Richmond's-out-of-his-room-he's-not-in-his-room

September 17, 2013 5:08 PM

Some Ohio State students found that behind a locked door in their basement...was a random dude they didn't know was living in their house.
posted by Tesseractive (84 comments total)

15 16 people live in that house?!
posted by goethean at 5:16 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

I do not know why but sex slave popped into my head
posted by robbyrobs at 5:16 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

Huh. In my best-friend-growing-up's house, a friend of his older brother was living under their porch, somewhat comfortably (except for plumbing), for a few months before they ever noticed anything was amiss.
posted by not_on_display at 5:17 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

This happened to some people I knew when I was going to school in Kingston, except that it was a homeless dude in the garage they never used.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:17 PM on September 17, 2013

At first I marveled at how he avoided running into any of the other FIFTEEN people living in the house for so long, but then I thought about how I live in a building with a hundred other people and almost never see any of them on my way in or out. We're so close together, and so far apart.
posted by carsonb at 5:18 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Yes, this is a nightmare I've had before.
posted by 2bucksplus at 5:18 PM on September 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

Recently at a house I just moved out of my ex-roommates discovered that a homeless man was living in the grassy alley between it and their neighbor's house. He had a tarp and a bunch of other stuff there and nobody between either house (10+ people) knew how long the man had been living there for.
posted by gucci mane at 5:18 PM on September 17, 2013

And to think if they had played their cards right they were this close to a lifetime supply of Doritos.
posted by Diablevert at 5:19 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Um...it's called a garden apartment, and it has plenty of natural light.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:20 PM on September 17, 2013 [8 favorites]

Huh. I was actually working at a movie studio the other day and one of the grips ran up to me and told me how he had just found a guy living in one of the fake buildings on set. The guy had managed to snag some props and cobbled together a rather impressive little living arrangement complete with houseplants and a chandelier.
posted by Thin Lizzy at 5:24 PM on September 17, 2013 [15 favorites]

Thin Lizzy: "Huh. I was actually working at a movie studio the other day and one of the grips ran up to me and told me how he had just found a guy living in one of the fake buildings on set. The guy had managed to snag some props and cobbled together a rather impressive little living arrangement complete with houseplants and a chandelier."

Was he wearing jean cutoffs?!
posted by fizzix at 5:24 PM on September 17, 2013 [24 favorites]

Sounds like the start of a great horror movie pitch. THE FORGOTTEN ROOMMATE (Ohio) #TIFF13
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:26 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Business majors would have just started charging him rent.
posted by deathpanels at 5:26 PM on September 17, 2013 [22 favorites]

Reminds me of the time I found Julio Cortázar and his sister living in a house I'd rented. It took forever to shoo them out of there.
posted by Iridic at 5:27 PM on September 17, 2013 [8 favorites]

He had accidently slipped from the alternate dimension where he actually had a room. The goatee was the give-away.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:28 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Rumor has it that when an old academic building on my alma mater's campus was being renovated, they found an under stairwell utility closet that had been converted into a grad student's rent-free mini dorm room on the sly.
posted by fings at 5:29 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Fuck, that is a lot of people in one house. What do they pay for rent, I wonder?
posted by maryr at 5:33 PM on September 17, 2013

15 16 people live in that house?!

I lived in a house with 11 people in college. Two double rooms, a triple and three singles. It was old/big enough that there was maid's room that was one of the singles. Another was (I think) the dressing room of the master bedroom. The triple was actually the original dining room. And so on. This brought the rent down to semi-manageable levels. (IIRC the rent for a single room was more than I pay now for a large one bedroom in Minneapolis. My rent in a double could get you a studio apartment here.)
posted by hoyland at 5:34 PM on September 17, 2013

THe only time I have seen that many people living in a big house work, it was NOT a democracy. A guy ran it, you toed the line or you were out. He was a good guy, though.
posted by thelonius at 5:36 PM on September 17, 2013

...Probably not a coincidence that both the residents quoted in the article are engineering students, huh?
posted by maryr at 5:37 PM on September 17, 2013

Squatting inside a Chicago drawbridge:

When the bells rang, signaling the arms of the bridge soon would ascend, he braced for a ride and cruised with the bridge as it slowly pitched him forward. If he was sitting down, he'd soon be standing.
posted by ShooBoo at 5:38 PM on September 17, 2013 [9 favorites]

I can't be the only person planning on checking under their house when I get home later.
posted by TedW at 5:41 PM on September 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

I once lived in a townhouse in Hollywood. It had a covered garage out back, each stall had a storage cabinet about 2 feet deep, attached to the wall so it hung over your car hood when you parked. I never used mine. One morning I got in my car to go to work, revved up the engine, and suddenly the door flew open and a homeless guy fell out on top of my car hood. The locker was full of crap. I told him to get his crap out of there today and don't come back, I'm putting a padlock on it when I get back this evening. He could have been living there for months.
posted by charlie don't surf at 5:49 PM on September 17, 2013 [6 favorites]

I'm guessing this was followed by a meeting with a cowboy, and Naomi Watts going insane.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:03 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

"Well, he seemed like a nice enough dude, but what if he wasn't????"
posted by antonymous at 6:10 PM on September 17, 2013

Lazlo in one. I am beaming with pride.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:15 PM on September 17, 2013 [11 favorites]

When I was a teenager my mom, who has always been a soft touch, hired this guy she met in the Safeway parking lot to do odd jobs at our house and in the garden. Everything was fine for a year or so, we referred him to friends and he did stuff for them too and he would sometimes join us for dinner or I'd drive him back to the place where he lived in a basement apartment.

Then we started hearing strange noises some nights from the basement of our house and we mostly didn't think anything of it as we had four cats and the neighbours cats would get in tiffs with ours. But one day my mom went to the basement, which was unfinished and full of junk, and found a bunch of used underwear and beer bottles just laying out in one of the rooms. We figure the odd job guy had lived there for a while at that point.
posted by SpaceWarp13 at 6:16 PM on September 17, 2013

Last line of the article: "It was a dangerous situation,” Alderman said. “It could definitely have been a lot worse.”

Worse for whom? They never even bothered to talk to the newly homeless guy, implying instead that he might have been waiting to pounce.
posted by Brian B. at 6:16 PM on September 17, 2013 [7 favorites]

I read the last sentence of the first paragraph as: When maintenance workers knocked the door down, they found a bedroom complete with framed photographs, textbooks, and Jimmy Alderman, a fourth-year student in civil engineering.

What, your house didn't come furnished with framed photographs, a textbook library, and a fourth-year engineering student? Sucker.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 6:21 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Does anyone remember the creepy story from NY a few years ago where there was a strange woman living in his kitchen cupboards?

Super creepy moment at about 1.20 in this video.

I think there was a metafilter thread but can't find it.
posted by Rumple at 6:26 PM on September 17, 2013 [11 favorites]

Worse for whom? They never even bothered to talk to the newly homeless guy, implying instead that he might have been waiting to pounce.

If I found a random dude living secretly in my spare bedroom, I would not give a flying fuck what his story was.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:27 PM on September 17, 2013 [8 favorites]

Any clue as to whether he was into goth culture?
posted by Cash4Lead at 6:28 PM on September 17, 2013 [5 favorites]

On the one hand I see how this could be a sketch situation, but on the other hand I feel like "what if I found out that the person who lives above me or across the airshaft or down the hall that I see and maybe nod to or pass a word ... WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE THERE." The basement doesn't seem like it was anyone's private space. I mean no one's making too many loud noises at obnoxious hours, pissing on the floor, lighting fires, emitting noxious odours, or starting fights in the hallways, I'll let my landlord worry about who's paying the rent.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 6:34 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Does anyone remember the creepy story from NY a few years ago where there was a strange woman living in his kitchen cupboards?

Super creepy moment at about 1.20 in this video yt .

I think there was a metafilter thread but can't find it.

I think the creepier moment is around 3:15.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:53 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

If I found a random dude living secretly in my spare bedroom, I would not give a flying fuck what his story was.

The squatter's story would be more interesting than a bunch of sheltered students who now feel victimized after their ignorance was accidentally exposed, and I'm not even suggesting Anne Frank here.
posted by Brian B. at 6:54 PM on September 17, 2013 [12 favorites]

I lived in a 7-10 person (and god only knows how many bands practiced in the basement) house for several years. It was more or less an anarchy bound by friendship, mutual respect and shared interests. We were all (somewhat approximately) grownups, and with a couple of notable exceptions, sane, so the whole thing hung together remarkably well, and didn't fall until the owner (distinct, it turns out, from the landlord) sold. With a somewhat tumbledown old house like that, and an elevated background level of chaos, the idea that there might be a door that nobody had noticed, with some guy living behind it seems entirely natural.
posted by wotsac at 6:57 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

In Chez Geek, this is the Guy On Couch card.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:03 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

"It was a dangerous situation,” Alderman said. “It could definitely have been a lot worse.”

Hold on here... So the situation was that 15 strangers were living with each other. Then they find out there is a 16th (who is pretty much the ideal roommate - someone trying to avoid ever being seen or noticed) and suddenly its a dangerous situation?

I would say the situation was roughly 1/16th more dangerous than than they thought.
posted by el io at 7:06 PM on September 17, 2013 [18 favorites]

The squatter's story would be more interesting than a bunch of sheltered students who now feel victimized after their ignorance was accidentally exposed, and I'm not even suggesting Anne Frank here.

Perhaps. I just think the other occupants of the house are entirely justified in their discomfort.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:13 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

"It was a dangerous situation,” Alderman said. “It could definitely have been a lot worse.”

It's the remake of Real Genius directed by Michael Bay where our team of nerds, after calling campus security on Lazlo, totally smoke those terrorists with a kick-ass laser, thanks to the help of their genius faculty advisor and Lockheed-Martin.
posted by ennui.bz at 7:15 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

i would think that someone who would go to so much trouble to steal lodging in such a manner would be likely to be stealing other things, too.
posted by lester's sock puppet at 7:26 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

They're just lucky it wasn't Zuul living in their refrigerator is all I'm saying.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:30 PM on September 17, 2013 [7 favorites]

Hold on here... So the situation was that 15 strangers were living with each other. Then they find out there is a 16th (who is pretty much the ideal roommate - someone trying to avoid ever being seen or noticed) and suddenly its a dangerous situation?

When I live with somebody, I vet them pretty carefully. Its not about the person being homeless or whatever -- it's living in very close proximity to somebody who has gone through no process whatsoever, so it's not that they specifically might be dangerous. It's that anybody might be dangerous, and there are processes to minimize that risk, and they bypassed these processes.

Which is one of the problems with being homeless, and I speak from experience here. You don't have the luxury of making sure the people you share a shelter or a squat with is going to be a good roommate. In the shelter I was in, one kid brought a gun in. Another cut his wrists in the bathroom. And just as the people who lived there were uncertain about whether the squatter was safe or not, the squatter likewise couldn't be sure the others living in the house were safe -- he also hadn't any opportunity to vet his housemates, and couldn't be sure that when he was discovered he might not be the victim of theft or violence. And it's a very bad setup, regardless of need. People are not happy to find somebody they don't know are sharing a space with them. It feels very dangerous, and that's quite reasonable, and for the squatter it's going to put them at increased risk.

This is the basis for at least two movies, by the way. There was the TV movie Bad Ronald from 1974, in which a disturbed youth walls himself into his old bedroom closet after accidentally killing a girl, and later when a family with three teenage girls moves in he peeps on one through holes he has drilled in the wall and otherwise stalks her.

And then there is Hider in the House in which a recently released psychiatric patient (played by -- shudder -- Gary Busey) moves into a house that is still being built and creates a hidden little room in the attic, and then stalk Mimi Rogers. It was scripted by Lem Dobbs, so is unusually intelligent. And OH CRAP the whole of it is online.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:33 PM on September 17, 2013 [20 favorites]

I would say the situation was roughly 1/16th more dangerous than than they thought.

Exactly. The dude upthread living in the bridge seems merely ingenious, and the homeless woman living in the kitchen cupboards seems a disturbing urban legend come to life, I cannot get behind the shock and dismay I see here. Jimmy Alderman has a story to tell for the rest of his life: "In fourth year, I thought I was sharing with fourteen other people I didn't know, but it turns out -- ready for it? -- I was sharing with fifteen people!!! Unbelievable, huh?"
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:42 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Luxury. We had a family lived for three months in a brown paper bag in our septic tank. They used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:42 PM on September 17, 2013 [14 favorites]

Diablevert: "And to think if they had played their cards right they were this close to a lifetime supply of Doritos."

And a mobile home.
posted by Samizdata at 8:16 PM on September 17, 2013

Iridic: "Reminds me of the time I found Julio Cortázar and his sister living in a house I'd rented. It took forever to shoo them out of there."

How did you miss the smell of cigarette smoke and the scratching of pen on paper/typewriter chatter for so long?
posted by Samizdata at 8:20 PM on September 17, 2013

All these stories make me think of the novel Crawlspace by Herbert Lieberman. A great read from the seventies.
posted by hoodrich at 8:29 PM on September 17, 2013

So how could they kick him out? Isn't he still technically a tenant even if not of the paying variety? Maybe I've lived inn some very lenient landlord tenant jurisdictions but I've always heard its really hard to evict someone which is what this seems to be.
posted by Carillon at 8:37 PM on September 17, 2013

If he doesn't have a lease isn't he just trespassing?
posted by maryr at 8:48 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

My super is living in the basement of my building...it's kind of like this, actually.
posted by yellowcandy at 8:54 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

I lived in one place in the SF Mission that had three people—friends of someone with an apartment in the building—living in the laundry room for a few months. It's amazing how critical some people can be about your choice of underwear.
posted by meehawl at 9:37 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'd thought that if you'd lived in a pace long enough, lease or not it still counted as tenancy. That's why shine landlords put in a no guests past two weeks not pin the lease rule .
posted by Carillon at 9:42 PM on September 17, 2013

I'm in ur base(ment), razing all ur leases.
posted by shoesfullofdust at 9:51 PM on September 17, 2013

All your base(ment)s are belong to us!
posted by shoesfullofdust at 9:55 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

I am waiting for Ed Snowden to release information telling us that this dude is actually psuedo-random.
posted by srboisvert at 10:18 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Well, Samizdata, I'm sort of an incorporeal congerie of ominous noises and ineluctable subconscious forces. I miss things sometimes, not having eyes or ears.
posted by Iridic at 10:29 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

I wonder, if it had been a n all-female household and the guy had been living there, would people still be so blase about the situation? "Oh yeah girl, you had a guy sneaking around the house you didn't know about. Cool story."
posted by happyroach at 10:39 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

in college, the sculpture department studio spaces were in what had been the mess and social hall for Indiana University World War II ROTC students. The old barracks that surrounded the building were also mostly art school studios. The mess, though, had once been pretty hi-tone, with elevated cove ceilings and other accoutrements intended to emulate a fancy 1940s pop performance space.

Adding room for lighting and so forth over a large asssembly area like that meant that the building had an unfinished second story, largely lacking a floor. There were a couple of forgotten access hatches along the walls, including one which was in a semi-private area.

One summer, I spotted this hatch and decided I would check it out.

the area around the hatch was a huge, fully-furnished apartment. It seemed like the presumptive grad student at the heart of the matter realized that full-size plywood sheets could fit up there, and floored it out on the studs. A mattress is about that big and, well...

I never met the person I was told was responsible for colonizing the attic, but goddamn, I admire them.
posted by mwhybark at 10:42 PM on September 17, 2013 [7 favorites]

When I live with somebody, I vet them pretty carefully.

I suspect that the kids in this story are slightly different, given that Brett doesn't seem to have batted an eyelid that time he met the guy in the basement and thought he was one of the other roommates.

The comments on that story have some pretty disturbing stories about the general management by the local realtors. "I had black mold in my room and first they said it was natural and then they just painted over it" wtf? That's a lot worse than an extra roommate in my book.
posted by jacalata at 10:59 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Previously: Living in the Mall (working summary link: Man Builds Secret Apartment At Mall, Gets Away With It For Four Years)
posted by dhartung at 11:55 PM on September 17, 2013

“It was a dangerous situation,” Alderman said. “It could definitely have been a lot worse.”

Ohh, please. Dangerous to whom? Christ, he wasn't even some sort of "undesirable," he's a student. The only real danger was to the actual basement dweller in an unverifiable/unstable living situation, and to the bank accounts of the landlords in the area, one of whom was denied a couple more hundred bucks per month.
posted by desuetude at 12:11 AM on September 18, 2013 [6 favorites]

“It was a dangerous situation,” Alderman said. “It could definitely have been a lot worse.”

And moreover:

Some of the housemates went to Student Legal Services for assistance and said they were referred to a firm that specializes in housing contracts. NorthSteppe is waiting for the residents to propose a settlement for the damages, Alderman said.

Dangerous? Damages? And moreover, it seems they know pretty much who he is, the cousin of someone who lived there the year before. And a quiet and evidently tidy roommate to boot. They seem to me to be either scared of their own shadows, or else opportunistic in trying for some kind of money grab.

Which I guess I can't blame them for if they hate their letting company so badly, I mean, if I saw an opportunity to extract some satisfaction from a company like that I know I'd strongly consider it (well in reality I'd be too lazy and timid to pursue anything, but I'd sure fantasize about it). But all this whining about danger I guess just seems to be in service of their trying to make a buck in the new American way.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 1:07 AM on September 18, 2013 [6 favorites]

Damages?

Think about it this way (I know the lawyer will).

Ten students live on the second and third floor of the house under one lease, and the first floor is leased to five other people.

At minimum, the squatter owes 1/16th of the total house rent, distributed 15 ways (after the lawyer gets a 50% cut).
posted by charlie don't surf at 4:28 AM on September 18, 2013

Two dollars! I want my two dollars!
posted by ook at 4:43 AM on September 18, 2013

Well, at least he has a face. And he's not apocryphal.
posted by NoraReed at 4:49 AM on September 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

I suspect that the kids in this story are slightly different, given that Brett doesn't seem to have batted an eyelid that time he met the guy in the basement and thought he was one of the other roommates

In this case, they have put the vetting process onto the real estate company, but it doesn't mean there was no vetting process. There is no accountability. There's the possibility of more thefts. There's no check for felony convictions or anything like that.

If I were these students I'd be flipping out too, and possibly demanding at least half my rent back for living in an unsafe situation.
posted by corb at 5:11 AM on September 18, 2013

I went to school an hour south of Columbus and if Ohio State-area landlords are even half the assholes the Ohio U ones are, I'd be suing them for a jillion dollars just to right the overall cosmic balance and/or to preemptively strike before they tried to sue ME for back rent on Basement Guy.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 6:05 AM on September 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

This is Ohio State we're talking about. I'm not surprised. A friend's kid was going there, did all the paperwork on time, was told that he would be in X dorm... and two weeks before move-in he is told that the dorm was triple booked and he had to find somewhere else to live. Of course by this point all the student apartments were full up so he had to live farther away from campus. And of course being a freshman he wasn't allowed to have a car. I can totally see someone resorting to this at Ohio State.
posted by charred husk at 6:43 AM on September 18, 2013

IANAL, and I definitely don't know anything about Ohio law, but this may just be the start of trouble for these renters. In New York State, it's my understanding that, in most residential zones there is a cap on the number of unrelated renters in a house. I was surprised when I heard about it, but the attorney I was talking to said the cap is 5 (again, this is for NYS).
Ohio may have no such law, or may have a different threshold, but it wouldn't surprise me if local regulators take note of 15 people living there.

Also, I read about this somewhere else yesterday, and that article suggested the tenants initially thought it was a ghost due to the microwave door being left open, and other surefire ghosty indicators.
posted by staccato signals of constant information at 6:57 AM on September 18, 2013

One year, my college had admitted more students than they had room to house, so improvised and rented the laundry rooms in the dorms, for a very small decrease in the usual dorm rent. My friends talked about camping in the president's parking space on campus, as he had a house on campus, a mere 5 minute walk from his office. A few years later, the president moved off-campus and got a house a few miles away, on the school's dime. His house on-campus was then used for occasional meetings and luncheons.

There was also a boarded up building, called the Power House, where I think some architecture students squatted for a while. At some point, some students used it as an art installation space.

Every year, there were a few architecture students who camped out in their studio space, with a footlocker for their clothes and food, and used the showers on campus.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:11 AM on September 18, 2013

One of my friend's grandmothers, near the end of her life, was experiencing dementia. She would always talk about the person living in her attic. Her family didn't believe her--they thought she was just imagining it.

After she passed away, when cleaning up her house, they found clear signs that there actually had been someone living there. My friend still feels guilty about not believing his grandmother.
posted by Quonab at 7:17 AM on September 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

I guess Lazlo doesn't have that RV he won in the sweepstakes anymore.

I wish there was some kind of annotation feature for comments, because I want to understand this comment and why it has so many favorites. Googling Lazlo RV doesn't bring up anything.
posted by averageamateur at 8:17 AM on September 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Honestly, looking for a "settlement" after nothing terrible or inconveniencing happened seems pretty grabby to me.

Also, I know some homeless people, so I'm not nearly as much on the "ooooh, a homeless person was living here, we were all in danger" side of the equation. Honestly, I'd probably have left well enough alone and not ratted on him given that he'd been living there quietly for months, but that's just me. One of the people I have a very, very distant internet connection to actually got off the street through living in secret in a situation sort of similar to this - once he had a stable place to live, he had easy access to his clothes and could store stuff and was able to sleep deeply because he had a locked door, he was able to get a job and save up money for a real place of his own. Actually, now that I think about it, I have a second internet connection who lived in secret in student housing when she didn't belong there, and that too was a critical step for her in getting real housing.

I hope the guy had somewhere else to go.
posted by Frowner at 8:48 AM on September 18, 2013 [5 favorites]

Does anyone remember the creepy story from NY a few years ago where there was a strange woman living in his kitchen cupboards?

Slight derail, but that video pings my 'fake' radar. Looking into it, the originators never admitted anything, but other people have similar suspicions. There's no record of it happening in any media apart from the website of an apartment search company who are into promotion via viral videos. Also, the framing and timing are just a little too neat and the guy in the video turns out to be an actor.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 9:01 AM on September 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

Schroeder's roommate: behind the locked basement door or not?
posted by mightshould at 9:23 AM on September 18, 2013

I wish there was some kind of annotation feature for comments, because I want to understand this comment and why it has so many favorites. Googling Lazlo RV doesn't bring up anything.

Same deal here. Poking around suggests it is a reference to the 1985 movie Real Genius.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:57 AM on September 18, 2013

That's exactly what it is. Lazlo, played by Napoeon Dynamite's Uncle Rico, is an engineering genius who cracked and has been living serrupticiously in the basement, existing both as a semi-legend and as the appropriately paranoid moral consciene of the film. Apparently he was inspired by a real student as CalTech.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 10:22 AM on September 18, 2013

He has figured out how many Doritos (Doritoes?) he needs to buy send away for no-purchase-necessary entries for to win every prize in their giveaway. In the end, SPOILER!, he wins an RV, among other prizes.
posted by maryr at 11:53 AM on September 18, 2013

That's exactly what it is. Lazlo, played by Napoeon Dynamite's Uncle Rico, is an engineering genius who cracked and has been living serrupticiously in the basement, existing both as a semi-legend and as the appropriately paranoid moral consciene of the film. Apparently he was inspired by a real student as CalTech.

Ah, the sweet relief of understanding. Thanks!
posted by averageamateur at 3:03 PM on September 18, 2013

I never made the connection between Lazlo and Uncle Rico. It *is* the same guy!
posted by headnsouth at 6:11 PM on September 18, 2013

You guys are taking the "it could've been a lot worse" quote out of context. The guy was saying that it turned out that Jeremy is a nice guy but it could've been a lot worse if he wasn't a nice guy but somebody actually dangerous.
posted by I-baLL at 7:21 PM on September 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

I-baLL: "You guys are taking the "it could've been a lot worse" quote out of context. The guy was saying that it turned out that Jeremy is a nice guy but it could've been a lot worse if he wasn't a nice guy but somebody actually dangerous."

I don't see where anyone is taking that out of context.
posted by desuetude at 4:22 PM on September 19, 2013

How did I miss this thread!
posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld at 7:20 AM on September 24, 2013 [1 favorite]