NACA Central, Bitterness & The Cowboys

Thursday October 22nd, 2009

I'm sitting at a Panera Bread in the shadow of the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, TX.  Couple quick thoughts on this stadium, our society and why we deserve to be destroyed.  This stadium is a collasal waste of money.  We are all still aware that when you take away all of the pizazz and the fanfare, the lights, the glamour what w're talking about is, as they say in Annie Hall a bunch of pituitary cases chasing a leather ball.  I would also like to point out that the area around Cowboys Stadium, The Ballpark at Arlington, and Six Flags over Dallas is suffering.  There is a Jack in the Box on both sides of the Stadium, never a good sign.  I saw at least one house with boards in the windows.  And I'm supposed to be here to make a few wisecracks about how weird life is?  

I'm in Arlington for NACA Central.  The National Association of Campus Activities Central Regional Conference.  

At the last conference I was working with my buddy Reggie Jr. who made a comment about comedians who have been on the road and the inevitable onset of bitterness that occurs.  Naturally when someone expresses their disgust in something like the Cowboys new stadium or the caliber of audience member they are forced to cater to on a nightly basis this disgust is a direct result of their bitterness and is never and should never be blamed on the audience of the aforementioned landmark devoted to a game.  

I don't even think Reggie was referring to me and regardless it's fine.  But I think it's a natural part of life on the road.  As you drive around from town to town, from city to city, from bar to bar, from bowling alley to tanning salon to do comedy you are faced with America and Americans.  US citizens of all shapes and sizes.  

Sure, I know plenty of comedians who enjoy the road.  They like the travel and the towns.  But I know a far greater number who cringe at the mere mention of the road.  The comedy condos.  The bookers who act more like bookies.  The hecklers.  The quiet crowds.  The old people.  The young people.  The couples.  The drunks.  The stoners.  The couple who makes out the whole time your onstage despite the fact that they paid a cover and two drinks a piece and you stand there more perplexed that they're not even asking for their money back.  It's like, don't you guys have a place to make out or do you buy tickets to shows because it provides a roof for your heavy petting?  

But after to withstand all of these elements wouldn't it be natural.  It's not enough that we have what some would say is the most difficult profession in the world.  The job of making people laugh.  And after we fly to Idaho with two stop overs, then rent a car, drive into the fucking bush and then deal with a sound system that doesn't work, a manager who doesn't know how to fix it and a bunch of locals who consider themselves to be comedy afcionados, after all of this we are expected to not complain about it?

Every single job I have ever had there are people.  And those people complain.  They complain about the hierarchy of the workplace.  The politics of the gas station, the 7-11, the bank, the whatever.  

Most of the comedians I know, when they complain, are complaining about their dream not materializing.  Most of the people I've worked with in everyday joe jobs complain about the job.  So on a scale of complaining I think there is a slightly more admirable shine to complaining about a job where your dream is on the line rather than complaining about the job when your job is just a job.  

Where was I?  

Football stadiums.  Stadiums in general.  First, to the people of Arlington, you're Ballpark is a poor man's Camden Yards.  There isn't a single thing remotely unique about the Ballpark at Arlington except the fact that it is sitting next to the extravagant Cowboys stadium.  Second, I don't mean to rag on the good people of Dallas and Arlington and Ft. Worth and all the other suburbs.  This has more to do with society.  We want to bitch and moan about the war, health care, education, civil rights, the list goes on and on and all of those things deserve our attention.  What does not deserve our attention or at least to the degree in which we are attentive to it is athletics.  Plain and simple.  You can not tell me that our interest in athletics and the money we devote to it is reasonable.  It is not and it is the first good place where we can start to improve.  And I don't want to hear that the Cowboys stadium results in 30,000 new jobs.  Thats 30,000 new jobs for 8 weeks a year (and probably only 8 weeks cause let's face it the Cowboys will not make the playoffs.)  

Not only should we be spending that money or education but we should also take the money we spend on jerseys, on team cargo camo pants, on heads of cheese and spend it on teaching our kids that this is and always will be a fucking game.  

The University of Oregon began their season this year losing to Boise State.  After the game their star running back punched a member of the BSU squad for heckling him.  And immediately everyone was on this kid for not realizing that it's just a game.  It wasn't just a game though.  It was this kid's life.  Possibly his only shot at getting out of whatever situation he was born into.  At least thats what he was brought up to believe.  So when his team rolled over the way the Ducks did in that first game it's no wonder he snapped.  

I recall Kellen Winslow of the Cleveland Browns, formerly of the Miami Hurricanes refer to football as a war.  No Kellen.  It's not a war.  It's just a game.  

I realize this jumped between discussing football and being on the road but I think my point with both of these discussions is simply that we are expected to entertain and make a laugh an audience of people who choose to buy purple camo cargo pants.