Nooners are not entertainment but the bane of my existence
By Douglas Sulenta
The Collegian |
Ah, the nooners, the bane of my well being at California State University, Fresno.
No, not those nooners, you bunch of sickos. I mean the noontime music frequently played down in “the pit.”
Nothing serves to pour salt on an otherwise pleasant day like those clowns playing a bunch of reprehensible, mush-brained music so loud it takes a short airplane flight to escape.
So here I sit on a pleasant afternoon on campus. Relaxing outside of the bookstore, I find a nice fluffy patch of grass under a large shady tree and commence my reading of a good book. Though it is reading for a class, I am currently enthralled nonetheless.
So as the clock approaches noon, the day is in full swing and I am enjoying life. Finally I hear the twelve gongs of the clock tower telling me it’s noon and I now have only three and a half more hours before my next class. Plenty of time for some good quality reading.
Before long though, to my chagrin, I hear the day’s deejay gearing up his noontime show down in “the pit.” Damn.
Even worse are these miserable metal/punk/alternative/emo/crap bands dragged off the street to perform on campus on occasion. Hey guys, I can’t quite understand what it is you’re saying (not that it matters), so please lower the volume of those instruments you’re playing so poorly.
Nothing quite throws a wet blanket on a sunny day like this pestilence. Here I am, peacefully reading, trying to understand something I already don’t understand when suddenly I find myself engulfed in waves of violent noise. I fear if I don’t escape the clutches of this mentally degrading music soon, I too will be walking around like the rest of the brainwashed zombies caught in the clutches of mainstream America, calling women bitches, everyone fool (what up fooo?), money scrilla and using f****** as the main adjective in my already paltry vocabulary.
Driven out of my comfort zone faster than the Europeans drove the Indians off their land, it’s time for me to find a new, quiet corner of the campus where I can escape this wretch. But what do I find at the Peters building other than the faint whisper of “Oh girl, let me see you drip sweat, blah, blah, blah.”
Nooo!
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate music or anything. In fact, I love music. It just so happens I like a different kind of music than most other people (don’t even get me started on the miserable bands they have down there). I support the arts in all forms, but the music being played in “the pit” simply isn’t conducive to learning. How could I think about the meaning of a difficult work of literature when some singer/rapper is crooning in my ear about booze, hoes, cars and cash?
There is a time and place for everything. If you clowns want to ride around in your bass mobiles and force me to listen to this muck while I drive down the street, that’s fine. Nothing I can do about that. But I don’t feel I should be subject to this nonsense at school.
It’s true. There is no reprieve from this music anywhere outdoors on campus. I’m to be forced out of the beautiful open air and into a musty-aired building to read my book. But wait, even that may not do. Nicole Burnes, a senior English major said, “Once, we had the windows open in our class [in the Family Food Science building] and the music was so loud the instructor nearly had to shout over it to be heard.”
But I digress. I have seen some cool things down in “the pit.” Last semes- ter I saw a rather mellow rapper called “Pigeon John” whom I liked a lot and in fact have seen elsewhere since. There have also been a couple of groups that weren’t completely intolerable. But for the most part I find the bad far outweigh the good.
Why not some reggae or some jazz or some nature sounds? Maybe a little folk music or, God forbid, real hip-hop. You know, hip-hop in which someone is actually singing about something other than money and hoes. A little Run DMC or A Tribe Called Quest.
Hey, I’m not even opposed to some underground hip-hop. But this stuff being played at lunch is simply unacceptable.
Quite simply, for the hour of the day that follows the twelve gongs on the clock tower, I just have to find somewhere indoors to hang out. Hopefully the weather soon rains on the parade of these poor deejays and bands just as they’ve daily rained on mine, and I suppose that would be a bit of poetic justice and make everything all right.
This is supposed to be an institute of higher learning, but all this music has me learning is I’m further out of touch with pop culture than I’d ever have thought.
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