Plaza 900 summons students hungry for dinner, rock

Even the food was tailored to the rock theme.

By Chase Koeneke

Published Oct. 2, 2009

Walking into Plaza 900 between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. would have netted you a lot more than food Oct. 1, as the dining hall hosted the Bengal Rock Party. Five virtual student bands shredded their plastic instruments to the fullest for fame, fortune and prizes. Well, prizes anyway.

"We've got a Nintendo Wii and a 'Rock Band 2' set to give to the winner," Plaza manager Monelle Hausheer said. "Second place gets just the game."

The Golden Girls dance team was out front, enticing potential diners to come in and enjoy the party. Freshman Golden Girl Allison Murphy was especially excited.

"Yeah, I play 'Rock Band,'" Murphy said. "I'm a pro."

Rain drove all the festivities inside, packing up Plaza like the Cavern Club.

In addition to a giant stage in the middle of the dining hall, Plaza's separate room was transformed into a "Backstage" extravaganza, complete with candy and door prizes for the bands and other students.

Sticking to the theme of the night, Plaza's menu was appropriately rocker-modified. From "Weird Alfredo," to "Bread Styx," to "Ted Nuggets," every rock genre/food group was represented.

The cavalcade of fake bands rocked the house. Led by Erin and Ryan Kertz, family band, Stick Man with a Gun (named so due to an inside joke involving full-contact Pictionary) brought both the noise and the funk playing Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf."

"Our friends chose the other song we wanted," Erin Kertz said.

For the intermission, Truman the Tiger and cheerleader accomplices played "Eye of the Tiger," giving a valiant three-star effort.

Crowd favorite, Chris Olsen and the Experts, were there to win, but their main goal was for the crowd to have a good time.

"They came out to see us," junior vocalist Ian Thomas said.

Freshman drummer Steve Corrier chimed in to finish Thomas' sentence.

"We wanted to put on a show," Corrier said.

The team trained hard for the event. From pseudo-running six miles before the show to pseudo-eating raw eggs, Chris Olsen and the Experts left no practice rock unturned.

"Steve even spent a year in Tibet," freshman bassist Seth Musgrave said.

With a score of more than 815,000 on the Foo Fighters' "Everlong," the band had more than enough points to get them to the final four.

The rest of the final four was rounded out by acts Broken Robots, Fashionably Late and the Swag Surfers. Broken Robots struggled with technical difficulties all night, but managed to snag a spot in the final two.

Facing them would be the Swag Surfers, who had destroyed every song they came up against. The finals would be no different, with Swag Surfers besting the Broken Robots in both AC/DC's "Let There Be Rock" and Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer," the Surfers took home the gold.

When asked how he was going to celebrate his win, sophomore guitarist Justin Carter just shrugged and said, "I got a test in the morning."