Issue #6 + O3LD: The New Adventures

Issue #6 of Operation Three-Legged Dolphin has been uploaded to our online distributor at Issuu and is currently being published at Rainbow Printing for magazine distribution. This issue features the official debut of the staff-made spin-off series: O3LD: The New Adventures, which depicts the dolphin in all his glory trying to survive on the College of Staten Island's madhouse of a campus! Each episode of this series will be published over the course of an entire school year, with a half an episode in each issue of the magazine.

In this episode: It's been two years since the dolphin has defeated the treacherous Palin Beast at the CSI Smoke Tower. In these two years, he has taken refuge at the campus, keeping students safe from the weird creatures as well as the local threats that have been making their lives a living hell. His latest adversaries come in the form of a group of trolls who are out to kidnap the professors of the Math department, mimic their identities and brainwash the students into following their orders. What do they want? Why are they here? Where did they come from? The answer may shock you in this episode of O3LD: The New Adventures!

Third Meeting Postponed

The College of Staten Island campus will be closed for a Jewish holiday between Wednesday, September 28, 2011 through to Friday, September 30, 2011 which conflicts with our original meeting schedule. Therefore, a makeup meeting will be held on Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 1:30 PM in Room 230, Building 1C. Our "Meetings and Events" page has been updated with the changes.

Welcome Back!

It's a new school year, and your mind is probably set on buying textbooks, memorizing your schedule and trying to catch your professor during office hours. If this is the case, you obviously don't know how to prioritize very well you probably don't know that Operation Three-Legged Dolphin is coming back for a sixth issue, and you can get in on the fun!

We are actively searching for new recruits and student contributors to show us their comedic side! We want YOU to draft articles for us, help us plan the layout of our next issue and to promote the madness to the masses just as we are. Where can you find us, you ask? The College of Staten Island is scheduling it's 8th Annual Involvement Fair, where representatives from student clubs, publications, and organizations alike come to present all of the involvement opportunities available to CSI Students. O3LD staff members will be eagerly awaiting your questions about how to contribute to issue #6 of O3LD and beyond!

CSI's 8th Annual Involvement Fair will be held on September 8th, 2011 at the Campus Center (1C) building during club hours, between 1:00 and 4:00 PM. We will be handing out copies of issue #4 and #5 so that you can get a taste of what Operation Three-Legged Dolphin has to offer to you!

Expect It. Soon.

As promised, issue five of Operation Three-Legged Dolphin is on its way to being published via the internet and through print copies that will be distributed campus-wide before the start of the Summer session and during the Fall session.

In addition, the O3LD staff will be handing out paper copies of issues four and five at the CSI Commencement ceremony on Thursday, July 2nd, 2011 along with some of the other student publications at the Campus Center (Building 1C). So come on down, get your copy, and see what the creative minds of your fellow students have in store for you this semester!

A side-note to all CSI graduates:
Starting this Fall, we will start recruiting CSI alumni and returning students as guest contributors for future issues. We feel that involvement should not be limited to undergraduates, and that all members of the College of Staten Island community deserve to take part in supporting both the magazine and their school anyway they can.

Dolphin Vs. Septopus

I have created a piece of Three-Legged Dolphin art for the third annual Arts Night, held each year at the Macaulay Honors Building located at 35 West 67th Street, near Lincoln Center.  The event featured the work of talented CUNY students, who feature their drawing, painting, photography, illustration, sculpture, mixed media, and performance pieces (am I leaving something out?)  There is also a live stage component in which singers and dancers perform brief sets to a captive audience.

Arts Night was created by Hunter College students Tyler Alterman and Mary Williams, and the first event was held in 2009.  The Macaulay Septopus, the mascot of Arts Night and opponent of the three-legged dolphin, was designed by Mr. Alterman as well.  I was the College of Staten Island curator during the first year and had the privilege of meeting a number of great people.  Now in its third year, Arts Night is run by the amazing Katie Alarcon, along with Emily Monaco, Natalia J. Donofrio, Jenna Jankowski, and many others I may not be mentioning.  I can't wait to see what they have planned for this year.  I'll be there enjoying the show and distributing issues of O3LD.  Come to Arts Night on April 29th from 4:30 - 9:30 at the Macaulay Building! 

Also, be sure to visit the Arts Night WordPress where you can find event updates.  And don't forget to submit by this Friday, April 8th!

O3LD is Now on Issuu!

No, you are not seeing things, and no, this is not "Photoshopped". Starting March 21, 2011, Operation Three-Legged Dolphin is making its way onto Issuu, an well-renowned publication-hosting website that is easy to use on computers, tablets and smartphones alike, and is the home to millions of magazines, books, pamphlets and so much more. We as a college magazine believe in the free distribution of our work, and digital distribution is just one of the ways we are targeting new prospective readers and recruiting new and ambitious staff members inside the College of Staten Island community.

So how good is Issuu? Part of what makes it the top publication site is the technology it has backing it and its ability to adapt said technology to changing times. Above is a screenshot of the HTML-based Issuu Reader BETA displaying our fourth issue in the Google Android built-in web browser (thanks to the Android-x86 Project). On laptops and home computers, Issuu provides their Flash-based reader with dynamic zoom and navigation controls (below) for comfortable reading, and can easily be embedded on different websites and blogs, thus making it possible to view publications from any platform big or small.

Lastly, we allow users with an account with Issuu to download issues of our magazine for personal reading free of charge! We also welcome constructive criticism on our work through comments from our fellow Issuu members. With every comment and e-mail, we're slowly making our magazine the best it can be by delivering exactly what our readers are looking for. This is just another way that the one and only humor magazine at the College of Staten Island is connecting with the community.


Check out our Issuu account at Issuu.com/O3LD, or click "Read Digital Issues" on the button bar above for quick links to past issues.

New O3LD Swag Has Arrived!

Ever wanted to walk around town with a three-legged mammal on the front of your shirt?  Now you can!

New O3LD t-shirts and hats have arrived!  To celebrate the launch of our new gear, we had a late-night photo shoot in our office, located in Building 1C Room 230 on CSI's campus.  Behold the men behind the madness.

Left to right: Matt Young, Mike Young, Dan Feldman.  To answer Zach Snyder's question, the leather jackets are not part of the promotional giveaways.

Dave Di Lillo's (center) brother Steve pointed out that we look like members of *NSYNC: http://static.tvfanatic.com/files/nsync.jpg

We even received an impromptu visit from O3LD favorite Andrew DiLorenzo and Brian Gonzalez, our neighbors from the Banner office!

Fronts close-up.

Hat close-up.

The second set of t-shirt designs arrived today!

Back close-up.  Both shirts feature the same back design.

Many thanks to the ever-talented Ed Peppe, O3LD's Editor-in-Chief, for bringing us these exciting designs, Paul from Ink Invasion (located at 456 Nome Avenue) for doing a great job with the printing, and Dave Di Lillo for being our staff photographer.

If you would like to receive one of these t-shirts or hats, please email O3LD@live.com or attend one of our upcoming Spring meetings and events, to be announced on the blog soon!

Welcome to the O3LD Blog!

The first meeting of Operation Three-Legged Dolphin was held in November 2007 in the 3N building on the College of Staten Island's campus.  Those who attended enjoyed the Gingerbread Pop Tarts and Coca-Cola I picked up on the way over.  At the start of the meeting, I drew a quick sketch of a dolphin with three legs, which I have recreated here, three-and-a-half years later. 


As I was leading the meeting, Dave Di Lillo, who took the title of "Secretary" but has always done so much more for the magazine, went over to the chalkboard and started drawing an upright version of the dolphin in full military fatigues.  Unwilling to concede that I had not intended for the dolphin to appear upright all along, I went home that evening and whipped up the first-ever non-chalk drawing of the three-legged dolphin.

The three-legged dolphin circa 2007.

Yes, I drew the dolphin's middle leg backwards. This was quickly corrected when I realized its walking would be reduced to a crab-like crawl, and I needed it to be athletic and fully mobile.  

While the question of who originally designed the dolphin (as well as whether I lost Dave's art project in our sophomore year of high school, when we first met) will forever be debated, what remains a fact is that there have been dozens of people who have put lots of work into making Operation Three-Legged Dolphin- or O3LD, as we like to call it, in short- what it is today.

I have been entirely blessed to have graduated from CSI and seen O3LD taken over by a new creative team, who will be frequently posting on this blog, along with myself.  Here you will be able to read old and current issues of the magazine electronically- on your computers, tablets, or mobile devices, as well as find out about all the latest in the O3LD universe.

So add us to your RSS feeds, find us on Facebook, link to us, send in submissions to our O3LD@live.com address, and keep reading our humble little magazine, which has become less humble as we make ourselves known on every possible platform.  

Thank you for many years of support and may we always be dolphins at heart!