When I was a kid the students used to riot and burn down banks. They protested wars and burnt people in effigy. So I’m on the University of California campus the other day and scratched on the pillar marking the Northside entrance is this chalked announcment: Cal vs Stanford Poetry Slam — at the Bear’s Lair. Oh, how ever-so trendy. A poetry slam. This cornball event of soul-searching and poignancy will be followed by a lot of cryiong and hugging.
For a while the Bears Lair used to be a mini-Nighclub with comics and open mikes for attempts at scathing humor. Now it’s a poetry slam. How Russell Simmons! And does anyone think competitive poetry is a bit silly?
Now if the “slam” was done in a smoke-filled espresso bar with a bunch of beatniks snapping their fingers and a guy on bongos in the corner, it might be OK. At least for laughs.
Come on, John, cut the kids some slack!
It’s an old ivy-league tradition for the home team to invent clever, poetic slams to be delivered during the game.
It’s like doing a puzzle. I forces them to realize a goal under severe limitations (rhyme and meter, I hope, but I try to be open-minded).
And if, as I assume, “it’s all in good fun” (and in today’s education environment I can’t imagine it not being so, or it would be squashed like a mosquito (most Bugs deserve our heartfelt respect, but mosquitos…), it wouldn’t really harm innocents, unlike the bank-burning days of yore.
What do you expect when students go to jail and get expelled for harmless pranks like stealing the other school’s mascot?
Meanwhile, the new bar at the Bear’s Lair is pretty sweet.
Listening to the Cal Band at the Bear’s Lair after a football game is the coolest, and the closest thing to school spirit I have ever felt.
The 2nd closest is an irrational, constant hatred of Stanford that permeates my thoughts whenever I go to Palo Alto. The 3rd is the utter joy at seeing my school mates trash our own field after winning the Big Game in 2002 after an 8 year drought, but not being able to join them because my friend got alcohol poisoning from drinking too much boxed wine that I had snuck into the stadium, and then having to arrange emergency transport home lest my friend get in trouble with the cops for having to go to the hospital. Fuck the Berkeley Po-lice.
Cal Band Great!
Ivy League tradition? If I had known that I would have been more harsh. How foppish can you get?
A guy with a wine cellar calling other
people “foppish”. Umm, ok.