The Fun & Fitness Expo is Excessive and Extraordinary
WE CAN(’T) STOP HERE, THIS IS CAPITALIST COUNTRY
by: Qake Cooley; photos: Tessa Geier
Giant bug-eyed cat licking its lips at me. It paces the sidewalk. Do you hear the eager snipping? Students learning to snip better, teaching us the fabulous cuts. Look at us looking better than ever. Look at us eating free ice cream and posing for polaroids — alas, the revelry! Feel the ball python slither, like a friend caressing your neck. Lizards!
Listen to the shouted hellos and howareyous — insurance, a gym, a deli; multiple yoga studios (all happy neighbors, the mask of tranquility hiding their New Age unsmile) and whoever decided to name their company Crunch.
Watch your more athletic friends climb the rock wall. Think you can do this. Do it and surprise yourself. Free hot dogs unless you donate; you should donate. Popcorn for your thought.
Do you dare walk barefoot across the vicious pine needles? Or shall you joust instead, a frantic game of bounce-around — smelling gas and inhaling its fumes like trailer park teenagers?
Suddenly, el ritmo begins on the dancefloor: an emcee introduces a contrived dance form and you watch the wooden elderly clonk across the dancefloor, hand-in-hand and out of rhythm. Literal dancing monkeys take the stage. As quickly as it began, Elvis Crespo’s “Suavemente” has ended; Mambo Number 5? Who has decided this! — why must the world confuse us?
You walk in circles. You take notes. Needles prick your skin and you welcome the river to flow in through the four gates, through the tiptop of your big head. You smell hot gates of cotton candy and see it twirling, twirling, twirling — dancing right onto the coffee loft. As if it were Halloween again, you see the cobwebs and know what they have in store: iced coffee! Perfect for a 52-degree day, yes.
The Ringling is somewhere underground. A health mart beguiles us to buy, buy. “Bye, bye, alcoholism,” says, in her words, “this great person. . . of [Alcoholics Anonymous], but [I’m] not gonna put her name. She is brilliant and sick. Upper Respiratory Infection.” Folk music whistles in the wind. The abrasive pop then continues. Residential Life reminds me that Valentine’s Day approaches. Why would you ever think a t-shirt is free?
Raffle winners announced. Raffle winners absent. The silence drags on. What are these hay bales doing here, and why are they so comfortable for to sit? Face-painted children wander, lost in fantasy. Paint your nails; makeup on your face because somehow this is more acceptable than paint.
Absent companies litter tables to and fro — YouFit, Culver’s, and other such corporate monstrosities (though you do love those concrete mixers) — but no litter litters the grounds.
Thank goodness for custodians. Custodians and cops: keeping watch, keeping company.
An ongoing crowd meanders about. Imminent casual atmosphere, more powerful than the cold. Smoothie king aggressively distributes sugar ice; as if to freeze our brains and give us a break from the heat of collective academic brilliance.
Freeze your body, warm your soul.
Putt? Putt!
Physical Plant makes an appearance, but it plays no music. It hangs lightbulbs and displays assorted tools and domestic fixtures. Here to answer all physical and/or plant-related questions.
We are lost kittens at the doors of capitalism. Me. Ow.
Are you fun, or are you fitness?
Are you human, or are you dancer?
