Spring break is on the way
Joe Muto
Livin' On a Prayer
I'm not in the mood to blast people today. I'm too excited over spring break. In a little more than one week from now, I will be sitting on the beach in lovely Negril, Jamaica, a mango daiquiri firmly in hand.
Many of you may be wondering what I'm doing going so far away. To me it was a no-brainer. Leaving the country, I'm able to drink in a bar without fear of being thrown into a skeazy spring break town jail. I'm too innocently cute for jail. The other hardened criminals would pass me around like an issue of Maxim before my drunken friends would even realize I was no longer at the club.
For a while I considered Cancun, but a friend told me he had been arrested and fined for peeing in the street while in Cancun. Since I consider public urination an integral part of any spring break experience, Cancun was out.
Jamaica leaped out as the obvious choice. I don't really know much about the local culture, but if Doug E. Doug's portrayal was accurate in the movie "Cool Runnings," I plan to sit around and wisecrack with the natives all day, lie on the beach and say "Mon" every fourth word, mon.
Some of my more cynical friends have implied that I am headed to Jamaica to consume a certain organic product which the country is famous for. Let me cut off the chitter-chatter right now: I have no desire whatsoever to smoke delicious, delicious marijuana, no matter how much more potent and effective it is than alcohol. Everyone knows that grass is for losers like our current and previous presidents, several Notre Dame football players and virtually every popular musician since 1955.
Once I have intoxication out of the way, my second priority in Jamaica will be to make a love connection. This should not be a problem for me because I am amazing at meeting new women. Wait. No. The exact opposite. Even though there is something romantic to a woman about being in a strange place with a person she will never see again, I have had trouble in the past cashing in on this.
Actually, I am greatly increasing my chances of taking drunken state-school girls back to my room by working on my physique. I'm working out harder than I ever have before, eating right and taking enough dietary supplements to give the German "women's" swim team pause. I started with Ripped Fuel and later moved to Hydroxycut. When those lost effectiveness, I sped up my metabolism with an old trick I learned during my modeling days: injecting pure, uncut heroin directly into my heart. I'm not sure, but I think I want to keep using it even after the break.
Hopefully my newly semi-buff physique will give me the confidence I need to approach a group of girls, suavely ask them where they're from and volunteer myself in case they need anyone to chew through their bikini straps. Lord knows I can't get any less confident than I was last spring break. I don't need any repeats of last year's all-too-common exchange between my friend Jimmy and I:
Me: "Hey, that girl's pretty cute. Maybe you should go talk to her."
Jimmy: "Naw, I'm working on my tan here. Maybe you should go talk to her."
Me: [pause] "I also am working on my tan."
Hook-ups or no, I fully expect this year to be the best spring break ever. Sharing a pair of double beds with four other guys is not necessarily my idea of paradise, but there's something to be said for getting away from here.
I've had just about all I can take of the weather, the work and the Knights of Columbus. I can't wait to trade it all in for cliff diving, the munchies and some fat Jamaican guy selling hemp necklaces.
Joe Muto is a sophomore Film, Television and Theatre major. His column runs every other Thursday. He can be reached at jmuto@nd.edu.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Thursday, February 28, 2002
