Shawn Collins' Blog

Affiliate marketing and other stuff from Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit.

The Fraternity Choice: Big Brothers and Little Brothers

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I was overwhelmed when I became a Pi Kappa Alpha pledge at the University of Maryland in September 1988. Just a few months removed from high school, I was suddenly operating in an adult world.

One of the many decisions I had to make early on was choosing a Big Brother in the fraternity. I got to know some guys during rush and came up with my list of three potential Big Brothers.

Looking back now, I am really glad I got my top pick of the bunch… Hank.

We liked a lot of the same music and had a good vibe together, which translated into years of being good friends, getting into some mischief together, and staying in touch for decades.

While some of the Big and Little Brothers never quite connected during the semester, there were always some who had fun and spent lots of time together during the school years.

And then, during Hell Week, it was a really important move, because one of the work days, Hank kidnapped me and let me chill for an afternoon, instead of being hassled and doing thankless, and sometimes pointless, manual labor.

Hank and Shawn away weekend 1991

After college, in those pre-social media days, we fell out of touch for a while, but then reconnected on Facebook, or maybe it was Instagram.

Later in my college career, I was picked by a pledge named Jason to be his Big Brother. This was my final year of school, so we didn’t have as much time to hang out, but it was a lot of fun getting to know him.

Father Rob Shawn Collins and Jason Palmer

I still have the Big Brother paddle that Jason made for me in the fall 1992 semester. It lost a letter over the years, but it’s still in good shape and fun to have a look at.

My Big Brother Paddle from Jason

Jason and I crossed paths a couple or three times after graduation, but then we went our separate ways. I was in New York City two years after graduation, and later moved on to Austin, TX.

But then I was on LinkedIn last year, and I happened to look him up. I sent a message, but didn’t expect to hear back, because if he was anything like me, he didn’t really check LinkedIn messages, since they were mostly strangers promoting their businesses.

A few weeks later, I heard back from him, and he was living just 25 miles away from me. So, we made plans to meet up for lunch and caught up over some Tex-Mex. Just a couple of Maryland guys who knew each other in the 90s and then both made our way to the Texas Hill Country.

We plan to get together again soon.

The Dangerous Days of Drinking Cisco in College

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During college at the University of Maryland, my fraternity brothers and I heard about Cisco, a fortified wine produced by the Canandaigua Wine Company with the slogan, “Takes you by surprise.”

Cisco, also known as Liquid Crack, was known as a cheap and fast way to get drunk back then. You could get a 12-ounce bottle for like $1.50 and it was 20% alcohol by volume. One bottle contained the alcohol equivalent of five shots of 80-to-100-proof vodka,

One problem was that it tasted awful—just too sweet and artificial. So we also got a 40 of malt liquor (I chose Private Stock, “the malt liquor with the imported taste”) to chase that nasty sweetness.

All of that alcohol content got us pretty ripped. Around that time, I even went as a “Cisco Kid” on Halloween.

Shawn as the Cisco Kid

Because of the high alcohol content, Cisco was known to lead to blackouts and violence. The odds were about 50/50 that a guy would break up with his girlfriend on a night of Cisco drinking, yet we persisted.

In 1991, the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Antonia Novello, spoke out against Cisco after it caused alcohol poisoning for more than a dozen teens. In January 1991, she denounced Cisco’s packaging and marketing and demanded repackaging so it wouldn’t be mistaken for a wine cooler.

Dr. Novello also pressured retailers to stop carrying it, and 7-Eleven removed Cisco from shelves nationwide. This negative attention was positive for us. A cheap and possibly dangerous drink appealed to a bunch of dopey guys in their early 20s.

Cisco was such a cultural touchstone that I wrote an article about it in The Greek Times, a newspaper I published at the time.

Cisco

In the fall of 1992, I needed to come up with a cocktail for our Pi Kappa Alpha room-to-room party, where each of the 14 rooms in the house featured a different drink. I chose a Cisco Spritzer: a big container of Cisco mixed with 7-UP. My room was the most popular at the party.

Plus, this drink was pretty contained and didn’t make a mess, unlike my drink the previous year: Lemondrop Shooters. The next morning, when I woke up, there were ants all over my desk from the spilled sugar and simple syrup.

Like many fun, reckless things, I moved on from Cisco after I graduated college. I made it through my Cisco days without any arrests or other hassles. During that time, I wore my room key around my neck so I wouldn’t lose it.

Shawn Collins the latchkey kid

It was a good time to stop, since I wasn’t really dealing with hangovers at that age. But just thinking about drinking a Red or Peach bottle of Cisco now gives me a headache.

Then again, if I saw it on the shelf at the liquor store, I might pick up a bottle for the nostalgia, and see how it tastes these days.

The Worst Album in My Collection: Brothers Sing On!

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When I was the recording secretary of the Delta Psi (??) chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha (?KA) at the University of Maryland, I ordered supplies from the national headquarters and noticed they had a record album, Brothers Sing On, for $1.

The cover looked so cheesy that I couldn’t resist getting a copy.

Brothers Sing On front

The record came out in 1964 for the Pi Kappa Alpha 96th Anniversary National Convention. Even then, I have to imagine this twelve-track LP looked and sounded outdated.

It took a while for Brothers Sing On to arrive to me. They probably had to dig through some dank basement to find a copy, because who was seriously ordering this in the early 1990s?

After I got it, I couldn’t listen to it, since I’d moved on from records in high school and only had a cassette and DVD player. But when I went to my Dad’s house to visit a while later, I had to bring it along and put it on the turntable.

Let me preface this by saying I bought a lot of music when I was young. I literally spent all my money on recorded music or concert tickets, so even though I had steady jobs from the time I turned 15, I never had enough money for a car.

I didn’t get a driver’s license and a car until I was 23, because my hunger for music was so strong.

Anyhow, I bought all of the music I could get my hands on. When I was low on cash, I’d go to the cut-out bins at record stores and buy cheap tapes for less than a dollar based on the covers and song names.

Most of the time, these were awful picks, but I kept doing it. I also published a music zine in high school, and I got review copies from so many bad punk bands. Still, nothing in my whole music collection (including the really bad stuff that I tossed in the trash over time) was ever as bad as Brothers Sing On.

Brothers Sing On back

Maybe I would have appreciated some of these tunes if our fraternity chapter sang any of these traditional songs. But when we serenaded sororities, the songs we sang were pretty vulgar and inappropriate. It’s a good thing we threw awesome parties, because our songbook was very lacking.

To give you an idea of how these songs sound, the singers were undergrads and alumni from the Pi Kappa Alpha chapter at Birmingham Southern College, and they sounded like a 1940s boy band singing in the style of a barbershop quartet. It makes Lawrence Welk sound like death metal.

Here is how the liner notes of Brothers Sing On introduce the record:

Fellowship is the hallmark of Pi Kappa Alpha. It flows into deep and abiding friendship and brotherhood.

Singing is man’s natural expression of fellowship. Chapter and group singing are both a cause and a result of fraternalism. Since 1868, the bonds of brotherhood in Pi Kappa Alpha have been strengthened and hearts made glad by the chorus of voices lifted in songs of fellowship.

This recording will bring many moments of listening pleasure. It is also designed to make participants out of all of us. This singing, by the men of a single chapter, demonstrates the musical potential in every chapter. Our many beautiful Pi Kappa Alpha songs can come alive only as we sing them.

A singing chapter lives in harmony. Listen and sing the songs of brotherhood!

It’s no wonder college fraternity membership declined significantly in the late 1960s and 1970s, with this corny stuff going on and anti-establishment sentiments among college students.

If anyone wants a copy of this record, Columbia Special Products released it (Catalog No. 99021); you may be able to find one on eBay. But don’t come for mine—these wax tracks will stay with me to the end.

My Fraternity Pledge Interview Book

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When I started pledging Pi Kappa Alpha at the University of Maryland in fall 1988, one of the things we had to buy was a small binder and paper to interview brothers.

The book was known as a Harvey T. Newell book, or Harvey T. for short. The name was in recognition of the National President of Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity, Harvey Thornton Newell Jr., who held the office when the University of Maryland chapter was founded in 1952.

Harvey T Newell Book of Shawn Collins

The brother interviews during our pledging semester helped us learn names and personal details of brothers in the house.

Each interview included a series of questions, and we had to have the interviewed brother sign the back of the page afterward. Some guys would just sign it right away, but others would make us do a task or say we would have to do something later to get their signature.

A common task was to find a brother’s girlfriend and get her to write a love letter to the brother. I also had to memorize the Budweiser preamble, go to the local Chinese restaurant and get an employee to write some goofy sentence in a Chinese dialect, and to find out various trivia about the house.

One guy said I’d have to tell him the name of any woman he wanted to meet at a party. I did this each time he asked. He never signed my book.

We had weekly pledge class meetings where we were tested on fraternity history, and we also had to show that we had secured five new interviews each week. I forget what happened to pledges that didn’t get their required signatures.

In each interview, we had to ask the following:

  1. name
  2. nickname
  3. home address
  4. home phone
  5. local address
  6. local phone
  7. year in school
  8. major
  9. favorite drink
  10. girlfriend’s name, if any
  11. hobbies and/or interests

And then there was a question that changed over time…

  • What does brotherhood mean to you?
  • What was your most memorable moment as a PiKA?
  • Where was the strangest place you ever got laid?
  • Now that you’re a brother, what advice can you give to me as a pledge so that I don’t get blackballed?

Harvey T questions for brother interviews

I typed the original questions on my non-electric typewriter, which I used for school assignments for a couple of years, until I discovered the computer lab.

This book was just one more stressor during my pledge semester, but it ended up being a useful tool for getting to know a lot of the brothers at the time, and it’s fun to look through it now and see what guys had to say back then.

Boxed Wine, Whippets, and a Reggae Festival Disaster

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It was July 12, 1992, at the University of Maryland, and none of us had work that day because it was a Sunday. I was hanging out in my Knox Box apartment with my girlfriend and my buddy, Pat, and someone suggested going to a reggae festival.

The 1992 Reggae Sunsplash tour was at the Merriweather Post Pavilion for the day, so we decided to head over for some Irie vibes in the sunshine.

There was a mostly full box of Franzia White Zinfandel in the fridge, so we grabbed it and a few red Solo cups and headed out to the festival. It was $20 to get in, and we figured we’d pre-game with our boxed wine and then fork over the money to chill on the lawn and feel the music.

Reggae Sunsplash

When we got to the parking lot, it was a big party, and after we made our way through our box of white zinfandel, we wandered around to see what was going on. The crowd reminded me of a Grateful Dead show, with all sorts of cool stuff for sale and lots of music, dancing, and smiling.

Then we heard it… the familiar sound of balloons being filled up. We wandered over to see some guys selling brightly colored balloons filled with nitrous oxide (N?O) for $3 each.

None of us had tried nitrous balloons before, but we were curious after watching people sucking in the gas, so we each got one. It was fun, but it was short, so we each got another one.

We continued this balloon party until we’d spent all of the money we brought… enough for a festival ticket and a couple of drinks each.

By the time the effects of the final balloon went away, we were still wine-buzzed and headed over to the gate to listen to the music from there. It was ok for a few songs, but we really wanted to be inside.

So, we came up with a plan to sneak in. The concert venue was surrounded by a chain-link fence that wasn’t much different from the fences I’d grown up climbing as a kid, so we decided to space out and make a run for he fence, jump over, and mix in with the crowd on the lawn.

The liquid courage had us all primed, and when we nodded to each other to start the sprint, we took off. I was impressed with myself and how cleanly I made it across, and then I took off my shirt and blended in with the other concertgoers.

As I caught my breath, I looked around for the rest of the crew, and they were being given a talking-to on the other side of the fence. Neither of them made it safely over, so I figured I’d sweet-talk the security into letting them in.

I walked over with a swagger while Pat looked at me and subtly shook his head no. Undeterred, I kept at it until I reached the fence and explained that the two of them were already at the concert, but they had to run out to the car to get some medicine.

Then I waited for security to accept my story and let them through. Except that didn’t happen. Instead, I got bounced out of the concert, and we were told to leave the premises immediately.

With our heads hung low, we walked away, grateful not to be arrested for our goofy breach attempt, and relaxed a while away from the fence so they couldn’t see us. We could still sort of hear the music, so we settled for that.

Also, being responsible college students, we needed to kill some time, so it was safe to drive back to school.

We were feeling good by the time Aswad hit the stage, and we headed back to the car as we heard “Don’t Turn Around” drifting through the night sky. I guess we sort of accomplished our goal, since we had a good time, heard lots of music, and got some sun.

The next summer, I was back at Merriweather Post Pavilion for UB40 and the Gin Blossoms. This time I’d gotten tickets in advance, stayed away from the balloons, and had a different kind of great night.

I Was Naked in Public A Lot in College

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It was the first day or so after I moved into the Cumberland Hall dorm at the University of Maryland when I started hearing about guys from one of the nearby dorms, maybe Chestertown Hall, who would streak through the quad.

I figured it was some tradition that carried over from the 1970s but wasn’t actually happening anymore. And I don’t remember any dorm streaking while I was living in Cumberland.

Some places I was naked at the University of Maryland

But while I was pledging, there was one night when we had to go to the Testudo statue in front of McKeldin Library, and all of us had to strip naked, pose around the giant Terrapin, and sit all over it.

After taking a picture of the undressed pledge class around Testudo, we looked to the pile of our clothes, and they were gone. We had to run naked back to the fraternity house to get our clothes.

Sorry to the students who would rub Testudo’s nose for good luck before an exam. There were lots of naked guys on there before the rub.

Then, during Hell Week, we went to the Sigma Kappa sorority, where we had to wear Speedos under our clothes as part of a pledge activity. After we arrived, we were ushered into their TV room and told to take off all our clothes and run around the sorority house — somehow, this was a sanctioned event between our frat and the sorority.

Again, as we returned to the TV room, our clothes were all gone. Another naked run from the sorority back to our house. We had to run across Route 1 and past all of the bar-goers on the way back.

Naked Stuff After Becoming a Brother

I didn’t really have a choice about stripping naked when I was a pledge. Those were times when we had to do it as part of the pledge class. It was sort of funny and ridiculous, and after a while we just had no shame.

But I was also in my birthday suit in public a number of times after I became a brother in Pi Kappa Alpha (PiKA).

There was a tradition where anytime one of our brothers got lavaliered (a little gold pendant with our fraternity letters on it) or pinned (a pin with our fraternity crest) to a girlfriend, the pledges would kidnap us and tie us naked to the big anchor in front of the Delta Gamma sorority.

I was on that anchor a few times, since I gave lavaliers to two girlfriends and also a pin to one of them. Each time I got tied up, I had to wait for my girlfriend to come and untie me.

Fortunately, this was long before everyone had a camera phone in their pocket, so I don’t think there is any photographic evidence of it.

However, another tradition we had was that pledges would kidnap the fraternity President-elect, and I was that guy for fall 1992. After I was kidnapped and made to drink silly amounts of alcohol, I ended up back in my room in the frat house in nothing but boxers.

I got up to go pee at some point and decided to take a seat because of my booze fatigue, and I was oblivious to a camera in my face as I settled onto the throne. While I was wearing nothing at that point, I ended up angled in a way that the picture was rated PG.

Shawn Collins fall 1992 after pledge skipout

In 1992, I also started up a Greek life newspaper called the Greek Times, and one of the cover photos was a naked brother of mine who had just been crowned the Alpha Phi Silver Sweetheart, and a bunch of brothers stripped him down and brought him to the sorority.

Zuke the Silver sweetheart of Alpha Phi

I am not sure whether using this picture on the cover was the reason this was my second-to-last issue of the newspaper (it was funded by the Panhellenic Association and Interfraternity Council), but I thought it might be a candidate for the Pulitzer Prize for Photography, so I went with it.

It was a fun time while it lasted, but I’ve been happy to navigate the world with clothes on since those days.

Swamp Water: Cold Beer, Live Music, and a Fake Swamp

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One of the artifacts I have from my frat days is a T-shirt from Swamp Water in 1990. It was a party where we’d create a swamp behind the house that you had to go through to get in.

The swamp was framed by wood and a layer of plastic to keep the water in, and there were wood pallets to walk on, so you didn’t have to get your shoes swampy. Based on the picture I have from building it, I think the swamp must have been about 18” or so deep.

Shawn Collins pouring a beer

Apparently, this was before people were lawsuit-happy, because this swamp was enclosed by walls and a roof and poorly lit, so it would be really easy to lose your footing, fall into the water, and get hurt. I guess someone could even drown if they were drunk and/or bonked their head on the way down.

Anyhow, it was a fantastic party. It was a 4-way event with two fraternities and two sororities. In the case of the Swamp Water that I still have a shirt from, we did it with Alpha Phi, Kappa Alpha Theta, and Delta Tau Delta.

Swamp Water 1990

The band for Swamp Water in 1990 was Honor Among Thieves, which was formed that year by students at the University of Maryland. Frontman Mitch Allan was a Theta Chi at Maryland, and they often played local bars and frats at that time.

In the years after all of this, Honor Among Thieves evolved into another band called SR-71, which had a hit single, “Right Now,” which was featured in movies such as American Pie and Dude, Where’s My Car?

Mitch Allan also wrote the song “1985”, which was on an SR-71 record, and he later gave permission to Bowling for Soup to record it, and they had a massive hit with it. Allen also wrote popular songs for Kelly Clarkson, Miley Cyrus, Jason Derulo, Demi Lovato, and others.

Those parties were amazing, with the beer flowing, fun people, great music, and a backyard swamp. I miss those days.

PIKAPALOOZA: A Frat Music Festival With Good Intentions

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I went to Lollapalooza at Lake Fairfax Park in Reston, VA, on August 14, 1992, and I was floored by the opportunity to see so many awesome performers in one place. Check out this lineup… Ice Cube, Jesus and Mary Chain, Lush, Ministry, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Soundgarden.

Lollapaloza 1992 in Reston Virginia

But that wasn’t all. In addition to lots of acts on the side stage, we were treated to an unannounced performance by Temple of the Dog! During the Pearl Jam set, Chris Cornell joined them for an absolutely kick-ass version of “Hunger Strike.”

The experience had my head spinning, and I wondered if we could do something similar, but on a much smaller scale, at the University of Maryland. Since the Lollapalooza name was so big at the time, and our fraternity went by PiKA (Pi Kappa Alpha), we went with the name PIKAPALOOZA.

The price of the Lollapalooza ticket included a donation to charity; I decided to do the same and make our event a benefit for SOME (So Others Might Eat), based in Washington, DC.

I can’t remember what we charged, but I think it was either a couple of cans of food or a few dollars to attend the whole festival. These were popular bands that had played at our fraternity house before, but this time there would be a bigger crowd in our parking lot.

There were the acts that day…

  • Sean & Dave
  • Black Sheep
  • Faceplant
  • Sorry About Your Daughter
  • Avogadro’s Number
  • The Unworld
  • Lazy Suzan

Pikapalooza

I got a bunch of sponsors to help cover costs, and the bands donated their time for the good cause. It was an exciting event to put on shortly before I graduated.

One of the sponsors I brought on was New Edge and Beyond, run by a guy named Cosmic Dot. I have no idea what they did or how I even met him, but he was a fun character who helped make the day happen.

One of my favorite acts that day was Sorry About Your Daughter, and their badass rendition of Prince’s “Purple Rain.”

PIKAPALOOZA went off without a hitch, and we gathered plenty of canned goods to bring over to SOME. There were big crowds dancing, singing, drinking, and smiling. Overall, it was a fantastic event, and I was looking forward to other PiKAs taking over for future editions.

In the days before I graduated, I went down to the fraternity basement for something, and when I opened the door to our boiler room, I saw boxes and boxes of food we had collected to donate. Whoever was going to drive it over to SOME never did.

I didn’t have a car or driver’s license, and with the semester wrapping up, I wasn’t able to find a volunteer to drive the food into DC. After that, I got caught up with moving out, trying to get a job, and all of that, and the food just sat there unused. That part of PIKAPALOOZA sucks, but it was a good day otherwise.

Cisco, Sanford and Son, a Payphone, and Post-it Notes

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It was summer 1991, and the lease on my Knox Box apartment was up. I hadn’t renewed it because I was moving into the fraternity house for the next year. So, I crashed at the frat with a few other guys until Hell Week was set to start and we would settle into our rooms.

My temporary home was room 13, right there when you walked through the front door of the house. During the semesters, this was the first stop for many people when they came to the house, and the summer was no different, except there were far fewer people around.

Room 13 at PiKA

When I wasn’t working my summer jobs at Cluck-U Chicken or Campus Rec, I was hanging around with guys at the house. My typical downtime fun was having a 40- or 64-oz bottle of Private Stock malt liquor and a bottle of Cisco (a very strong, disgusting fortified wine) and watching some TV with the guys.

That summer, it seemed like Sanford and Son was always on, so I think I saw every episode a couple or three times. One day I was enjoying a marathon of Fred Sanford’s antics with Lance, and when the drinks kicked in, I decided I really needed to call my girlfriend.

There were no working phones in the house, so I had to gather all my change and walk across the street to a payphone. I was so psyched to talk to her as I dropped my coins into the phone. I excitedly punched in her number, which was long-distance, so I think it was like $1.50 or more for the first few minutes of the call.

My heart was beating fast as the phone rang on the other end. Then an unfamiliar voice said, “Hello.” I asked if my girlfriend was there, and the person on the other end said I had the wrong number, and they hung up.

That was it. I spent what little money I had on that call, and I was left deflated.

Then I got a great idea. I was the Secretary for the Interfraternity Council (IFC) at the time, so I hopped on my bike and rode over to the student union to call her from the IFC office. As I pedaled across the University of Maryland campus, I kept repeating her phone number in my head to be sure I got it right this time.

It was less than a mile on my bike, so after my quick ride, I locked up my bike and headed into the office. I speed-walked to the phone with a smile on my face, punched in the correct number this time, and prepared to chat.

The answering machine picked up, and I left her a message dejectedly. She had no way to call me back, so I probably wouldn’t talk to her until she came back to campus to get ready for sorority rush.

Oh well, I didn’t want this trip to be in vain, so I fired up the office computer and played Sim City for a while. After I got bored of that, I decided to head back for more hang time. On the way out the door, I saw a big stack of Post-it Notes and grabbed as many as I could for no particular reason.

I got on my bike and pedaled back across campus with one hand holding a bunch of Post-it Notes. All was well until I headed downhill on McKeldin Mall and veered off the sidewalk. With one hand on the handlebar, I went head over ass and landed in a heap.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in bed, and it was nearly midnight. Lots of hours had passed, and I guess I made it back to the frat on autopilot and climbed into bed with bloody arms and legs.

My bike made it home with me, but the Post-it Notes got lost along the way. Everyone else must have been out at the bars, so I climbed back into bed to go to sleep for the night.

My Bloody Valentine, Beer, and Decades of Rats

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You never know when some random moment is going to turn into a thing you talk about for the rest of your life. For Pat and me, it was when we watched the 1981 slasher flick, My Bloody Valentine.

Pat Curran and Shawn Collins

We were new brothers in Pi Kappa Alpha at the University of Maryland, and there was a low-key get-together with a sorority where everyone drank beer and watched the original version of My Bloody Valentine.

I think it was a double-feature with a Diceman concert at Madison Square Garden.

My Bloody Valentine

Anyhow, the Coors beer was flowing from our house bar, and we were tossing back our drinks and enjoying the ridiculous horror film.

Those movies were fun because they were gory, but also silly and campy. I prefer that old slasher style over the shock and gore of current horror.

Anyhow, if you’re not familiar with the movie, it takes place in the small town of Valentine Bluffs, and the residents are planning the first Valentine’s dance in twenty years.

You see, the Valentine’s dance had been banned for a couple of decades after a deranged minder went on a murder spree in town and left the hearts of victims in gift boxes.

The young locals weren’t scared of this old story, though, and they wanted to celebrate, so they held a secret party deep in the nearby coal mine, and the kids were stalked and murdered by someone in full miner’s gear.

I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I won’t say any more, except for the pivotal scene when some characters were terrified in the coal mine and heard a noise. One of the people said something along the lines of, “Don’t worry, those are just some rats.”

Another future victim responded passionately, “That ain’t no rats.”

The line may have been slightly different, but I am not going to rewatch it to verify.

From then on, Pat and I would use “That ain’t no rats” as a greeting and random shout to each other on campus and at parties. We don’t see each other as much anymore, but when we do, we quote My Bloody Valentine.

My last text to him was a week ago, with a video of a rat in a pizza parlor and the text, “Ain’t no.”