It's okay to brag sometimes, right?

My freshman year in college was pretty miserable; I went from a very diverse, liberal high school to a white-bred, upper-class homogeneous university, and I felt completely out of place amid the drinking, wild parties, and general cookie-cutter personalities around me. My sophomore year, I saw a weird looking guy with blue hair riding a bike through the quad, and I thought to myself, there's somebody who might understand me. A bit simplistic, maybe, but that's how I felt at the time.

Finally I heard about the improvisational comedy troupe, Tower Players, and I went to my first meeting eager to join. There sat the guy with the blue hair, surrounded by a bunch of other weirdos, and suddenly I felt like I belonged somewhere. It's hard to describe this particular group of people. Most of them weren't very popular in high school, most of them were a bit insecure and overcompensating--we all were--but they were very much their own people. Funny, strange, sarcastic, they were a group of misfits that became my best friends all throughout college, and remain dear friends today.

We used to sit around and talk about how one day, when we were all famous, they'd talk about how we all attended Miami University. Like we were Dorothy Parker's vicious circle, or the artists of Paris in the twenties. Oh yes, we'd start a new art movement. A movement of misfits. "Without deviation from the norm, there can be no progress," we'd say. A bit of an ego trip, maybe, but not a little inspiring.

So most of us are still on the bumpy road to fame (I hope you sense my sarcasm here), but one or two of us have already realized our dreams.

Here's my friend Amos Heller, whose dream it was to be a musician, on stage with Taylor Swift last night when she won Entertainer of the Year at the CMA awards. He's her bass player. And he's awesome, and I'm proud of him, and I reserve the right to brag about any and all Tower Players who Make It.

His facebook status today:

ME: You were AWESOME in "Tremors"!
REBA MCENTIRE: That was...NOT what I expected to hear!

And here are the Tower Players, from way back in the day, standing onstage at Second City in Chicago.

And another one from graduation, flipping the bird to Mother Miami:

How cool are we?