Spike began to shed some of its journalistic aspirations with the emergence of the editorial trinity of Mark Lotto, Josh Lewis, and Jonathan Shainin, each of the apocalyptic class of the double goose egg. This was indeed an epochal period for the magazine, one in which it would face the challenges of numerous pretenders and respond by morphing into a complete institution, a veritable machine of humor, and, indeed, a state of mind.  The meat and potatoes of the semi-annual publication retained some flavor of reporting, with write-ups on the closed stacks of McCabe and the travails of the admissions office, but, at the same time, the editors compounded these ventures with tendencies toward both the abstract and the very concrete, the latter most often in the form of the dick joke and the imagined missive from the desk of Hulk Hogan.

  These were colorful days, populated by heroes such as the cartoonist Michelle “Rat” Wirth and villains such as the editors of Vague, a rival publication—the titular adjective best describes current knowledge of its purpose and contents. Suffice it to say that the editors of Spike considered Vague a serious enough challenger to merit insult within the magazine’s pages. (It was not the only such would-be usurper of Spike’s humor throne, although it was perhaps the one that exhibited the most cause for concern—a samizdat-style zine, The F-Word, appeared later, although its only article to have made an impression on this historian’s foggy reminisce is a brief parody of rap music by Dave Haendler ’03).  The challenge thus presented was a great inspiration for the expansion of the Spike enterprise. The more notable innovations included a temporary armistice with the Phoenix, in which Spike staffers agreed to periodically satisfy the paper’s desperate need for content, and the staging of comprehensive humor “events,” such as the “Canadian Invasion,” during which hockey contests were held in public spaces on campus and beer, probably Molson but possibly Labatt, was served by Spike staffers in Sharples.

Praiseworthy as such extracurriculars may have been, the animus of the magazine remained the magazine. In this regard the editors did not disappoint, and this period saw the publication of two of the more noteworthy issues of Spike’s run. The “Fifty-Four Greatest Things of the Millennium” issue (Spring ’99), in its ambition and intellectual inquisitiveness witnessed a shift in Spike’s focus from sophomoric fare to more thoughtful content.  Another, more negative, tradition of non-publication was started the next semester when the editors failed to publish (and Shainin dropped out of the fold), but for their final effort Lotto and Lewis bounced back to produce “Everyday,” a issue themed toward the quotidian and the trivial that in its scope would set the stage for what many latter-day editors would attempt in their closing salvos.