February 28, 2003

Sure, Harding's rules on spaghetti straps, shorts, and curfew are stricter than they are in many state penitentiaries. But what's to get upset about? What exactly am I itching to do that Harding won't let me do? I mean, other than staging a musical at the Benson in which at least one character ceases to smile? The answer: not much.

Take curfew, for example. Curfew is 11:00 on weekdays, 12:00 on weekends. You have a fifteen minute grace period every day, as well as a certain number of “special events,” which allow you to take an extra hour. If you are not back in the dormroom by curfew when the R.A. comes to check, something bad presumably happens to you, such as you get sent to the dean. Of course, this is only true of Cone Dorm (motto: “Keeping the More Mature Students from Enjoying the Late Movie”). At Grad Dorm, as I understand, the R.A. checks each room on the less frequent basis of “never.”

But anyway, curfew is a big deal here. The trouble with rules is that they almost immediately produce the urge to break them, even if you would never have cared to break the rule before it was laid down. For example, if I imposed the rule “Absolutely No Scratching Your Buttocks Before 2:00 PM,” it is likely that many people would set out to scratch their buttocks in full view of the public quite deliberately, whether or not either one of their buttocks was in particular need of scratching. This is a well-known psychological fact.

So it is with curfew. Now, I am not a rule-breaking type of person. But yet, curfew bothers me somehow. I don't ever break curfew. I barely even use a special event, and I have upwards of 5 million as a result of being a technical senior. I just don't have much reason to break it. What exactly am I supposed to be doing until 12:00 AM on weekday nights? I don't have a girlfriend. Searcy is not exactly crammed full of things to do. Painting the town red takes all of five minutes. Nor do I naturally stay up until the wee hours of the morning, or even the slightly less wee hours of the morning.

But yet, I feel compelled to use as many of the special events as possible, as if it the only acceptable option is to be constantly chomping at the bit, staying out late whenever it's allowed just because it's allowed. This may be because every time I run into my dorm mother from Armstrong (motto: “I Hope You Enjoy 400 dB of Reggae Music at Two in the Morning!”), she always says something to the effect of, “Hey Chris! Good to see you! You know, you really should've gotten out more. You only used three special events.”

Sigh. And you want to know how many special events I've used at Cone this semester? Two. That's right. Only two. And that's two out of approximately 5 million. Or, if you don't want to take my word for it, you can go check the “Special Event Board” posted for all the world to see in the Cone Lobby. It makes for interesting, albeit embarrassing reading.

This is why I feel compelled to drag anything at all into a special-event requiring engagement. Study date in the student center? Only if it goes until midnight . I want to rack up X's on that board, but I just haven't had much occasion.

This is why it bothers me a great deal that going to the opera does not count as a special-event requiring excursion. By going to the opera in Memphis, you are absolutely guaranteeing that you will not return to the dorm until 1:30 or later, especially because Arkansas roads are both extremely convoluted and not marked until well after it matters (“That Exit You Just Passed was I-55 South” the sign states). So , naturally, the dorm mother feels the need to extend grace to you and not count it against your special event tally, even though you desperately want her to.

So, at long last, I have arrived at the topic of this C-File. You see, I went to the opera in Memphis again this past weekend. The trouble is (and this is the bad part)... it was a perfectly enjoyable experience. The trouble with perfectly enjoyable experiences is that they don't make for compelling stories afterwards. “The opera was fun!” “And...?” “Yeah, that's about it.”

This time, the opera was Verdi's Masked Ball, set in Sweden, or possibly 16th century Boston (it doesn't matter). The plot is quite simple. King Gustavo III of Sweden/Boston, who is perfect and pure except for being a heathen adulterer, is madly in love with some girl whose name I forget but it doesn't matter because she's the wife of Renato who is a big fat guy who is the king's best friend which is ironic because he doesn't suspect anything at all and then they all go to this sorceress's house and she writhes around for a while and then you get bored and start daydreaming about Buffy the Vampire Slayer for a while and then when you wake up four scenes later Gustavo dies because it is an opera and that's the rule but not before singing for a good 48 minutes before finally collapsing. As you can see, the plot is silly and unimportant.

You can tell that an opera is all about the music because singers refer to characterization and acting as “stage business.” My question is, if the plot does not matter that much, why even have it at all? The stage business becomes more of a distraction than anything else. At first, I was resolved to spend as much time as possible focusing on the music and enjoying it, but as soon as I started watching what was going on onstage I got bored and started focusing on the unnatural positions my legs had assumed as a result of there being not enough leg room for most midgets.

Not that there weren't powerful moments. For example, during one particularly emotional scene underneath a gallows, Renato (the big fat guy) discovers that his wife has been seeing Gustavo. Two of the conspirators who have been trying to kill Gustavo watch this dark and moving scene and comment upon it with the following evocative lyrics:

“Ha ha ha.”

“Ha ha ha.”

“Ha ha ha.”

They even announce, while laughing musically, that “the tragedy has become a comedy.” Isn't that great?

But the opera was overall enjoyable. The trouble with going to the opera in Memphis, is, naturally, finding a place to eat in West Memphis. West Memphis is different from Memphis proper in many ways. For one thing, it is in Arkansas. For another thing, it is a stinking armpit of a city. There's no point in trying to eat in downtown Memphis, and there's nothing to eat on the way to Memphis, so you either eat in West Memphis or starve. Given those options, the second one sometimes seems attractive.

But the girls we were with were absolutely determined to have a nice Italian meal before the opera. After all, they would be dressed up, and the only appropriate foods to eat while dressed up are the extremely awkward and messy foods usually covered in brightly colored, bleach-resistant sauces.

So they got online and searched for an Italian eatery located in Memphis – category: Under $20. They found a restaurant entitled “Sicily's,” and wrote down the directions. When we finally found Sicily's, it was discovered that the full name of the eatery was, in fact, “Sicily's Beer and Subs,” and that the all-brick establishment sported several stylish neon Budweiser lights in the windows, as well as a couple of very attractive and efficient window-mounted air-conditioning units. I personally didn't see why this was such a problem, but the women immediately insisted that we go somewhere else. We had stopped at a Chinese restaurant a little why before to figure out where the heck we were going and to recover from several near-death experiences involving curbs, so I suggested that we just go to that restaurant, and everybody concurred.

Well, the women seemed to think that, while this Chinese buffet was an acceptable choice, it was still somehow amusing that we were eating there. Evidently this had something to do with the billiards room located conveniently located just off the main dining room. Or perhaps it was that our waiter was wearing little more than an undershirt and several difficult-to-identify stains. I thought the food was all right, considering. And people wear prom dresses to IHOP all the time back home... Oh well. It's a lost cause.

So that was my night at the opera. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go run outside and pretend to come back in after curfew so I can use a special event.