They can dance if they want to, if they don’t, nobody in Gorham will. On Thursday the 18th in the Portland computer lab there was dancing o-plenty as four unidentified men strolled right on in with a boom box and did a shirtless boogie to the unt-unt-unt of techno.
Party Boy would be proud of these intrepid few who were out for some good times or he might sue, hard to say, but what I can say is that at least there was getting-down getting done somewhere that day because I was also privileged enough to see the BATTLE OF THE BANDS later that night on the Gorham campus, in the Student Center where the cafeteria is.
They should have just stuck to dishing out French fries and tater-tots cause there was just a lot of painfully apathetic, pre-21 folks there that just couldn’t give a damn. Now, now, don’t get me wrong there was some random displays of people actually having a good time, but as a whole there was more bickering about the rules of the battle, the BATTLE OF THE BANDS that is or, either the occasional (twice by my count) drug/alcohol induced jam-band twirler, or the almost obligatory psuedo-punk/emo almost mosh-pit that one of the bands managed to incite.
So why is there so much fun happening in Portland rather than Gorham? Well, I think we all know the answer to that question don’t we because there ain’t nothing to do out there man and even if some folks from Portland did want to go see what’s going on out there, if they don’t have a ride and well, they’re screwed, because the last bus out of Gorham on any given Thursday is 10:20 p.m. on the dot and the BATTLE didn’t get done battling until well after midnight. It’s even worse for the people living in the Gorham hood because they can’t come in-town and hangout, see a show, or anything else for that matter that runs past 10 p.m. or they’re sleeping on the street.
Hey, how about some buses that run a little later when special events are going on that run later than 10 p.m., huh? You mean to tell me USM can build a gigantor garage complete with a little bridge spanning that street, but they can’t front some cash for a Greyhound? When they said USM had a split campus they weren’t kidding.
To be fair, the folks who put on the BATTLE OF THE BANDS should be given their props because it could have been great. Yah, there may have been some mixed and unclear rules about play-sets and the like, but lets give them credit… they’re trying to do something proactive in a sea of apathy. It’s not their fault almost no one from Portland made it, or that most of the folks that did show up looked like they were waiting for a puppet show. The blame goes to every Dorito chompin’, cable watchin’, lump that’s content to just let other folks go ahead and do all the thinking and planning for them so they don’t have to move any farther than the couch. No, no…not you, the other lump.