The Free Market

I worked on the banquet side of the country club tonight, which is work they could basically dress a chimp in a bellhop suit for. It really is that brain-dead. But at least I got to taste a few hors d'oeuvres (beef tenderloin crustini ... delicious).

The event was for a local singing group—one of the best in the nation I'm told. They specialize in choral works and had there not been a girl we all classified as "really hot" seated at the table closest to the podium, I would have remained totally oblivious to what was occurring. Instead, my initial interest in this girl took on a newfound curiosity when I noticed that there was a clear tubing coming from under her dress and attached to the purse she was carrying. "Maybe it's a colostomy bag," I jested. My drooling male co-workers said the lone female working among us had determined it was likely the result of a recent surgery.

For a small gathering (we were set for 56, but probably because of the weather, the crowd was more like 40 at best), the planners really went all out. A three-piece band. A guy doing caricatures for attendees. Open bar. Complimentary CDs and flowers. The works.

Asking "really hot" girl if she cared for wine or if I could take her plate, I forgot that the point of this whole thing was to raise funds. When five members of the choral group came up to sing and the "wacky" speaker for the quintet introduced each song they sang with how "he loved Google" to assorted laughs, I wanted to jab a steak knife in each of my ears. It was that painful.

Then they introduced the "really hot" girl, who'd apparently been awarded a scholarship before being involved in a car accident and going through three subsequent surgeries. So, no, it wasn't a colostomy bag after all. But at least her speech gave me a reason to pay attention while standing there, bored off my ass with a tray in my hand. I poured myself some of the leftover wine before the group's president or whatever took the podium.

He began with a bad joke about somebody with too long of a license plate blocking the exit (everybody laughed, out of pity I assume), and then proceeded to essentially beg attendees for donations. To begin the plea, he tried to be hip by referencing the importance of choral music to future generations and how we must teach our children about it before artists like "Two-pack" (his pronunciation was really that awful), 50 Cent and Kanye West "fill their iPods.

My first thought was, "What the hell's wrong with Kanye West?" But then he jokingly asked the crowd if they were familiar with any of the "bands" he just mentioned, which of course was met with more forced laughter. Or maybe the old people actually found the shit funny, which makes me even sadder.

I was kind of hoping that as long as the man was ridiculing the obvious targets in pop culture (all black, I should note), maybe we would develop something really interesting like a war between hip-hop artists and choral musicians about who gets to, you know, "infiltrate the youth culture."



Alas, his jokes just led to a none-too-subtle reminder to fill out the forms on the table and pledge to help the singing group. And if the guests weren't ready, they were invited to take the accompanying envelope and mail money instead. He introduced a video about the group's history and returned to his seat amidst applause—or at least I assume that's what it finished like, because the guy's speech took so fucking long that I felt compelled to go outside and do something productive while waiting for this grandstanding to end: I smoked a cigarette.

And while seated there on an upside-down crate, I saw a cicada fluttering its wings in a puddle, struggling to escape the hole it was in. I grabbed it by its wings, lifted it out of the murky water and placed it next to the crate. It took a few moments, wings flapping off the excess liquid, but then the buzzing sound I read about so often this summer started to begin. And it was beautiful.

Like "Two-Pack," you could say.