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2nd half of first round
This was on a Monday night. Having been through the first part of first round, I felt more prepared about what to expect. On this night I visited houses in the following order:
Phillies
Rockies
Red Sox
Marlins
Astros
The opening presentation at Phillies was one of the funnier ones during first round, as the skit had multiple characters that were stereotypes of the other houses asking if they could be a member of Phillies and the head presenter would tell them no for some reason. They made sure to talk about how much they partied. The one-on-one here didn't go well at all because I put in a room with two guys from India (the only two Indians in the house) - what made it go badly was that I could not understand what they were saying at all and when I could understand what they were saying it was only questions about how much I drank. I left this house almost hoping that they would cut me because there was no way I wanted to return if they only cared about how much I drank.
Rockies was next. Their opening happened in the lobby of their house which was a fairly small room which made all the screaming and chanting when we came in sound that much more impressive. Their presentation made repeated hints that their house mom was promiscuous. The food here sticks out more than any other house mostly because it was fried chicken....except it was cold chicken. The one-on-one was okay at best because the guy I was paired with and me didn't have much common ground at all which made for forced conversation...however, I was leaving the house, one random brother in the stairwell started talking to me and we did have some common ground and all of a sudden Rockies seemed like a much better house. Overall, the first 29 and a half minutes of the round at this house sucked but the last 30 seconds was good which meant that I was considering going back there 2nd round.
The country club house, Red Sox, was next. All of the brothers were dressed like they had just left church. Their skit was all about how much classier they were than all the other houses and how Red Sox could turn even the most socially inept guy into a "refined gentleman with class and manners that all mothers would approve of". the one-on-one was more of this, except they tried to talk about how much they partied and all the kick ass parties they had which seemed a bit forced. I left this house thinking I probably wouldn't come back.
Next was Marlins. All of my friends who had seen Marlins on Sunday night told me this was easily the best ski during round one. I was not disappointed. To play up the image of being badasses who didn't care about grades or anything, one of the brothers took a large sip of gasoline and then produced a huge flame with the help of a blowtorch. Next, another brother had someone throw a clay pot. At his forehead. It shattered into many pieces although I would find out later that all of the clay pots had been pre-broken so that nobody got injured. The last wild stunt featured the fire guy needing something to get the gasoline out of his mouth so he grabbed the closest available bottle which had a blue liquid and was labelled Windex. The one-on-one played on all of this more as they talked about how they had a party that involved 2 tons of velveeta cheese and the brother himself showed me all of the illegal parking and drunk in public warnings he had amassed on the wall. This was easily the best skit as far as shock value was concerned and it all seemed like fun.
The last house of first round was Astros, the soccer house. Their presentation was crazy but not as crazy as Marlins. It was fairly obvious that the speaker was quite drunk as he at one pont forgot the name of the fraternity itself. They combatted their image as the soccer house by saying that they had other varsity athletes and IM athletes as well, which for the most part cemented that I would not be coming back to this house. The brother paired with me for the one-on-one acted like he didn't want to be there so we actually ended up watching tv for a majority of the time before the round was over.
At the end of the night, this was the ranking for the 5 most recnet houses:
Rockies (i wanted to see if the last 30 seconds there were a fluke or not)
Marlins (this house was lots of fun and it was easy to tell that everybody there enjoyed themselves)
Phillies (just because it wasn't as bad as the last two)
Red Sox (i didn't really like the whole country club thing)
Astros (no chance I would fit in there)
That was the end of first round. On Monday night, we found out who cut us after first round and then we preffed houses for second round. This is where Mark comes into the story. After first round, me and Mark talked about the houses we liked and didn't like and he told me that he wanted to suicide Cardinals and that he wasn't really interested in any other house, and he tried to convince me to suicide Cardinals as well. He was first in alphabetical order and I was near the bottom, so he got to find out what houses he got cut by first.
As it turns out, he got cut by Cardinals. And 5 other houses. It ended up that he didn't get to pick 5 houses becuase that's all that was left in the first place. I felt anxious at this point because I didn't know why Cardinals would cut Mark which made me worried about whether or not they had cut me.
As it turns out, I was cut by:
Giants
Phillies
Red Sox
Astros
I wasn't surprised about any of these. This left Braves, Cardinals, Yankees, Indians, Twins, Rockies, and Marlins.
I knew that I wanted to go back to Braves, Cardinals, and Twins and that I didn't want to go to Yankees anymore. This left Indians, Rockies, and Marlins for the last 2 houses. In the end, I cut Indians because I decided that I would rather be associated with a house that partied hard or broke lots of stuff than a house that had its head up its ass.
After the first round of rush, I went from having 2 houses that I thought I could see myself in to 5. Little did I know, the hardest decisions of the week hadn't even happened yet.
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