Homecoming '04 Part I

At most schools homecoming is a simple event….alumni hangin’ out and catchin’ up, drinking beers and reminiscing about the good old days-the dorms, the parties, the four years that you will never again be able to replicate.   Miami, on the other hand, does things a little differently. Here they throw down for homecoming and turn it into an extravagant and over-the-top affair that more closely resembles MTV’s Music Video Awards than a traditional homecoming. If they had thrown in a red carpet and some paparazzi you would not have been able to tell the difference.

For starters, the school put together an impromptu concert on Thursday afternoon with Fabolous. At most schools, a performance by a multi-platinum artist of Fabolous’ fame would have sent ripples of excitement and anticipation through the student body. At Miami? Puh-lease. The concert itself was not even planned until the day before. Wednesday night I checked my email before going to bed and noticed the usual insipid and banal school email sitting in my inbox. All college students are used to these generic emails-they inform you of club meeting times that you don’t care about and parking restrictions that only serve to make your life more difficult. Well, lodged between the usual drivel was a short paragraph stating that Fabolous was performing the next afternoon at 1 p.m. at the student center. I had been mindlessly perusing the email to this point but this announcement made me do a double-take. Fabolous is performing tomorrow? At 1 o’clock in the afternoon? This has to be some sort of joke!?!? For a second this superseded my excitement for the Wyclef concert which was scheduled for Friday night. Slowly, however, a sense of uncertainty started to creep into my mind-I have elements tomorrow at 2 and there’s no way that the concert will start on time, they never do, so if I want to go I’ll have to skip class-but those thoughts were quickly pushed aside by my swift decision to skip class the next day if it interfered with the concert.  C’mon, how many times do you get the opportunity to see Fabolous perform at your school on a random Thursday afternoon?

So Thursday morning I had Torts at 8 a.m., followed by Contracts at 11. What I had forgotten in my state of glee of the previous night was that Scott Shapiro, a big time baseball agent and UM law school alumnus, was coming to talk to the sports law society at 12:30. So I was left with a decision that I did not want to make-going to the concert at 1 or passing it up and staying for the Scott Shapiro meeting; career or mindless entertainment?  Future or present??  I surprised even myself and chose to stay for the sports law society meeting, which I’m glad I did. Mr. Shapiro gave us lots of helpful advice for perusing careers as agents and told us some great stories about several of his clients, a list which includes Ozzie Smith and Carl Pavano. So the meeting lasted until 1:45, at which point I started walking over towards the classroom which houses my least favorite law school class, Elements. As I approached the doorway I noticed my friend Drew standing about 10 feet away, looking around in every direction, searching for something, or someone. Well that someone was me. He spotted me and quickly made his way over to where I was standing…

Drew: Fabolous is late and the concert hasn’t started yet.
Me: You wanna skip Elements and go to the show instead?
Drew: Well, I dunno.
Me: F*&k Elements! Let’s go see Fabolous.
Drew: Ok! (Emphatically)

So that was a relatively easy decision to make. Unlike college, where I skipped a plethora of classes every semester, for reasons such as rainy or cold weather, I have made every attempt to go to as many classes as possible in law school. This day was an exception. I had made the responsible decision to stay at the law school to hear Mr. Shapiro talk for the sake of furthering my future career. Well now the world was sending me a clear and definitive message-you made the right choice and now you should be rewarded for it, so go see Fabolous. Well it sounded like a rationale justification to me at the time so I went with it.

So Drew and I headed over to the student center, where the concert was being held on the outdoor patio overlooking the pool. Fabolous, by this point, was obscenely late, but what else do you expect from a famous rapper?? Soon enough, however, we spotted a black Navigator with tinted windows and sun-glistening, spinning 24’s role up to the back of the stage. Most of the assembled crowd, mostly scantily clad undergrad girls in bikinis, also noticed this and began buzzing with anticipation. Shortly Fabolous, along with four or five of his boyz, decked out in a pink polo shirt and matching Yankees hat, an outfit that only a hip hop star could pull off, along with in-your-face iced out bling, emerged on stage and started right into his act…

“Miami, I hear ya’ll are keeping it gangsta”….yea Fabulous, you know us law school kids…We’re keepin’ it gangsta.

::coughcoughbullshitbullshit::

The show lasted about an hour with Fabolous performing most of his popular songs. I had a great time and it was the perfect remedy for the monotonous boredom that Tuesdays generally bring. I wish that it could have lasted longer because that hour completely took my mind away from the stresses of law school. I did feel bad for all those that weren’t able to skip class though. Imagine sitting in class, bored out of your mind, and hearing the sounds of loud bass, rap lyrics, and screaming kids permeating the air. I don’t think that I would have been able to take that…

So that was the first day of homecoming…an impromptu Fabolous concert in the middle of the day, an event that at most other places would have been advertised for weeks  advance. Once again, the city in general, and the school in particular, were showing everyone that

Miami is about as far away from reality as is humanely possible. This was only the beginning, however, and there was much more to come. So tune in tomorrow for the next episode of
Homecoming ’04….

 

 

Comments

[bryan]

vik-

what youve just described is about as far from reality as i could ever have imagined. once again, i think i speak for everyone when i say: we hate you.

[Joe]

I have tasted the life of Viktor Slza;kjdinski, and I like it!

Though I do hope that you find some other field of law to pursue. If you become an agent, you're going to kick my ass in fantasy baseball EVEN MORE. Ugh.