Then Nicholas had an idea: As a promotional video to get into college, he would make a video on the nondescript sandbar using the piano, bagpipes from a neighbor, and a small submersible sub used for studies at MAST. So the family moved the piano the few blocks from Grandma’s place to their home.

“We were thinking of a big production, a music video epic,” Nicholas said.

Never made it, though. That’s because this past New Year’s Eve, as a crowd of about 100 gathered at the Harrington home in Miami Shores, the chants to burn the piano got louder and louder.

The crowd was obliged: The heavy piano was lowered by davits into a canal next to the Harrington home, and set ablaze. The next day, after cooler heads prevailed, the piano was gently lifted onto the family’s 22-foot open fisherman. Then Harrington, his two sons and a neighbor set out for the sandbar — where they set the piano ablaze, again.

– Charles Rabin, Miami Herald.

Rabin buries the lead like four paragraphs deep in this story: These people at this New Year’s Eve party demanded — chanted for — a piano to be set on fire. Some Lord of the Flies s#&!. This NEVER happens at parties I go to. Never. I would go to so many more parties if it did.

This kids, incidentally, came up with the idea to set a piano on fire on a sandbar for a movie he was making to get himself into college. Man, I hope he gets in. If he doesn’t — he wants to go to Cooper Union, which is free — he should probably be given some sort of scholarship for awesomeness. Actually I think the Awesome Scholarship would be a nice offshoot of the Awesome Fund. This kid could be a member of the inaugural class of Awesome Scholars, if I had lots of money.

He said he wanted it to be epic, so I really hope he intended to be playing the piano while it burned, on the sandbar. That would make for a pretty badass Guns N’ Roses video.

Apropos of almost nothing, two brief notes: I almost burned my house down thrice in college. And we only lived there for two years. Two were in the kitchen: a grease fire on the stove, and a lesson about why you don’t cook hot dogs in the toaster oven. In both cases I put them out with baking soda and they did minimal damage (except to the toaster oven).

The third came on our back patio, right outside my room. By patio I mean about a 100 square foot concrete area surrounded by weedy shrubs. Part of the house hung out over the area providing cover, specifically the part of the house that was Will’s room — you know Will from the San Francisco desk. Anyway, it was the perfect spot for barbecuing and we had a little grill and table sat up for the grilling and subsequent eating.

After our food was done one night, but while the fire was still burning, I became tempted — as I often am — to play with the fire. The people who lived in the house before us took their tiki torches with them when they left, but they left behind a large bottle of torch oil. In perhaps not my smartest decision, I filled up half of a red plastic Solo cup with the fuel and threw it all onto the fire at once. (It’s a very stupid thing to do; please don’t try it at home.)

Look — usually when you do that with lighter fluid, there’s a quick, explosive, awesome flare up and then it settles down immediately. So that’s kind of what I expected. But then after the quick, explosive, awesome flare up, it never settled down. Actually, the flames grew — a tower of flame expanding in an almost cylindrical shape toward the ceiling.

My other roommate Ted and I stood there just sort of gaping as the flames reached the ceiling and started spreading out a little, and we could actually hear Will rolling around in his office chair in the room above. But we were completely paralyzed with wonder and fear, and it was only right around the time we realized we had to do something that the oil burned out and the flames died down — the house had not caught fire.

Second: My brother claimed some of his fraternity brothers made a raft out of kegs and took it out on the Charles. I’m at least somewhat skeptical, but the fraternity did seem like a reasonably rowdy and reasonably creative lot and it was MIT, where drunken fratboys could conceivably craft a seaworthy keg-raft.

Hat tip to @SNESMaster.