Function Primer

Thursday through Saturday, my groove was on. Many people speak of grooves as if they are something to be worn and quickly thrown off, like a lobster bib or the One Ring. Maybe contacts. My optometrist recently told me that since I've been wearing my contacts way past the prescribed throw away date, blood vessels behind my forehead have begun to bore tunnels into my eyes to supply oxygen to dying cells (because the permeability of contacts falls off after two weeks). That scared me into getting glasses. But that's another story.

I wore my groove for three days straight, which I'm sure my doctor would have a problem with. I binge danced. And I have come out of my lost weekend with a few pointers on how to throw a function.

1) DJ DERRICK - I put this first because it takes primacy over all other pointers. DJ Derrick is legendary. He's been around since before I came to the University. Some say he laid tracks for Napoleon at the Coronation after party; others say that he was laced beats for Chaucer. Still others say he was scene even at the time of Jesus. However, he is fresh as ever, and cannot be equaled in either music selection or tempo. Quick note to aspiring DJ's - never let a song last longer than a minute and a half. I begin to lose interest after that, unless I personally know the musician, and that only happens when T.I. comes on.

2) COSTUME - This is half of the fun. I've seen pie charts that show dancing as almost three fourths of the fun. I've seen pies filled with the meat of human beings. But despite all this, I can say that assembling the costume is a mini-function in itself. Crafts are a personal specialty. However, these past three functions were formals, so my costume was a tie. But picking out the tie still required a trip to the Salvation Army. I guess I could have asked my date to come along, but she had already picked out a dress.

3) PICTURES - Please, do not make me go to the Square again. I realize that Lights of the Ozarks is gorgeous, but I've now seen it three nights in a row, and the only aspect I could marvel at was the temperature (I have been told that there are camels there - I don't necessarily believe this, but I could be tempted to go back if I was guarenteed camels). Rather, take photos indoors, at a sorority house or in the ball pit of Chuck E Cheeze, depending on where you eat. In all seriousness, pictures are important, because this is the only record of the function you'll have; don't let the girl ruin it. Just take pictures with dudes.


4) DANCING - I absolutely loathe the dance circle. Perhaps 75% percent of all function goers grind, which is fine. Go ahead and vibrate. But, let's be honest, that looks like zero to negative amounts of fun. Most participants are catatonic. Dancing with some separation is required to have fun. But, many moons ago, when the stars were young and cats ruled over their human slaves, someone invented the dance circle as the only alternative to grinding. In this scenario, girls have a lot of fun with their sorority sisters, while their dates stare at one another and nod. I'm serious - stare. I stared at David Lee for over fifteen minutes - and his face never changed. Robot? More investigation is required. But it is possible to dance one on one. In fact, it is much better for all parties involved. Symbiotic relationship. A dance square, of two couples, is acceptable. A dance hexagon is even attainable, but in terms of geometry, it is the pinnacle of sides if the fun factor is to be maintained. Trust me - I was a math major.

5) DON'T LET YOUR DATE GET WATER ALONE - She will leave you.

6) PARTY BUS - Riding the bus home from the function Friday night, I was reminded of how glad I am that I am a Christian, and I do not have to go to hell, which I imagine is a lot like a party bus. Double capacity. Extremely hot. No handrails for those who have to stand. They played music at maximum volume, but the problem was the channel, which wasn't a channel at all but just a static space where a radio station used to be. I saw a drunk couple making very unsexy love. I can't close my eyes at night anymore. To avoid this, come to the function realtively early, maybe a half hour after it starts, and leave a half hour before it ends. Unless you like hell.

Let's Talk About the Black Eyed Peas

A few weeks ago, BYX threw it's annual Roller Disco function. We drive to a neighboring town and roller skate in those tan Forrest Gump boots. It reminds me of CEO Day, at St. Joe's Elementary. Once a month, if you brought a canned food, you could wear whatever clothes you wanted, instead of the requisite white shirt blue pants uniform. At the end of the school day, St. Joe's would bus all the students to the Skate Place, where we would watch the public school kids get in fights. They tore the Skate Place down many years ago. Now it's a grouping of apartments, named the Skate Place. This is the reason we have to have Roller Disco in a different city.

The point is, whilst skating without my date (it's very difficult to skate with someone when you are as fast as I am), a gorgeous and dramatic song began to play that slowed down time. After three minutes of sweat and tears from dancing powerfully and falling twice, I asked the DJ what that song was. He said, "If you do that again, we're going to kick you out." I reiterated by question, and he said, "Meet Me Halfway, by the Black Eyed Peas."

GASP. Not the Black Eyed Peas! I have a blood feud with this band. I need to look up the definition of blood feud, but I think that's what I have. Their lyrics are offensively simple and the individual beats in the song look like money signs when you open it in GarageBand. Take their latest hit, "I Gotta Feeling," which rhymes the traditional Jewish celebratory exclamation, "motzel tov," with "just take it - off!" That's not offensive. But I'm not Jewish.

I'd like to post some lyrics to this song, in order to prove my point. As you read this, please try to make it melodious. If you are familiar with the song, feel free simply to sing the words.

let's do it

let's do it

let's do it

let's do it

and do it

and do it

- oh no, I'm not finished yet, and neither is Fergie -

let's do it

let's do it

let's do it

let's do it

and do it

and do it

And here I could make a stale joke, pretending to be unfamiliar with her command and asking her to repeat it once more. The issue at hand, however, is what exactly "it" is. It's never stated, and the context of the song is so vague that it could be any number of things. I'll go out on a limb and suggest that it refers to desecrating other ethnic groups' cultural traditions.

However, "Meet Me Halfway" is different.

Okay, that's a lie. "Meet Me Halfway" is the exact same formula. Beats that were bought off the end cap at a grocery store and phrases that are vague and familiar enough that one must find his or her owning meaning in them. But I am in love with this song.

Please, take five minutes and watch the music video. Or, take thirty seconds and hit the highlights, which are as follows: Fergie, who is actually wearing clothes despite what first glance told you, lost in the rainforest from Fern Gully. Taboo in a spacesuit floating way too close to the sun. apl.de.ap dressed as a Bedouin with steam punk stunner shades, floating in circles on the surface of the moon. Elsewhere on the moon, will.i.am in Jay Gatsby's racing goggles, riding a robot elephant. I think he may be using this video as an audition tape for a stage production of Around the World in 80 Days.

Nothing changes in terms of formula. This song sounds like many other songs I've heard. The lyrics were probably written using those word magnets on my mom's fridge. But sometimes a repetition of something as confusing and simletaneously seductive as "meet me halfway" makes me want to climb aboard my trusty robot elephant and ride off into the setting Saturn.

Everyone Loves A Nerf War

Traditionally, my fraternity's semi-formal event, Reindeer Rendezvous, is a movie night. Small groups go out to eat, then gather at some warm and comfortable location and watch a movie. Last year it was A Muppet Christmas Carol. That was my pick. I was told later that the movie was the reason we were changing the format. Apparently everyone except for me has terrible tastes in movies.

This year, Nathan Allen, an older member who looks Irish, taught the fraternity and our dates to waltz. It was almost violent. When you're spinning in a circle, oscillating up and down like a parabola, you can only see where you're going half the time. That means the other half the time you're traveling backwards, flying blind with no idea about what's at your six. I hit a lot of people with my elbows; not all of them were guys. I blamed it on my date.

Another new feature of this year's Reindeer Rendezvous was presents; instead of making shirts to commemorate the event, we asked all the members to use the money which would have gone to shirts to buy presents for children. That was both a good and bad idea.

Did you know that a nameless, No-Ad company packages two revolver type dart guns for only ten dollars? It's an amazing deal. This may just be a testament to how overboard Wal-Mart has gone with their Roll-Back campaign - I mean, we get it; you're a cheap store - but this was a deal I couldn't pass up. And since I was supposed to buy a present for a girl (no brainer: EasyBake Oven, 18 dollars ROLLED BACK from 25), I bought them for myself.

Last year my family had to spend Christmas with my sister and her husband on account of her pregnant belly. Don't even get me started on how much I hate babies. That's entirely too many words for this segment. But during the gift exchange on Christmas Eve, my sister's mother-in-law gave the same shaped present to my dad, my brother, my brother-in-law, Cory, and me. We opened them at the same time. It was a solid, fifteen dollar Nert blaster with a revolving barrel. Cool, but cool when I was eight, you know. I didn't really know how to react, since I didn't know the gift giver that well. Maybe she thought I was still in junior high. I thanked her and watched my sister unwrap her present (a paint set), until I saw Cory opening the packing with a knife. I didn't quite understand what he was doing until my brother got his gun entirely free of the package and flipped his recliner over to use as cover. By then, it was too late for Christmas Eve. The night devolved into a war that lasted to a point that surprised everyone. My dad shot my brother in the eye, point blank; he doesn't even like it when we play Halo.

The women had to go into the kitchen to drink tea and fluff my sister's pillows or something. I tried to shoot her in the stomach, but it didn't do anything. The baby still came out normal.

When my date and I got to the Rendezvous venue last night, I found that many other members bought the same two gun package. There was some time set aside to wrap the EasyBake Oven, but I told my date to handle it - there was something I had to do. Then I shot her with a dart.

These guns were quite cheaply made, and most of the darts were misfires, but the amount of guns present added up to hundreds, literally hundreds of foam darts stuck in girls' hair. A few pledges bought more expensive, on brand guns that, in the long run, won out over the Air Splitters I dual wielded. One buck had a Nerf sword. Did you know they made Nerf swords? My date does, because I hit her with it.

This was my last fraternity event as an executive officer. My tenure is finished at semester. Seeing a vision of my dad in transparent blue telling me to finish strong, I stayed behind to help pick up darts. I sadly threw away maybe ten Air Splitters that were abandoned. However, I found a Nerf shotgun that was bought as a present and laid aside, forgotten and unwrapped. It's now beside my bed, loaded and cocked.

When Love Is Gone

Over Thanksgiving break, I had dinner with a friend from high school, Mary Kate. She lives in L.A. and works as an actress, among other jobs. We have written some things together, and, through collaboration, have gotten to be good friends, on the basis that we know things about each other that few others do. When you write with someone, you learn about things that don't come up in conversation. Like where the dinosaurs really went. But I actually use that bit in regular conversations, so it's not a good example.

Mary Kate is currently in rehearsals for a stage musical version of A Christmas Carol. This beloved holiday tale is based on a novella by Charles Dickens, who was paid per word, so the real Christmas miracle is that the story is so short. I realize that currently there is an adaptation in theaters, but the previews for it make Jim Carrey look like one of those Terminators which had rubber skin, before Skynet figured out how to clone human tissue. At least that's how I explained it to my niece.

Mary Kate's role is Belle, Ebeneezer Scrooge's one-time squeeze, who pops up during his time travel tour with the Ghost of Christmas past. I was delighted to hear this, because Belle has the best solo in what is now believed to be the greatest Dickensian adaptation, A Muppet Christmas Carol.

Wikipedia says that despite using muppets, the film is a fairly close adaptation, as if someone might have assumed Dickens originall wrote the character of Cratchit for a frog and had envisioned Scrooge's school teacher as a patriotic American bald eagle. To Wikipedia's credit, they're right - there were no muppets in the original book. But they didn't cite their sources.

When I was younger, as in a senior in high school, my family would watch A Muppet Christmas Carol every winter break, multiple times. For some reason it was adopted as a yuletide mascot, to represent our Christmas spirit. We know all the songs. Then, when I finally read the original story, I was amazed at how closely the muppet's film followed the narrative. Most of Gonzo's pertinent lines are unadulterated Charles. Except for "Light the lamp, not the rat." Though it has no literary basis, this catchphrase has been popular in my family for some time.

I told Mary Kate that when I relayed this information to my mom, she wouldn't reply, but her face would slide down as if anesthetized, and she would begin to sing Belle's solo, "When Love Is Gone." I also told her that I wouldn't be able to resist, but that I would join in and sing Scrooge's part when the solo becomes a duet around the bridge.

The best part is, they stand on a physical bridge when they sing that part. Don't believe me? Watch the video. IN COLOR!

And when I told my mom, she became sober, and began to sing, "It was almost love/It was almost always..." And I sang with her.

It Is Finished

At my house, we don't have a television, or internet. We're off the grid, just in case the robots come looking for me. Therefore, I don't play video games during the semester. I [SARCASM BEGINS] focus on school work [SARCASM ENDS] instead. This was the original purpose of the Pankration - to provide a video game binge after a semester in rehab. Thus, I spent months (literally, months) of deliberating which game I would play, oscillating between titles like Dragon Age: Origin and Fallout 3. Last week I sat down with my little brother in the fraternity, Tim Yopp, and asked his advice. After a solid half hour, we decided on Final Fantasy VIII, a RPG released in 1999 for the original PlayStation. I had to go back a decade to get the proper Pankration experience. That's why I'm the Laser Wolf (which I just decided is the title of the head of the Pankration. I'm shooting from the hip, but I think it will stick).

Final Fantasy VIII uses Roman numerals instead of Arabic characters to communicate that it is a very serious game. It uses four discs, and Tim told me it took him ninety (90) hours to beat the game. That's like four days. Without ever sleeping.

I fell asleep around 3:30. At that time, I had been playing for ten hours, and I had completed the first disk and turned off the console in order to put in the second. That was my mistake. I should never had given my body a chance to escape. Curse my flesh! It can't even play a video game for ninety hours!

I love Japanese stories. They are entirely too melodramatic; they always involve young people embroiled in strong emotions. There's always an unexplainable, spiritual element circulating. Some nights, I will go to Blockbuster without a specific movie in mind, just with the parameters that it must be anime, because I want to experience emotions so over the top that human actors couldn't pull them off.

Final Fantasy VIII is no different. It's everything I hoped for in my own life, but cannot have, because the leading scientists it the world still can't figure out how to make swords in the shape of eight foot long planks of wood.

My pledges all reported in yesterday. They all saw the sunrise; most fell asleep immediately afterwards, around 5:30. One, David, made it to 7:02 exactly. I'm not sure what's significant about that. I talked to Tim Yopp around lunchtime. He still hadn't slept. He was just starting his third game.

Today is the Pankration

Two years ago tonight, I created a monster, and by monster I mean the acronym M.O.N.S.T.E.R., More Oreos, No Strong Tea ETERNAL RAMPAGE! (exclamation mark my past self's emphasis, not present self mine). I acknowledge that I threw out grammar for the sake of the final acronym, and yes, I'll come close to but not entirely follow through with admitting that I started with the word monster and worked backwords. However, I can explain.

Two years ago tonight, I bought a gallon of Arizona Iced Tea and a package of Double Stuffed Oreos, along with several double-A batteries for my 360 controller and the game Mass Effect. This was the first Pankration, as I played from sundown to sunup the Monday before Thanksgiving. I skipped all my Tuesday classes.

Last year, with the same supplies, I logged twelve straight hours into Final Fantasy X. That Pankration heralded a new era of holiday, as I finished celebrating a week later. I played over thirty hours that week.

Previously, I have been the only person to honor the Pankration. My goal this year was to raise participation at least 10%. Even the Olympics can't claim to do that. Instead, through an aggressive marketing campaign that enslaved the pledges to promote my holiday, there's now over 250 people from multiple states and college campuses that will pankratronize. That's several month's worth of video games, in one night.

I got the name from my Classics teacher, Dr. Levine, who has hair like Kid from Kid 'n' Play, and huge black rimmed glasses that someone could punch through without touching the frames. He told me that the Pankration was an ancient Greek combat event where the only two rules were 1) no gouging of eyes, and 2) no biting. As apart of the Olympics, all nations competed in the event except the Spartans, who would never surrender and thus died in competition whenever they lost.

Piggybacking on the historical validity of the old Pankration, I linked from its Wikipedia page to create my own, which was sadly deleted. However, the talk page is still open. Visiting it, you will notice there is a strong and honorable fight between the editors of Wikipedia and some unknown elements. Those are pledges. I told them of the movement to delete the page, and they led a valiant crusade to keep the page legitimate as well as existant.

You can witness the argument go downhill, however, at the point where a user with the name "Half Man Half Rancor (Mancor)" enters the arena and challenges the editor who was our main antagonist, "Singularity42," to "prove that he is in fact a human and not a cyborg trying to infiltrate the plans for a mass expansion of the Pankration sensation." He then demands that Singularity42 cite his sources as to his humanity. At another point, he attempts to appeal to Mr. Wikipedia, and upon discovering there's no such person, he tries to spin that fact into the argument that made up things are still legitimate.

I haven't yet identified Half Man Half Rancor (Mancor).

I am proud, though, that we put up enough of a fight that one of the head editors of Wikipedia thought the issue had enough relevance to sum up the arguement after the page was deleted. He said this:

"The result was a snowball delete. The discussion has spawned a lot of confusion and some rancor. As for the confusion, the repeated references to [the article] Wikipedia is not for things made up one day made it appear that Wikipedia's standard for inclusion is existence. It's not. Instead, the issue here is notablity...But that has not swayed the consensus in the discussion, which is trending heavily and irreversibly delete. Where a discussion is certain to lead to only one outcome, it's time to close it."

I feel like this is an equivalent of a Supreme Court decision, which provides a precedent for all other similar minded cases. This is the Pankration's legacy. Also, no word yet if the editor meant to pun when he said the discussion spawned some rancors.

Capture the Officer

The pledge mission this week was Capture the Officer. For three days, from noon to midnight, pledges had to track down, chase, tackle, and tie up the executive officers of the fraternity. We did not go quietly. The police can attest to that, in at least one case.

Our pledges are divided up into four houses, named after four of the founding fathers of the fraternity. Each pledge mission is worth house points, and the cumulative house point total for the semester decides who wins the Area Cup, the prestigious pledgeship trophy. Yes, this all came from Harry Potter. That would make me Dumbledore, and all I have to say to that is, I'vepretended to be lesser wizards before.

Points were attached to the circumstances of the capture, to make the competition more interesting. Fifty points were given for each individual capture, but bonus points were available; these points were earned by the items or setting of the hostage picture the house took. Here's a quick menu:

In the Union food court - 25 points

On a moped - 25 points

Kissed by sorority girls - 25 points

In a shopping cart - 50 points

In Barnes and Noble - 50 points

At Mount Sequoyah - 50 points

Buying the office ice cream - 75 points

Riding go carts - 75 points

With a live horse - 100 points

You can see the logic behind some of these. I love Barnes and Noble. Most guys like kisses. All the officers love ice cream. The horse was sort of a "what the hay" thing - I didn't think it would actually be done. Little did I know.

These could also be combined. If the officer was eating ice cream at Barnes and Noble astride a live horse, that's 225 points, plus the fifty for the initial capture. That being said, let's score some of these photos, you and I.

This is Jessie Green; he was the first to be captured. Since all the doors were locked, the House of Duke broke through a window screen in his basement, came up the stairs and pulled him out of the top bunk he sleeps in every night like he's a five year old. Kudos for the special operations night vision, but that's all. 50 points.

Jessie had a rough night Tuesday. House of Wagner. 50 points. No extra for caressing.

Our president Lowell, captured by the House of Miller on Thursday. Lowell's original plan was to lock his doors every day at noon and not come out for any reason until the next morning. He even made a grocery run before the game started. This plan fell through, though, when two complete houses came to his house on Wednesday night demanding his blood in some sort of spiritual communion exercise. This spooked him enough to attempt to switch hide outs, at which point he was captured. Ice cream, shopping cart, and girls make this worth 200 points.

The House of Miller's capture of me. They followed me from the library, waited for an hour outside the Kappa house (because the Kappa's refused to let them in), and then ran me down like a loose puppy trying to make it to freedom in the middle of the road. Marks for moped and girls; 100 points.

Also note David Norris, who is wearing a Pankration shirt. He's been a major force in the promotion of my holiday, and tells me there are 200 people in a Facebook group committed to a Pankration celebration. He even made flyers.

Miller's capture of both Eric Barnes and Andy Brown. Miller was a busy house on Thursday, capturing in all six officers. These captures came off tips from the paterfamilias of their house, Ryan Miller himself. That's like Godric Gryffindor catching the Golden Snitch. Okay, maybe more like Helga Hufflepuff. Two officers, two mopeds, ice cream for all: 300 points.

The House of Cooper captured me on Wednesday. They waited outside my Classical Literature class, and chased me literally halfway across campus before I collapsed like an asthmatic. They duct taped my arms from the wrist to the elbow, and my legs from the ankles to the knees. They put me in a truck with a bag over my head. They tickled me.

I tried to resist at every possible moment. Escape wasn't really an option, because I moved like a pogo stick, but every time the cab door opened, I managed to fall out onto the pavement. I wouldn't stand, either - I'd make them put my dead weight back into the truck.

Sorority girls, moped, shopping cart, AND live horses: 250 points. They would have gotten 75 more with ice cream, but one of the pledges put the ice cream sandwich in my hands before they took the picture. That's a mistake. Before they could get the camera turned on, I ate the entire sandwich with the wrapper still on. You can't see it, but my face is covered in chocolate.

I like to think of all this as training for when my cover as a human is eventually blown. I'LL TELL YOU NOTHING!