley's stereo muted. Hurley snorted, raised himself from his chair, and walked over to the stereo. He looked at it for a few seconds, likely saw the "mute" notation on one of the panels, and pressed a couple of buttons to return the sound. Then he sat down again, the chair sighing from the return of Hurley's large frame.

Because Eric's remote was for a television, we couldn't switch the mode from CD to radio to record player, but we were able to shut off the stereo, which sent Hurley scurrying to see if there was something wrong with his outlet.

The most fun I ever had
with a knob.

We discovered what would freak him out the most: the volume.

The stereo had a thick black volume control knob that was the size of a mini Ring Ding. After Hurley sat down again, satisfied that everything was working correctly, Eric cranked up the volume from his remote, which not only raised the volume on the stereo, but turned that gigantic knob all by itself. If I remember correctly, the stereo didn't even come with its own remote control, so it looked like some kind of hearing-impaired ghost was adjusting the sound.

Hurley's frightened yelp was drowned out by the blasting hip-hop music that at the time was current but today would be considered "old school," as well as by the yells of other people on the floor asking Hurley to Turn That Shit Down.

Hurley stumbled to turn the volume down and when he turned around, he saw me looking at him. Eric quickly hid his remote between his legs.

"What's the problem, Hurley?"

"Dude! This stereo system — it's possessed!"

"Possessed, you say?"

"Yeah, man. Come here!"

I left Eric in his chair and strolled into Hurley's room.

Hurley maintained a reasonable distance from the stereo as he pointed to the volume knob. "This -- this thing moves by itself!"

"That doesn't make any sense, Hurley. How could it do that?"

"Look!" Hurley turned the knob to a moderate volume. "I do this..."

I shot Eric a nod and Eric placed his remote on his lap and pressed a button. The chunky knob began to
move clockwise as Boogie Down Productions' Edutainment grew louder. Hurley let out a scream that sounded like: "Wuuhhhhlaaaaaa!"

"Hmm," I replied. "That's strange."

"It's fuckin' possessed!" Hurley yelled as he yanked the plug from the wall. "I'm taking this back!"

I returned to my room, and Eric and I watched as Hurley called the store and tried to explain the problem:

"No man, the knob moves by itself. Like it's possessed!"

I could only imagine what was being thought by the guy on the other end of the line. Hurley received an answer that appeared to be satisfactory, so he hung up and started unhooking the system, which consisted of several parts that had to be returned correctly to the Styrofoam shells from which they were birthed, like a game of Superfection.

It was only when Hurley had the stereo fully repackaged (but before he started dragging the box out of his room) did we tell him how we were able to mind-control his audio entertainment.

He kept the stereo, but for the rest of the time we all lived on the floor, Hurley had paper taped to the bottom of his door so we couldn't zap the stereo from under the crack.