Karamu
fiesta forever.
I'm still recovering from my trip to the Fiesta Bowl, and as a Notre Dame fan, there is most definitely still a tear in my beer.
It's highly appropriate that I began this with lyrics from Lionel Richie's All Night Long because that is the exact amount of time that Troy Smith, Ted Ginn Jr. and A.J. Hawk outplayed the Fightin' Irish. But although Notre Dame didn't quite go out and win one for the Gipper
my trip wasn't a complete failure.
Sometime between my luggage getting lost, United Airlines' ticketing computers crashing, getting special screened at security and standing in line next to the guy who played older brother Wayne in the nostalgic TV show The Wonder Years
I realized something: people need to take themselves less seriously.
Individuals tend to think that their luggage is special. It is not. Sure, I love my recently purchased Victorinox duffle bag, but when it got lost, I specifically remember staying calm and thinking that this is something that happens. Luggage gets lost. Computers crash. You pay a grand to watch your team get beat.
All of these things happen, and screaming at a customer service employee or getting into a fistfight with some jackass wearing scarlet and gray won't get you your toiletries, boarding pass or national title any faster.
I want people to act like reasonable adults, and I think Lionel Richie can help. Maybe if people would sing All Night Long (or any other track from Richie's collection of monster hits, for that matter) when they are waiting in a long line at the grocery store or doing anything else that is tedious, then perhaps this would help people lighten up a bit and realize that the guy ahead of them didn't buy 37 cans of tomato soup for the sole purpose of pissing them off.
So where does the Richie Factor come into play? Well, any day with an '80s song in it has the potential to be amazing. Cheesy '80s tunes, like your day, can be quite lame if you take them too seriously. However, when you can both recognize and appreciate a cheesy song for what it is, you give yourself the freedom of allowing crappy, yet amazingly sentimental music turn a horrible experience like being stuck in traffic into a laughable, yet somehow inspiring piece of nostalgia.
Imagine it: a society where we all took ourselves a little bit less seriously. If this concept begins to gain momentum, then people will hopefully laugh more and complain less. Then, just maybe, people will stop assuming that their waiter will drop to his knees and give a Kobe Bryant-level apology if he forgets to bring an extra side of Ranch dressing.
Yes, people will be calm and relaxed, and we will all have '80s tunes to thank.
Despite all of the inconveniences of my trip, I really only have one legitimate complaint. For the 96th consecutive flight in a row, I have failed to sit next to a supermodel. The lame in-flight films don't bug me. I'm unaffected by turbulence. But once, just once, I would like to sit by a supermodel.
I have it all planned out. I'll start out reading The New Yorker, and then she will sit next to me. After about 25 minutes or so I will switch to GQ to show her I am down with the latest and greatest in men's fashion. Then, about ten minutes after I switch to Vanity Fair, I will turn to page 73 and she will point at the highly erotic advertisement I'm looking at and say, That's me. That's when I will put down the magazine and start an amazing conversation about how Miami Vice was under-appreciated and ahead of its time.
Why can't this happen?
I have no problem with the older woman I sat next to who (apparently) liked Philly Cheese-steak sandwiches and books about nature. And I actually got a kick out of the second grader I sat next to (I think his name was Carter) who was down with Jesse McCartney and hockey. He talked to me for like 20 minutes about the movie Top Gun
and we both agreed that Iceman is brilliant. I guess just once I'd like to be that guy- that lucky guy who could be the next Mr. Tyra Banks.
But maybe this is all a part of my pathetic attempt to re-live every episode of Seinfeld
a show that, ironically, took the smallest of daily hassles and made them into very serious complaints. But at least I have realized that neither Wayne nor I are special in the unsympathetic eyes of the travel-gods. Either way, I'll keep singing Lionel Riche.
- Trace Hacquard is a graduate student in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Send him an e-mail at lh303403@ohiou.edu.
17
Archives
Trace Hacquard
