Nightmare on Franklin Street

Nobody cares about Halloween when they’re older, right? Starting around age 14, aren’t you too mature for such frivolous, nonsensical conceits? Doesn’t dressing up like something ridiculous lose its appeal after a certain point in one’s life?
False! Come to Chapel Hill for the night of October 31, and see for yourself. There were 82,000 people on Franklin Street (The main drag for UNC students, filled with cheap restaurants, bars, and other interesting stuff). Why were they there? Good question. I had a hard time explaining that one to my mom, too:
Mom: “So you’re going to Franklin Street tonight. Are there activities there?”
Drew: “No, not really. Not at all, actually. Just a bunch of people.”
Mom: “So why do so many people go if there’s nothing to do?”
Drew: “Um…they’re there because everybody else is, I guess.”
So I don’t really know why people come to Franklin Street, but they do come in droves. Even if the police hadn’t blocked the street, it would have been impossible for a car to budge. The street was flush with people, surging in all directions and no direction at once, struggling to move every which-way and getting nowhere fast, because the person in front of them probably just saw the break-dancing panda bears, so they had to stop and watch.
The costumes that night were, on the whole, completely ridiculous. Because I think everything is better in list form, here’s a list of some of my favorites:
• The Pope
• Tetris pieces (Tetris is a board game)
• Transformers that actually transformed from cars to robots
• Richard Simmons
• Three gorillas chasing a banana
• A group of people who were dressed up as the characters from the Mario video game series (Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, etc.)
• Two robots playing guitars
• Borat (the title character from the movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”)
• Flava Flav (a rapper)
• Controllers for the Nintendo Wii
• Star Trek characters (it’s always nice to see somebody go out on the nerdy limb, especially because Star Trek raised me from the age of five to eighteen)
• Satan
• McLovin (the scene-stealing character from the movie “Superbad”)
The gender roles seemed outright cliché. I am speaking, of course, of those females who decided that this Halloween, they would be sexy. It appears there is a cottage industry that subsists by making Sexy (insert noun here) costumes. Sexy whats, you ask? Well on Halloween, I saw Sexy: Doctors, Teachers, Lawyers, Woodnymphs, Schoolgirls, Witches, Devils, Nintendo Characters, Magicians, Dentists, Emo Girls, Satans, Vikings, Spice Girls, Cowgirls, Indians, Girl Scouts, Guitar Players, Accountants, and of course the old standby, Sexy Cops.
While females seemed to feel that less clothing was more, many males seemed bent on making their figures larger than life. For example, one of my friends dressed up as a gigantic magnet and glued pictures of chicks (as in baby chickens) to it, and was a chick magnet. Get it? It’s funny, right? I also saw people dressed up as Scrabble boards, pumpkins, playing cards, drivers’ licenses, Solo Cups, and pretty much any other thing that you can think of, only bigger.
Perhaps what I found most interesting was that the UNC basketball team all decided that they didn’t need costumes, and would instead just go to Franklin, stand in the middle of the street, and wait to be recognized by the throngs. Which I guess is kind of a perverse way to enjoy one’s notoriety, but it yields beautiful little nuggets, like when one of my friends found Deon Thompson (a forward on the basketball team) in the middle of the street and asked him, “Wait, what are you dressed up as?”
To which he replied, “Deon Thompson!” That’s kind of a conceited thing to say, but I guess he’s earned it. He did drop 14 points against Georgetown in the tournament. Off the bench. Yeah, he definitely earned it.
And what/who did I dress up as, in the midst of this madness? Hunter S. Thompson, author/crazy person extraordinaire, who wrote the literary classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (which was later made into a not-so-classic movie starring Johnny Depp). Once I donned my costume, it became increasingly apparent that not as many people as I would have liked actually knew who Hunter S. Thompson was, as evidenced by the fact that one of my friends asked me, “Dude, are you Chevy Chase?” In fact, only about 12 people the entire night commented on my costume, and of those 12, probably half of them were other people dressed up as Hunter Thompson. (See the picture for one such example.)
So, in the end, why do people go to Franklin Street on Halloween? As Captain James T. Kirk once explained to Spock (shamelessly stealing a line from some ancient mystic), “Because it’s there.”

My first rap concert

If you read my last column, you’ll remember that I promised to write about the Lil’ Wayne concert I went to this weekend. I’ll try, but it’s almost impossible to condense three hours of cacophonous rap music, the faint smell of marijuana smoke, and manic, possessed dancing into a TDB column. And now that I’ve said I can’t do such a thing, here goes.
A few weeks ago, a couple friends of mine asked if I wanted to join them to go see Lil’ Wayne — who is, of course, one of the world’s best-selling gangster rappers — in concert at the Greensboro Coliseum. Wayne was slated to appear with Soulja Boy (the kid with the number-one hit in the country that is so bad it makes me want to overdose on something every time I hear it) and Eve (she had a few hits when I was in middle school, and I didn’t know that she still existed), as well as Lil’ Boosie, Lil’ Scrappy, and probably about four or so additional rappers whose names also began with “Lil’.”
Always up for something new and/or weird, I of course accepted the invitation. I told some of my friends from back home that I was going, and they told me that I was, to put it mildly, completely out to lunch. Heck, even my own mother told me that I might get shot. Nevertheless, I persevered in my Lil’ Wayne-based pursuits.
My associates and I arrived at the Coliseum circa 9:00 pm, meaning we missed Lil’ Scrappy and possibly somebody called “J. Holliday,” both of whom sound kind of lame. We did, in fact, make it in time to see the incomparable Soulja Boy.
Hate to break it to you, but he stunk. He sang four songs, two of which were “Crank Dat (Soulja Boy),” his big hit. I honestly don’t remember what else he played, but generally he just danced his little Soulja Boy Dance, and lip-synced along to the backing track.
Wait, wait, wait. Did I just say that Soulja Boy lip-synced? I paid money to see somebody dance and lip-sync to their rap song? The durn point of a rap song is to rhythmically speak to a backing track which isn’t that hard in the first place, and to deprive your audience of that one sentimental piece of musical authenticity just folds the entire system into little tiny pieces and cuts it up like one of those snowflakes that you made in elementary school when your teacher felt like being lazy and didn’t want to do actual work. Lesson is, Soulja Boy makes me want to punch myself in the face repeatedly.
Next came Eve, who was aggressively boring. I didn’t know anything she sang, other than “Let Me Blow Ya Mind,” which was a minor hit when I was in seventh grade. I honestly can’t think of anything else to say about her, other than she had backup dancers who were supposed to detract from the fact that at this point in her life, she is less than skinny.
Finally, after agonizing minutes of anticipation, a fake news story flashed upon the Jumbotron explaining that Lil’ Wayne was incarcerated, but for fear of riots, he would be transported to Greensboro Coliseum for one night only. Then, Weezy F. Baby (as Wayne is sometimes known) was lowered down onto the stage in a cage. You heard me right — a cage. It was, needless to say, one of the most face-blowingly awesome events I have ever witnessed. From then on, he performed some of his greatest hits, such as “Hustler Musik,” “Ride 4 My (this word starts with an N and ends with a lawsuit),” “Stuntin’ Like My Daddy,” and “Leather So Soft,” on which he demonstrated his surprising proficiency on the guitar.
In case you were wondering, my friends and I were some of the only white people there. But you know what? It didn’t matter — everybody there treated us just like they would an old friend, and everybody had a great time.
Quick story regarding after the concert: That night was also the night of UNC’s homecoming concert, where the band Augustana played. Around 1:00 in the morning, my friends and I got back and went to a friend’s suite on the eighth floor of her dorm to hang out. We ended up sitting on the balcony, chatting, when up walked two dudes wearing really, really tight pants. Because I’m an insensitive jerk, I made fun of them. They heard me, and told me to do something that is anatomically impossible. Little did I know, those two guys were in Augustana. Not many people can say that they’ve met a world-famous rock band, but even fewer people can say that they’ve met a world-famous rock band... and made fun of them to their faces.
Jam of the Week: “Good Life” by Kanye West and T-Pain. I’m convinced that anything T-Pain touches turns to gold, and this song is no exception. Lyrically, the song is pretty simple. Basically, Kanye talks about how happy he is now that he has money, and T-Pain thoughtfully concurs. And yet the song is so, so good. Why? Pixie dust and drum machines, man.

My life thus far

So a quick recap of my last eighteen years: I was born in Charlotte, lived near there for a while, then Dad got a job in Polk County (isn’t it interesting how life repositions people here?) and I’ve been here ever since. I went to Middle School, Elementary School, and then High School—in that order—and then I got a job, and now I’m in college. Simple enough, right?
False. One of the weird things about college is how, like, difficult the transition from going to a high school class to going to a college class is. I’m not talking about the actual classes themselves—their insane, antagonistic difficulty that haunts your dreams and prohibits you from being a normal, loving human being is a given—I’m talking about physically getting to class.
See, I have class at 8:00 a.m. Every other day. This is officially an issue for me. Don’t, please, remind me of how I’ve gotten up at 6:30 every morning for thirteen years to go to school. That didn’t count, because I could get in a car and be protected from the elements, save for the thirty-odd seconds that it took me to get from the car to school. Life goes on, and we have to go on with it. I now get up at 7:00, take a shower, get dressed, forego breakfast in favor two pop-tarts (cinnamon chocolate flavor please; don’t give me any of that fruit-flavored nonsense, because when it’s this early, my tastebuds can’t handle that shock), brush my teeth, and grab a juicebox or two for the road. Total time: about thirty minutes, given that I have to usually wait for the shower, and half the time is spent packing up my stuff and worrying about whether I should bring a sweatshirt or not.
Getting up on time is, as you can see, not a problem for me. However, I have to walk fifteen minutes to my nearest class, and at 7:45 in the morning in late October, global warming and Al Gore’s Nobel Prize notwithstanding, it’s still pretty darned cold. And what happens when the drought temporarily stops on a day like today and it’s raining? Cold rain is worse than the Third Reich in my opinion. So starting around mid-November, I may just stop going to class.
Also, a sneak preview of the next column, because I’m just so darned excited about it: On Saturday night, I’m going to a concert. Which concert? Well, I’m glad you asked. I’m going to see Eve, Lil’ Boosie, the ubiquitous Soulja Boy, and Lil’ Wayne, who touts himself these days as “The Best Rapper Alive.” If you’re my age or are in any way connected to YouTube, you have definitely heard of Soulja Boy. His song “Crank Dat (Soulja Boy)” is number one on the pop music charts. Its infection beat and the fact that there’s a dance that goes along with it has captured the collective consciousness of America. Naturally, I can’t stand him. On the other hand, Lil’ Wayne is really, really good, and I’ve always wanted to go to a rap concert. Next column, I shall have a full report for you all.
Current Jam: “Buy U A Drank” by T-Pain. A former number-one hit, this song is pretty bad until you listen to it about a million times, and realize that its singer, T-Pain, is a genius. Between his vocorder and his pleas that he just wants to buy a girl a drink (which he mispronounces “drank;” hence, the title of the song) and then take her home, you’ve got to hand it to him. He makes a darn good argument when he says, “I know the club close at three. . . .what’s the chances a-you rollin’ wit me?” I mean, who wouldn’t roll with him?