Category Archives: Life Advice

College Football, Life Advice

The Big Red Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption opened in theatres September 23, 1994. 

The following afternoon, the Huskers rolled Pacific 70-21 in front of the hometown crowd. 

While we all know how that year turned out for the Big Red, Shawshank was mostly overlooked at the box office and during award season as Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction took home most of the hardware. 

It wasn’t until a few years later that it began to receive the acclaim it missed the first time around. Thanks to nearly daily showings on basic cable that are still running strong today, The Shawshank Redemption has cemented its status as very arguably one of the greatest films ever made and currently occupies the number one spot on IMDB’s list of the top 250 movies. 

“Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

But we’re not here to do a dissertation on the legacy of Shawshank.

We’re here to talk about a theory.

It’s called the Shit Tunnel Theory. 

I can’t tell you exactly when I came up with the it but I can tell you I was on the couch watching Shawshank for probably the 100th time and was faded enough to have an epiphany that changed my outlook on life.

Allow me to set it up. 

According to Shawshank lore, Andy started tunneling his way to freedom with his tiny rock hammer two years into his 19 year stretch. That’s 17 years of chipping through the concrete wall of his prison cell piece-by-piece. An estimate from someone a lot smarter than me put Andy’s progress at 1/64th of an inch per day, or about the thickness of your fingernail. 

So after 17 long years Andy final breaks through and has to face one final crucible-The Shit Tunnel. In a film that’s full of cruel moments, this was the cherry on top of a turd sundae. 

But Andy give up?

Not a chance. 

He grabbed a rock, broke through that pipe, and dove right in. He charged through that “river of shit,” to quote Red, like he was a plumber named Mario on a mission to save a princess. It was 500 yards to freedom and after all he’d been through he was not going to stopped by a Shit Tunnel.

Now if we can go back to me on the couch for a moment, it was during this breakout scene that I realized no matter what goal you’re working towards, there’s always, without fail, going to be an unexpected obstacle that pops up when you have the finish line in sight. Even if it’s not a literal Shit Tunnel, the concept is the same. If you have something you want to achieve, you gotta pay the price by conquering the Shit Tunnel.

Husker fam, if Memorial Stadium is our Shawshank, we have just entered the Shit Tunnel. 

So what if the Huskers leave Wisconsin with an L and an 0-5 record for the first time since who knows when? It’s already been a miserable decade and half, what’s another year at this point?

All this losing now won’t mean shit if hang onto the hope and belief that better days are ahead. Sometimes you just gotta hold your breath and barrel down that Shit Tunnel towards where the light should be. 

Go Big Red. 


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Big Ten, College Football, Huskers, Life Advice

Welcome to Your First Weekend as a Free Man, Shawn Eichorst

Hey Shawn,

Congrats on your first day of funemployment!

How is it treating you so far? Did you muster up the courage to get out of bed? Don’t feel ashamed if you didn’t. There is nothing wrong with isolating yourself in the darkness during moments of despair. Judge Judy and Steve Harvey can make great company. Plus, daytime TV is a great reminder that no matter how bad things can be, they can always be worse. At least you weren’t on the wrong end of a paternity test, right?

I imagine making national news for being unexpectedly fired has to sting a little. As much as you feel the urge to do something drastic, you need to fight it with all your strength. Keeping a low profile and maintaining your cool will work wonders for you in the long term.

Trust me, the last thing you want to do is get arrested for egging Memorial Stadium in the early hours of gameday, or end up on someone’s Snapchat face down in a toilet at O’Rourke’s Tavern.

Your first weekend as a free man should be all about staying invisible. (From the accounts I’ve read about your firing, this should be easy for you.) Even before you proved it with last week’s blunder of giving up the Black Friday game, Nebraskans have always considered you an outsider to the point that there were rumblings in the deep, dark corners of Huskermax that you were really a sleeper cell agent secretly working for Wisconsin.

And that leads to an important detail about Nebraskans that you may have overlooked. If the number one sport in Nebraska is Husker football, coming in at a very close second is the sport of gossip. Behind that pleasant exterior of the average Nebraskan lurks a devious desire to know all the dirt about about anyone and everyone.

When I said stay invisible two paragraphs ago, that means don’t leave your house. Even a just a couple hours out in the yard is long enough to spawn half a dozen “Sad Shawn Eichorst Doing Yard Work” Twitter accounts. If there’s a home improvement project you need to tackle, buy whatever you need online. While your local Home Depot will be a ghost town on Saturday afternoon, all it takes is one set of eyes for the world to know that Shawn was in buying some spackle.

Instead, I’d suggest these first days in isolation be spent watching Netflix. Go on a bender. You could be the first person in the world to watch Daredevil season 1, Jessica Jones, Daredevil season 2, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Defenders in one sitting. That would be legendary stuff, man.

Or, you can start organizing all the Nebraska swag you’ve acquired over the years. I can’t imagine you want to hang onto all of it and dumping off a giant pile at one Goodwill would be sure to grab some dubious headlines. Instead, spread around a bunch of smaller donations like an ax murderer disposing of body parts. Maybe you can even make some late night drop offs at parking lot donation bins.

If you’re thinking about getting away from it all for while, that’s not a bad idea either. Just be sure to fly out of KCI. The schlep will be worth not getting snickered at by an Eppley Airfield TSA agent. Plus, if anyone spots you in KC, people will assume you’re already making moves if you’re down in the big city.

But don’t be gone to long. You don’t want to have a $1.7 million dollar settlement check collecting dust in your mailbox.

And that leads to my final bit of advice for now. $1.7 million is like $17 million in Lincoln, NE. As much as you probably want to move away as fast as you can, you can live a very comfortable life in the Star City with a nest egg like that, especially if you take advantage of all the cheap booze and beer nights around town.

But if you really do want to move away, take your time in listing your house. It would throw the media who spent the last 24 hours raking you over the coals for a total loop if your pad didn’t show up on Zillow for at least year.

Or, you could really really troll everyone by turning Casa de Eichorst into an Airbnb. There’s no doubt Dirk and Lee would book a sleepover and imagine their horror if you are hiding in the walls to haunt them. Oh, this could be genius prank. Just be sure to wait until November 1 to buy all your fake blood and other props when they go on sale post Halloween. You don’t have a job anymore so you need to pinch some pennies when you can.


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Huskers, Life Advice

How to Smoke Weed in a Dorm Room and Not Get Caught

Nothing says off-season like waking up on a Saturday morning to find out a Husker has been busted for something stupid.

And the stupid isn’t necessarily the act, but sum of all parts.

Today it was revealed that another football player was cited for having a small amount of that wacky tobacky. Two things to note: 1) If you’re a Husker fan with a pulse, you should know who I’m talking about. 2) I’m not naming names because the last thing these kids need is another google search result. And besides, we’re not thirsty for clicks.

Without sparking a debate about the alleged dangers of smoking marijuana, the reason why it’s now legal in varying degrees in 29 states (including Alaska and Montana so you can’t say it’s just the damn hippies) is because people have started to figure out that it’s not exactly the devil’s weed you learned about in health class. It’s not that dangerous.

Granted, there’s that odd occasion where you run into your rock star buddy (who gets his weed from the same source as Snoop Dogg) in a Trader Joe’s parking lot and next thing you know you’re wandering the aisles for the next hour and roll up to check out with a cart full of nothing but an empty bag of chips and a tub of guacamole that’s been scraped clean. The biggest danger in that situation is coming home and facing the wrath of your lovely wife after you went to the store and plum forgot to buy groceries, even though she gave you a very detailed list. Not that I ever did this.

Here in LA, marijuana use is so ubiquitous that you can catch whiffs of the sticky icky wherever you go in public. It’s kinda like being back home in my native GI but instead of the stench of burning carcasses from the meat packing plant, you know someone nearby is smoking weed but you can’t tell who since everyone is staring at their phones. In fact, if you called the police to report such a thing, they will laugh at you and hang up the phone.

But back in Nebraska, the campus police will show right up if an over-eager RA thinks someone in their dorm has lit up a doob.

The best advice my dear mother has ever given me is that something is only illegal if you get caught.

So with that in mind, here’s how enjoy weed in your dorm room and (most likely) not get caught.

1. Know thy neighbor. Are they cool? As in do they know and respect the unspoken rule that snitches get stitches? Even squares can be cool enough to look the other way but a snitch can never be trusted.

2. Embrace modern innovations. Weed pens and edibles might not be as exciting as pulling a monster bong rip in while sunk deep into a bean bag chair but they sure are stealthy. I don’t know if dabs are easy to find in the Cornhusker state but I do know it’s pretty easy to fly the friendly skies with a stash of edibles in your carry-on bag. Just make sure to you peel off any incriminating labels before traveling with your snacks.

3. Dryer sheets are your best friend. If lack of the aforementioned modern innovations means you have to smoke weed the old fashioned way, stuff a bunch of dryer sheets (your mom put a box into your laundry supplies) into a paper towel tube and exhale your ginormous hit through a tunnel of static cling prevention. There will still be smoke but it will smell April fresh and you don’t have to worry about it wafting out the door because you already laid down a damp towel, right? Do these two things and you’re going to have to try really hard to get caught. This technique never failed in an entire year of #dormlife.

And this is where I’d like to point out I didn’t mention air freshener because if you’re not smart enough to know that one on your own you shouldn’t be smoking anything.

The best part about taking this photo was my wife asking what I was doing. For maximum performance, use an empty roll and wrap an additional dryer sheet around the end to keep the ones packed inside from fluttering out.

4. Chill, bros. Watching Wheel of Fortune while being high enough to solve the puzzles before Pat Sajak even drops a clue is exciting shit, especially when half your floor is packed into your dorm room but keep the volume to a manageable, polite level. When you’re doing something illegal, it’s best to not do anything that draws attention.

5. Keep your stash stashed. If you you ain’t using it, keep it hidden. I knew a kid in the dorms who always left his bong on his desk and often kept his door open for visitors. Or for campus police officers doing a random walk by.

6. Don’t ride dirty. Wanna make a Chipotle run now that you’ve got the munchies? Leave your contraband at home. Better yet, DON’T DRIVE ANYWHERE. Take a walk and make it an adventure or hail an Uber if you’re too lazy to hoof it. Or, you could stay in and order a pizza and pass out with a slice in your mouth and spend the next two hours eating it at glacial speed, while watching a documentary about N.W.A. on VHS. Not that I ever did this.

BONUS TIPS

Lincoln has long been rumored to issue more citations for public urination per capita than any other city in the US. This could have something to do with all the people who duck into alleys off O Street to pee after last call.

The key to peeing in public is to not look like you’re peeing. That means you don’t want to strike your urinal pose in front of a dumpster. Instead, be causal and pretend you’re talking on the phone and operate your gear with your other hand. Just be careful that you don’t dribble anything on your shoes, especially if you’re wearing flip flops. 

Ladies, I have no advice for you. Sorry.

Don’t apply for a job at Blockbuster Video. They drug test and instead of doing urine samples, they do a hair test which is impossible to beat.

Yes, that was a real thing college students worried about back in the 90s.


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