Despite the title, I'm not going to be chronicling the fun family activities that I'm going to do during the fall of 2013 because that's lame. "But, honey, we can take our ugly, misbehaved children on a drive to a pumpkin patch eleven years ago and go apple picking and look at the changing leaves and you can write about it!" No thanks, sweetie. Something much more interesting than time travelling with my fictional wife and unattractive, hypothetical kids has come to my attention.
Becky recently trotted out the t-shirt depicted in the image above and it positively needs to be addressed before we can delve into what the hell is going on with the fake family that I just created. I am told that this shirt was distributed to students over a decade ago by the clearly-running-out-of-ideas Activities Board of Hartwick College, where Becky went to obtain her subpar education. The events being advertised by this Activities BORED are reported below along with my perfectly deserved commentary. It took me days to think of that board/bored thing.
September 14 - Salsa Night: Because of my detestation for dancing of all kinds like I'm John Lithgow in Footloose, I hope this was a food-themed party, but I have my doubts. I suppose it could have been a celebration of both eating and dancing salsa? Though that kind of movement with a belly full of peppers and tomatoes might be inviting an intestinal dancefloor disaster. I've never seen Footloose, I had to look up the plot to know that John Lithgow was even in it. Who am I trying to impress here? You've got to be true to yourself, Smoke Bandit, because God makes no mistakes, as Lady Gaga says. I didn't even know those were the lyrics, I had to look them up. Come on, be your truth, Smoke Bandit!
September 27 - Comedian Nore Davis: I thought for sure that this was a typo and that this was a woman named Nora, but that wouldn't make sense either because of how women aren't funny. See, a woman never could have come up with a zinger like that! Speaking of which, an internet search has revealed that this man named Nore worked very closely with Amy Schumer for years and it doesn't get less funny than that. Nore's go-to joke seems to be about how white people like Jurassic Park. Man, he has us pegged! And based on how he dresses and talks and behaves, it seems likely that he regularly gets pegged himself.
October 3 - Acapella Group Kazual: I kept the Hartwickian typo in there because "a capella" is two words, but in their defense, there's no way they could have looked that up before printing it on hundreds of t-shirts. My research is suggesting that this "Kazual" is a play on the word "casual." Clever girl! That's a reference to my favorite movie, Jurassic Park. If you think about it, calling an a capella group "casual" makes perfect sense because a capellans are so casual about music that they don't even feel the need to bother with instruments, just like none of the best musicians in history. It looks like their lineup is comprised of three brothers and a cousin so I guess they were casual with their recruiting tactics as well.
October 5 - Wicktoberfest: This must be Oktoberfest but with "Hartwick" shoehorned in there, as Hartwick is wont to do when naming anything. I'd find it hard to believe that any school, even one held in as low esteem as Hartwick College, would sanction a function that provides students with alcohol, so what's left to do at Oktoberfest? Dress in lederhosen and feathered hats and stomp on tables to some of the worst music humanity has ever produced? Hard pass. I actually had to remove a One Direction comment that I had there out of profound respect for that twinky moron who just died trying to jump from his hotel window into the pool while he was drunk, high, and accompanied by prostitutes, so kudos to me. But why, as a society, are we still annually celebrating the marriage of 19th century Bavarian royalty? Germany has already had their time in the spotlight and that didn't go so well, did it?
October 11 - Hypnotist Sailesh: Sailesh's website boasts that he offers three hypnotism acts: Health & Wellness, R-Rated Show, and Comedy Show. But, to a hypnotism fanatic like me, it is glaringly obvious that Sailesh didn't finish Hypnotism School because he's missing the other four pillars of hypnotism from his repertoire: Puppet Hypnotism, Nude-On-The-Top Hypnotism, Hypnotism on Hypnotists, and Bottoms-Off Hypnotism. What a freaking hack. Sailesh brings a bad name to the otherwise highly-admired community of bald Persian-Canadian hypnotists.
October 12 - Comedy Juggler Nick Pike: This guy seems to be English and the booking phone number on his site is 1-800-993-NEON. Hopefully he got some deal on that line that allows him to pay per call it receives.
October 16 - Midterm Massages: Remember that this was a simpler time, a time when DeShaun Watson was nothing but a high school quarterback in Georgia, not yet a highly-overrated college quarterback, not yet a highly-overrated professional quarterback, and not yet a ruiner of massages for everyone else forever. Thanks a lot, DeShaun. Because of you, I now I have to administer deep tissue massages to my own buttocks like a barbarian. We can find a cosmic solace in the fact that at this moment, Watson is having one of the worst starts to a season for a quarterback in 25 years and we're all laughing and laughing at him. I want to know who was giving these massages at Hartwick, though. I'd only participate if the cute girl from microeconomics class is doing them tee-hee! Okay, fine, it's a guy. It's a cute guy that's in my microeconomics class, alright? I was born this way.
October 25 - Comedian Gordon Baker-Bone: I'm not one to talk because I am social media averse, but this guy has 3,716 Twitter followers despite joining the site in January of 2010. For comparison, Spongebob Squarepants, who, to the best of my knowledge, is a fictional cartoon character and therefore unable to tweet, apparently has 2.7 million followers. Of course, this begs the question of why any student would go see this guy when they could instead just hang out in the dorms with their pals and watch Spongebob. Plus, I'm pretty sure that Spongebob doesn't brag about how he likes it when white people die, which is the exact content of literally the first joke Gordon tells in the first video that pops up when you search his name. It's okay though, because I'm sure the pink-haired freaks with facial piercings and tattoos and weak fathers were protesting his performance on campus due to his outright racism, right?
November 4 - Singer Kyshona Armstrong: See, this isn't fair because anything that I accurately point out about this woman will either get me called racist or sexist or obese-ist or homophobic, etc. by the pink-hairs so I'll take the high road and go with the safe play and merely state that she has a stupid, made-up, nonsense, ooga-booga name. Actually, I can't contain my obese-ist thought either: Hartwick doesn't offer engineering classes so I'm surprised they had a stage on campus that was structurally sturdy enough for this show. To make up for that comment, I'll listen to one of her songs right now. A sort of penance, if you will. Okay, that was a mistake. I'd rather stomp along to Oktoberfest music with Gordon Baker-Bone.
November 9 - Craft Night: You know what? I'll give the Hartwick Activities Board this one because that actually might have been fun. I think I'd have a hoot making macaroni art and origami and things with popsicle sticks or whatever while dishing with my buddies on a Saturday night. Girls and gays do paint and sips when they want to communally complain about the men in their lives, right? Same concept, I'd imagine. Unless this is another typo and it's really "Kraft Night," featuring Robert Kraft, which would likely end up looking a lot like DeShaun's Midterm Massages. Just search "Robert Kraft massage" if you don't get the joke.
November 22 - Comedian Justin Rivera: They're burying the lead here: Justin is a comedy magician. Upon watching a couple of his clips, I take back my initial skepticism because from what I'm seeing, his bit is that he does magic tricks poorly and that's actually funny. Justin, I appreciate the concept so you are off the hook.
December 2 - BIG Prize Bingo: I've never been too sweet on bingo because of the incredible lack of required skill and strategy and basic bodily function, but I must admit that the Activities Board folks have me interested with their claim of a "BIG" prize. Are we talking "big" for a bingo game, in relative terms? Because that could be like a nursing home breakfast voucher that allows the carrier to substitute bacon for granola one morning. But when you have "BIG" in all capital letters like that, it suggests, I don't know, a ferris wheel or something. Though knowing sneaky Hartwickians, "BIG" could also be an acronym for a "Bacon Instead of Granola" voucher.
December 6 - Comedian Mal Hall: Oh, come on, man. There are far too many obviously untalented and therefore struggling comedians on this list and I'm actually starting to feel bad poking fun at them, except for Gordon Baker-Bone, whom I hope drowns in poo. As someone who I'm assuming was a midget boxer once declared, "You don't punch down," so I'll just say that I'm sure Mal had a fine performance and I wish him all the best, so long as he hasn't ever associated with Amy Schumer.
Well, that's a wrap on the fall of 2013 in Oneonta, NY. I guess overall, that was probably a pretty fun autumn at Hartwick, or as I like to call it, Fartwick! Becky hates when I call it that, but I've recently been trying to be more true to myself. Does that mean I have to tell my made-up family about my microeconomics male crush? It was a green card marriage and the kids are hers from a previous and abusive relationship, anyway.