Friday, May 04, 2007

Cinco de My Ass

I'm not a holiday guy, really. Once you hit, I dunno, 14, Christmas loses its luster. (Especially if you're not a religiously observant cat.) Easter, same deal, but revise that age down to 10, the last time you get really excited by candy. Thanksgiving is, at this point, a holiday sponsored by Purdue. But at least there's something legitimate to remember—even if it is the rape of the natural world and the beginning of the end for the indigenous peoples of North America. Still, corn!

But Cinco de Mayo is a holiday invented, promoted, and sustained by tequila companies. And Corona. A holiday for alcoholics. And sorority girls. But mostly drunks. There's just something distasteful about that. (And, while I am painting with a wide brush, at least there was, actually, a St. Patrick. That's a holiday that's been co-opted by drunks.) Hell, do you even know why anyone gives a shit in Mexico about May 5th? Neither do any of the people crowding the bar at Chili's. (For the record, it commemorates the victory of Mexican forces led by General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin over the French occupational forces in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Or not, if Wikipedia is up to their usual fact-free standards.)

I'm all for drinking. I just don't need excuses to drink. That's why I never understood drinking games: Getting drunk is fun enough, I don't need to wrap it in a silly activity to want to do it.

But if we've gotta have a Booze Holiday, then I want a Gambling Holiday, too. Fuck that, we should just have Vice Day, when anything and everything bad for you or at one point illegal is encouraged.

Vice Day, brought to you by Baretta and Trojan.

I could get behind that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

ha! I'm with you. Drinking is no fun with all the waiting around and only drinking when you lose.

Cunningham said...

At least you don't have to deal with silly peoples shooting guns up into the air to celebrate.