Los Angeles

First off. It's Los Angeles. The weather is always wonderful, there's a Jamba Juice onsite, and wisps of Radiohead's "Kid A" flutter around the campus at all possible hours. What more could you want from a camp for nerds?

It's been a long while since I've been at Loyola Marymount University (in west LA, near Marina Del Rey), since as far back as the nineties even, so I don't remember what courses are offered, and it's probably changed a lot.

LMU has always been a kind of black sheep with traditions, not keeping many (to the dismay of easterners), until a great kid named Michael Sherwood (whom I've never seen since but lives on inside) brought an incredible passion and zeal in the summer of '01. In that summer, and through no easy means, he imported REM's 'It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)', 'Stairway', Gay Dad (I do believe LMU "started" this tradition), and Radiohead to the camp. Suddenly, there was light and energy. The abysmal food tasted better, the sky was bluer, the girls were wearing less clothing. If you ever read this, and it doesn't get edited, Michael Sherwood of somewhere in Los Angeles County, you're Ryan Trask's goddamn hero. That guy shed tears to get them just to play 'Stairway'. Absolutely incredible. (I believe he attended Union and JH for a few years before that, and I'd like to start a cult about him, anyone have any idea?)

Well, I've been there the past two years. That would be '03 and '04. They offer almost all the basic courses, although some of the odder ones like Selected Topics in Advanced Chemistry are not there.

It's SoCal, so everyone is somewhat afflicted in the head. The RA's are generally crazier: The Boring brothers were the life of the camp in the four years that they've been RAs.