Friday, December 2, 2011

The People's Champ


Today was one of those days that I was sitting around eating a triple mandarin chicken plate from the Panda Express in a USC cafeteria and my mind wandered back to the days of yore in Gresham.

Quick side note: How miserable must it have been to not be northwest quad as a Freshman at IU. Unless you got lucky and knew someone in a good house you were doomed to obscurity. I mean seriously didn't you do your research? Didn't your mother call ahead and say "my white daughter from the suburbs wants a chance at social relevance, where should she live?" And don't give me that bullshit about "random" housing assortments. Anyone with a core 40 high school degree could have manipulated the Freshman Interest Group/Living Learning Community thing. Here is our shared interest, we want to rage with the attractive people who will end up in the Greek system, not the fine arts students that will inevitably move to the dreaded east side...god, did you ever go to a house party at like 7th and Union? That is where dreams go to die. All this said, the other quads did have far superior food. But Taco John's was my jam, so I got over it. /End rant.

Anyway, while thinking back to 2006, I caught myself thinking, "What the fuck happened to the lyrical prodigy Paul Wall? Or Mike Jones for that matter?" I mean who can forget the classic lyric "Call Me George Foreman, cuz I'm selling errybody grillz." Truly one for the ages.
As you would probably imagine, neither of them have done shit in the past 5 years. Except Paul Wall became morbidly obese briefly before undergoing gastric bypass surgery. I'm fairly ready to say that he is no longer the people's champ.

With Paul Wall fat and irrelevant, Dwayne Johnson busy starring in Disney movies, the title is seemingly up for grabs. What makes one a people's champ? I always assimilated it with someone that can relate to an "average Joe" aka a middle-lower class factory worker. A bunch of politicians always try to claim to be a man of the people, but they are not. They are trust fund babies that served in the military in non-combat zones and then went to the law school of their choice. I am not a man of the people, I have a very niche audience, and even that crowd doesn't agree with half the shit I say. My popularity probably has a very high absolute value though. (In case you are retarded, absolute value is distance from 0 thus I am calling myself polarizing)

But last night, the answer came to me, well it came to my friend who told me. I was at the Music Box in Hollywood and I saw a drunken USC student wearing probably a $1000 outfit just several feet from a migrant worker who hadn't even removed his steel toed boots after a long day of working illegal construction after being picked up across the street from a Home Depot (I realize this is a hasty generalization and it's completely plausible that he was a legal resident that had been doing yard work all day and hadn't had time to change) But next I saw something beautiful. The Mexican dude that was doing this very violent dance that involved a lot of intense stomping and spinning (literally I could feel whenever he came within 30 feet of me because of the vibrations) started dancing with this white girl of privilege. Then some senoritas hopped in and the frat guys in their cut off tanks joined in and there was: a socio-economic melting pot of dance. There were idiots at this rave wearing dead animals felts for hats (this is the next big thing, treacherous, but I assure you it's coming) guidos popping bottles, 14 year olds trying to bribe adults for beers, blacks whites, yellows...all there for one reason, get fucked up and have a good time.

We aren't so different at the end of the day. Some people may care more about possessions or status or what have you, but we all really have one goal...have fun and maybe take a member of the opposite (or same) sex home. Many people used to say music was that great force that brought everyone together, but some music has undertones and is political, not every genre works for everyone. I would love to argue that alcohol is the great unifying force, blue collar, white collar, no collar people just letting loose after a shitty week. But some people don't drink and whatever, it's your life, be boring if you so chose. But the one thing that has brought people together since the beginning of time, whether it be for cultural celebrations or just as an expression of joy is dance. Try watching the "Beautiful People" video without wanting to go party with 100,000 strangers. You may look like an idiot in doing so, but so does everyone else. So let's raise a glass to dancing, maybe not the new people's champ, but the one force that no one is above. Go cut a rug tonight.

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