Ex-students salute Schwarzenegger

From the ‘80s to the ‘90s, Arnold Schwarzenegger's name on an action movie bill translated into box office gold. Now, for the seventh year in a row, former UCF students Ryan Boylston and Vinnie Gulisano will honor the former California governor's birthday by hosting Arnold Day at Lazy Moon Pizza.

"They can look forward to almost the entire Arnold Schwarzenegger collection first and foremost," said Tim Brown, owner of Lazy Moon. "A potential Arnold Schwarzenegger appearance, or someone who looks very much like him, cake and a good bit of beer drinking, in true Arnold fashion."

The seventh annual Arnold Day will be held at Lazy Moon on July 30 from 12 p.m. to 3a.m.

In 2004, Boylston and Gulisano bellied up to the bar at Lazy Moon and spent the entire day watching Schwarzenegger movies on one of the restaurant's televisions. Now, Arnold Day, which began as a two die-hard Schwarzenegger fans hanging out and eating pizza, has evolved into a full-blown celebration. This year, Boylston and Gulisano decided to give back, donating the proceeds from the sale of Arnold Day T-shirts to the Governator's favorite cause, The Special Olympics.

"The first six Arnold Days we pretty much threw for ourselves," said Gulisano, who graduated from UCF in 2007 with a degree in finance. "We just said we wanted something to do for the weekend. Now it seems cool to just become more involved with the community."

In addition to that, Brown said that he plans to donate at least 15 percent of the profits from Arnold Day to the Special Olympics as well.

"Even if we only make 100 or 200 bucks, that shouldn't go toward anything but a foundation," said Boylston, who graduated from UCF in 2005 with a degree in marketing and mass communications. "That shouldn't go in my pocket, I do this for fun every year."

According to Boylston, he has been a Schwarzenegger fan since birth. However, Boylston made it clear that he was a fan of Schwarzenegger the action hero, not the actor recently caught in a love-child scandal.

"It's not about celebrating Arnold as a person, it's about celebrating the character that he has created and the movies he has created," Boylston said.

Brown said that since its inception in 2004, all those involved in planning Arnold Day have been trying to out do the celebration from the year before.

"It kind of became one of those things to see if we could escalate it every year, to make it more and more absurd," Brown said. "Which led to getting a cake, and then eventually doing drink specials every time there was an absurd climax in the movie."

Two years ago, Arnold Day founders decided to take it up a notch, hiring an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator to make an appearance at the celebration.

"We were sitting down, and Arnold Day had been going on for about an hour, he didn't show up until 1 o'clock," Gulisano said. "We were debating whether or not he was going to show up in costume in character, or in normal clothes and then go in the back and change. And as we are discussing that, he kicks the door in dressed as Arnold from Terminator 2, runs inside; everyone is screaming and cheering and he ran over to the first beer he saw and he just chugged it and started yelling. It was awesome."

According to Boylston, Arnold Day has been a way for him to remember a simpler time, when taking your child to see a rated R movie was not at all out of the ordinary.

"When I was younger, it wasn't taboo to take a kid to see a rated R movie," Boylston said. "My dad would take me to go see Terminator and the worst thing I was going to see was maybe a curse word here and there, and maybe someone got shot. R-rated movies back then weren't ultra-violent like they are today."

According to Boylston, action movies these days aren't the way they used to be. There isn't as much excitement for the release, kids are no longer begging for toys from their favorite action movies, and most lack the staying power that movies starring action heroes such as Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"Its nice to step back into that era every once in a while," Boylston said. "Sure, a lot of the movies are cheesy and the acting surely isn't up to the standards of today, nor are a lot of the special effects, but it's just fun."

For more information, please visit www.ArnoldDay.com