HIGHER EDUCATION… Squid fondly remembers those heady college days. Drinking with the party-crazed otters, smoking a little seaweed with the mollusks. But Squid never realized one apparently can’t traverse the CSUMB campus without tripping on a stoner. According to that highly reputable and thorough news website The Daily Beast, CSUMB ranks seventh on a list of the “50 Druggiest Colleges in America.” The list, released Dec. 15, relied on data from College Prowler, described as the only college guide written by students, for students. And despite the fact that there are more than 5,000 colleges and universities in the country, the Beast and their Prowler buddies examined just 400 of them to arrive at their conclusions. One problem, says a rightfully annoyed CSUMB president Dr. Dianne Harrison, is the rankings were based in part on the number of violations and arrests that took place on campus in 2009. “The sad irony is that if we had not been enforcing our policies by issuing citations, we would not have been recognized in such a negative light,” Harrison states in a written release. (Harrison also takes The Herald to task for running the story without questioning the Beast’s methodology.) Squid is here for you, Mighty Otters. Because hello, have these people never heard of UC Santa Cruz or Berkeley? UCSC didn’t make it into the top 50. And Berkeley came in at number 46.

SUNDANCE DREAMS… Squid loves film. Scorsese, Fellini, Tarentino, Lynch, von Trier, Coppola (both). Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void is a trip. The BLUE Ocean Film Festival… nirvana. Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale… a little misleading. But it’s an extra treat when local filmmakers make the medium their own. Cut to: Doug Mueller. The Monterey resident studied film at CSUMB’s Teledramatic Arts and Technology program, has made several shorts and documentaries, including some for the Carmel Bach Festival (where he’s worked for a decade) and Chamber Music Monterey Bay (see them at www.douglasmueller.net), and has recently made, along with friends like Dusty Bias, his first feature, Prairie Love. It was shot in Mueller’s native North Dakota in weather that ranged from an icy 20 degrees to a scary 37 below (though that didn’t stop one lead from doing a scene that called for him to run on a snowy road in underwear). Mueller describes the film as “really great.” Squid would tell you the plot, but if things go well in January, you may be able to see it yourself: The film was accepted, out of 10,000-plus other entries, to premier at the Sundance Film Festival, where Mueller and company will shop for a distributor. Good luck, fellas. Temperatures there will range in the 20s. Word of advice, Mueller… set your next film in Miami.