We may have to do that after reading this in Pat Dooley’s mailbag:

I agree with you about Miami where the music was too loud and excessive. I’ll listen closer on Saturday, but what they really need to do is plug my iPod into the sound system. Then we’ll be rockin’.

Agreed on one point: we’re generally very queasy about music being played over the loudspeakers, especially because everyone’s taste in music sucks except for Barstoolio’s, and even then we’re suspicious because we like her music, and our taste sucks. It’s particularly bad because at Florida they crank up with “Thunderstruck,” a middling AC/DC song at best, and then pepper the proceedings with “Zombie Nation,” the aural infection that we uneasily “oh oh oh” along with when in the stands because….dammit, it works.

It works other places, too: if you’ve been in Tiger Stadium when they play “Callin’ Baton Rouge,” it works; so do a number of other songs, including “Jump Around” at Camp Randall and “Enter Sandman” at Virginia Tech. We’ve mentioned this before, but if they played the first 35 seconds or so of this at Florida Field…

…we’d write a check worth literally tens of dollars to the athletic department on the spot. It wouldn’t bounce or anything. We’re not willing to let Pat Dooley plug in his iPod yet–DO YOU LIKE TOM PETTY?–but the real test would be asking yourself: does subtracting the music lessen the experience?

In some cases, the answer is a resounding yes, though in Florida’s case no one would weep if “Thunderstruck” were taken off the case completely. If you can’t get feverishly excited in 90 degree heat and 60 percent humidity, you’re simply not excitable, or perhaps lying on the ground twitching from heat stroke.

We don’t know about the rest of you, but we are definitely that guy at the gymnasium with the iPod zoning out, trying to forget they are surrounded by the interminably douchy after work crowd day in and day out. Please let our doughy dilligent self through to the real weights please, as we’d like to put in our time and get the fuck out. Thanks, guy doing uneccessarily heavy shoulder shrugs 2 inches from the rest of the rack.

Regardless, our workout mix is always gingerly sprinkled with 5 times the US government’s daily recommended dosage of college fight songs. We have to say that there are just some songs that pick you right the fuck up like that barely legal caffeine-guarana-panther testicle poison they sell next to the towel bin. So, we pay tribute to our 5 favorite allies on the warrior’s trail to jacked-uped-ness.

Honorable Mention: Rudy Montage

We’re not talking about the sappy Zamfir in the pines panflute nonsense, but we have to show our love for the rambling blue-collar ballad of a scrappy little lad that tries so big. We’re especially fond of the corresponding movie sequence that let’s us see Samwise Gangee get the everloving crap kicked out of him by Polish immigrants.

Dont just stand there trying to think! Let’s hit those ropes! Jump to 1:35

Aggie War Hymn

Let’s just get up front about things and say that most fight songs are rather upbeat and happy tunes. We’re looking squarely at the Texas Longhorns working on that railroad of theirs all the livelong day, but we have to say the militant beat of the Aggie War Hymn has a great cadence for any number of ridiculously exerting activites. It almost has a smattering of the theme from Rocky if you try to hear it.

[Fighting Redacted] War Chant

A close runner-up to the kickass of the Florida State theme, your Rose Bowl runners-up have a catchy tune for you to feed the warrior within. Find a version with about 40 drums too many and go nuts. Its not REALLY a war chant, but we’ll take what we can get. In the WWE of fight songs as costumed wrestlers, [Fighting Redacted] are Tatanka.

The noble buffalo approves.

Florida State War Chant

The Undefeated of all savage war cries. Conjuring images of painted horses and flaming spears surely add to its majesty, but the endless drone of the Seminole legions is the true source of its domination. A long staple of opposing team weight rooms to get them fired up for games of the centuries. Load the spacehip with the rocket fuel! Load it with the warriors!

Needs more tassels, but yes: a good swole song nonetheless.

Southern Cal, the Only Song They Know

Its boring, and its slow. It’s the only song they know, and it will strike fear into the hearts of any army about to be trampled under the Trojan heel. It is a sound of impending doom. Doomy Doom Doom DOOM to those that oppose them. To the faithful, it is the sound of endless victory. In both cases, it gets you the fuck up and ready to stab your foe with a trident, light his daughter on fire, and pillage the ever living crap out of his village.

Play another song sometime! PLEEEEEEASE!!!

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

There is nothing in this country’s collegiate pepidemiology that can compare, however, to the glorious anthem of the Soviet workers. There are at least two movies that are instantly awesome by their renditions of this hymn, The Hunt for Red October and Rocky IV, and it was really a tough call as to which version to highlight….but Drago has fireworks and a whole motherfucking battalion on his side. He must break you. We have absolutely no problem with a team like the Red Raiders adopting this as their unofficial song of pirate praise.

We use this version because it is immensely cool, and could not find footage of the crew of the Red October singing it as they go silent. That would have been indescribably cool–ed.

It would have to go with some nice Fenerbahce-stand-hopping, of course, but we think it would be perfect, especially with a lyric sheet reading “buh-DOO-do-DOO-do-DEH” over and over again.

Handler Two: Man, she’s flipping me out right now.

Ralphie: Trample. Kill. Ram. Trample. Gore. Crush crush trample. Fear. Two legs everywhere. Trample them all. Desperate hunger for grass. Kill.

Handler Three: We’ve got to go in two.

Handler One: Look at her eyes. It’s just one pit of black surrounded by white fear. God, that’s unnerving.

Ralphie V: Hunger. All that grass. Must crush, then eat. Sun. Buffalo in heaven. Demand blood. Ram. Stomp. Run. Kick. Destroy two legs.

Hander Two: Where’s Trey? He’s supposed to be here. We can’t do this with just three handlers.

Handler Three: We ready to go?

Trey, Handler Four: Hey, guys, when are we—AAAIIIIGGGHHHHH

Handler one, hanging on for dear life: OH GOD HER EYES HAAAAIIIIIILLLLLP!

Ralphie: OPEN SPACE RUN KILL.

Handler Four: My insides feels leaky and warm…I can’t feel…my…hands…

Handler One: I CAN’T HOLD ON JESUS CHRIST WHY THE HELL DO WE HAVE A BUFFALO THEY DON’T LIKE LEASHES!!!!

Dan Hawkins: Well done, boys! That’s a division one football mascot!

Ralphie: Sun. Grass. Trampled. Yes. Suddenly tired. Hungry. Stop.

Handler One: MY SHOULDER! OH GOD MY SHOULDER!

Hawkins: Can we get her to skydive onto the field? And then trample someone? That would be EPIC.

(HT: Rashaan Salaam)

Stuff Orange and Blue People Like

Law school. Perhaps biasing the study with our own personal experiences, but everyone who graduates from Florida goes to law school, is thinking about going to law school, or has considered going to law school. They may also be in the process of applying to go to law school, or just getting over the thought of going to law school. At the least, the Gator fan you encounter has had sex with someone who went to law school. (This is a requirement for graduation. Go look. )

O, just-a like the Italian breads my a-mama made!

Panera. We have never, ever, ever seen a demographic spread their financial legs more whorishly for a business than Gator fans for Panera, the bread and coffee chain out of Atlanta that specializes in selling sugary breads for two to three times what you might actually pay for them at a real bakery. And that’s right, Florida fans, we said that: Panera’s not a real bakery. It’s a goddamn cookie shop with coffee and shitty wireless–that’s it. A sugar cookie the size of a roofing shingle is still compacted sugar, butter, and flour, even if you’re eating it in a pleasant place with healthy wheat stalks woven into all of their ersatz rustico! Italian decorating. The pleasant decor and clean floors will keep the calories off, right? No, it won’t, but walk in there on a Saturday and you’ll swear the place was giving away free crack and fistfuls of Tebowbucks in little orange and blue baggies.

Speaking of bland, tasteless, and overpackaged….

Sisterhazelbox 20. Accept it as a given that everyone else besides you has shitty taste in music. Everyone, that is, except the Gator Nation’s insatiable hunger for bland late 90s rock, a noxious hunger fed from the center of Meyerville itself by the band Sister Hazel, local boys just out to have a good time, smile a lot while singing the bridge, and crank out vanilla “alt/folk/classic” rock so devoid of spark, emotion, or points of interest it sounds like the musical translation of the Empty Quarter: beige for as far as the ear can hear.

Oh, sure. Bring that up:

Sister Hazel Williams was an African-American woman who ran Sister Hazel’s Rescue Mission in Gainesville, FL. during the 1970s and early ’80s. This facility gave those who were down on their luck a safe place to stay warm, eat and regroup, regardless of age, race or beliefs. It is in this spirit of unconditional concern for all beings that the band chose to use her name.

If you have unconditional concern for all beings, then WINNAR WINNAR to you. But don’t expect us to admire you for claiming to have it–so did Stalin, man. (Takes hit off joint lit with a burning copy of Reason magazine.) Neither does it excuse having to still turn on the radio in Gainesville and hear “Hard To Say” played for a number of time so immense mathematics majors are currently working on ways to properly denote its huge size. And fuck Matchbox 20, too, and any other band that skinny blonde girl is listening to. Imagine the sound of slowing being suffocated in a tub of cream of wheat–that’s what your music is, Gator Nation. We’ll be over here listening to the taped sound of puppies being thrown into a blender to get the sound of your laid-back edgeless rock out of our ears. Or Motorhead. Same thing, really.

(If you opt out of the blandlubber rock, you then like Nickelback or Saliva or rap-rock, and have not hepped up to the fact that all of America is pointing at you and laughing a jiggly fat laugh.)

Melanoma. Florida fans love them melanoma. Sitting at the intersection of the “furthest south” and “degree of whiteness in fanbase” give you few choices in this matter: you must love it, because you’re getting it. It comes with the degree. Remember: if you can’t afford to rock the coach satchel, show your true Gator pride in your very own alligator skin. It is truly the pinnacle of Gator fandom to wear your own. (And you wonder why we wear dipshit hats to games.)

Even Gainesville shot girls like beads. And melanoma. Cause she’s getting it, too.

Beads. Florida fans adore beads, and sometimes wear multiple sets of them with any outfit. Unlike beads worn by LSU fans, they are not considered formal wear appropriate for court appearances or congressional debates, and are used exclusively for college sports-affiliated events. The exposure of breasts is not required to receive beads, as they’re usually strewn about the ground at Florida games, a mess creating fantastic opportunities for random harm-joy as you watch drunken bystanders slip on them. For extra points, attach a tiny plastic gator.

Puncture wounds If you engage in a fight with a Florida fan, you will be stabbed. Note: this is not “slashed,” the preferred method of a Miami fan, or “shot in the face with a creaky black powder rifle,” as with West Virginia. No, this is the puncture wound suffered when a Florida fan desperately flails for the Leatherman in his pocket and, rather than waiting to find the knife, simply presses forward into your abdomen with the pliers. In the Sunshine State, death doesn’t wait for you to find the knife, and neither will the angry Cuban you ran into the median on the no-look merge in your SUV on I-4 that started this whole thing.

Oh, while we’re in the neighborhood:

The Ford Expedition. Not the vehicle of the youngish Gator, but the Ford Expedition seems to be the vehicle of choice for the mature Gator Nation, and it makes sense: so big it overstates your already overstated Floridian aggresssion towards your fellow motorists/potential killers, so frightening it puts the “force” into force majeure, horrifically overpriced, and an environmental Chernobyl on wheels–in other words, representative of Florida in most every way. You will keep it long enough to give it to your child. They will get drunk and drive it off a causeway and into water. There is no other way things will go in this situation.

Jager! Sure, other people like Jager. Florida fans seem to adore the unique mix of deer piss and rubbing alcohol with a fervor exceeding the norm, however. Why anyone would drink this instead of saving money and just ridin’ with the Tussmobile is something we can’t understand, since cough syrup is cough syrup no matter how you repackage it. We’re going to print out a bunch of Jager labels, slap them on bottles of Robitussin, and troll tailgates next year with a Radio Flyer full of the “Jager” on ice and sell them for ten bucks a pop. When you’re looking for investment capital, talk to us on Sunday, because we’ll weeping hundreds–Hundreds, we tell you!

Reverse cowgirl. The preferred position for Gator fans, because they saw it in online porn, it’s exotic enough to not be straight missionary boredom, and it’s a lot like the Meyer spread-option in that it depends a lot on spreading them out and using misdirection to score. Will take place half-tastedly in a hotel of moderate price, or in a friend’s bedroom with the door locked, and without recording equipment. Both parties will refer to it afterwards as a “hook-up,” even to a friend of the same gender.

HURR HURRR JEAN SHORTS HRRR! It happens, but when it does, it usually happens like this:

Yes, that’s right–the pointing is being done by someone who is either wearing a denim skirt or jean shorts herself. Scoreboard.

Wait. What the hell are they doing with that…is that a buffalo? A live goddamn buffalo? They’re not going to…

Oh, my. They are.

Considering the $25 million LSU shelled out for the mascot’s habitat, they’re undoubtedly looking for a new Mike as we speak. Animal rights activists be damned–having a live tiger on campus is just badassness no matter how you cast it, and no one’s gone more out of their way than LSU, which has constructed what amounts to a mini-zoo for their pampered mascot.

There’s a Roy Horn joke somewhere in here, but we just can’t find it. RIP, Mike.

The best line in the whole thing doesn’t come from any of the participants, but rather from the dead and great Lewis Grizzard. Barnhart mentioned the line Grizzard had on the Clemson-Georgia game:”It’s more than a football game. It’s their way of life against ours.” No one’s ever issued a statement more perfectly encapsulating why, mid-game, you may actually look at the otherwise pleasant and similar people wearing different colors than yours and suddenly feel like you gazed upon the primitive celebrations of a lesser, hairy-knuckled tribe unworthy of having clean water and healthy children–and certainly unworthy of being on the same field as your obviously superior, fully-evolved football team of gridiron samurai.

The irony in all of this is that most people accuse the opposition of being guilty of something they are, by demographic, equally or more guilty of the offense themselves. Nothing’s funnier to the outsider than watching SEC fans accuse other SEC fans of being “redneck” or trash, especially when the rest of the country walks around with this mental cheatsheet of regional prejudice in their head:

However, since we’re soooooo scientific, which individual myths about fanbases are true? We propose a few below based solely on our own observations over the years, shying away from the obvious ones (jean shorts on Florida fans, for example) and attempting to say things we know are absolutely, unequivocally true.

Auburn fans use Weber Grills. Not an insult, but something definitive and true we know we can say as a rule about Auburn fans is that they cook with the classic, steel-egg Weber grill. And they grill like there’s no tomorrow. Alabama fans may, of course, suggest that they do this out of a lack of understanding of the basics of propane and propane-related technologies–they will, of course, in addition to suggesting that Alabama fans taught Auburn fans the secret of fire only to watch them burn their own houses down.

Georgia fans wear red slacks. If you’re going to geek out, go head first, or in the case of Georgia fans, dick-first into your geekery. Often pleated, sometimes stained, and rarely unnoticeable, screaming red pants on Georgia fans is a near universal certainty at Dawg games. We have only one thing to say about this, which is that we know two kinds of people who wear red pants by choice: Zouaves, and fabulous Canadian figure skater Brian Orser.

Red pants= sexcellent!

3. Michigan fans are very smart, and very grumbly. Undoubtedly among the most intellectual and most tortured of fans, Wolverines can sound like football Kierkegaards even in the best of times, salting even their greatest successes with grumbles about Lloyd Carr’s conservatism, Mike Debord’s baffling “non-scoring” offense, and most notably other Michigan fans, who are too quiet at games, too complacent/not complacent enough re: Carr and Bo’s boys, or not angry enough about Ohio State’s recent run of ownership in college football’s most corrosive rivalry.

The vinegary Brian of the MGoBlog isn’t the exception, from our experience: he’s the rule.

Ohio State fans don’t need no instructions how to rock. Because they know what rocks: Ohio State. What doesn’t rock? Michigan, and you, if you happen to not be Ohio State. The mirror image of Michigan’s tortured Scandinavian outlook, Ohio State fans are sunshine-pumpers of the Nth degree, loyal, screaming fandogs who’ll turn the tamest social event into an opportunity to scream at you for thirty minutes about how wrong, wrong, wrong you are about Cheatypants Sweatervest and his program.

We know this from experience, as we’ve had at least two incidents involving OSU fans that went like this.

OS: You know OSU won that game on a blown pass interference call.

OSU fan: nnnnOOOAOAAAAHIIIIIGGGHHH!!!!! (Rips off shirt, grows to three times normal size, stomps around for thirty minutes.)

(Fast forward to end of conversation.)

OS: You need to calm down.

OSU fan: (shrinks to normal size, redons tatters of shirt.)EEIIIAAAHHHHhhhh….no, you’re wrong. But we should totally do that again sometime.

OS: Sure.

Ohio State fans: seriously into it.

Notre Dame fans, aside from their chaotic student section, are very, very serious. We thought it was just the age thing, what with all the geriatric monied alumni throwing heaps of money to keep their spot on the wooden benches safe. But no, after some field research we have determined that Notre Dame fans watch the game with the intensity of Enrico Fermi ripping scraps of paper up and tossing them into the wind to determine the force of the first atom bomb blast.

This means a lot of very intense sitting, something we could barely handle in any situation, much less the frenzy of a football game. The ADD kicked in around the second quarter, where we began yelling “rrrRRRROOOOOLLLLLL TAAAAAHHHHHDDE” in our thickest drawl during lulls in the game. (Being the UCLA/ND game, it was pretty much one long lull until the lid-flipping end.) It proved to be a great smartass test, as anyone who appreciated the obvious humor of a bad running gag turned laughing to see who the idiot was. These people, we thought, are our troops. The rest of the endzone section just kept craning their necks, looking for whomever was letting off the semantic flatulence in their stadium.

Point being: they’re serious folks. We half expected white boards to break out in the stands during timeouts.

Florida State fans all like Toby Keith. We’ve had this theory for a while, since in truth it’s very difficult to discern Florida fans from Florida State fans if you don’t have a copy of their SATs lying around. (We kid, we kid! Actually, we don’t. But we also had to move to Taiwan to get a job with an English degree with our Florida degree, so again, liberally salt all jabs and content.)

Like the Hutu and Tutsi, we’re actually all intermarried, intermingled, and very, very similar in many respects. Only one factor sticks out as a salient dividing line between the two camps: Toby Keith.

We’ve created a handy chart to help you with this division:

While a Florida fan may like Toby Keith (perfectly legal operation here,) a Florida State fan MUST by rule like Toby Keith. They must be a Ford truck man, that’s all he drii–haiiives, he don’t have no boundaries, he don’t compromise. The Florida State fan believes in a little less talk and a lot more action, and in his sadder moments believes he should have been a cowboy. When he scores, he may ask how do you like him at that moment, or who your daddy truly is; when you beat him senseless, he will sing about how he’s not as good as he once was, and perhaps get drunk and be somebody just to feel better.

But the rule remains: he/she MUST like Toby Keith. It’s a natural law.

Leave your own below.

Ask and you shall receive– SM

We would point out in the latest chapter of “Fightin’ Music” that Florida has not one single musical act to claim in the name of quality. Popularity, yes; Creed sold a zillion fucking records in the late ’90s/early ’00s, a time when we were too busy selling our plasma and giving handjobs for rent money visionquesting and temping to prevent such an atrocity from happening. They did, however, provide the soundtrack for countless teen pregnancies between fundy kids who took virginity pledges, so we have to thank them for the unending dark comedy there.

Florida is a musical Namibia. Sadly, our supplemental football fight music doesn’t change that. If anything, think of “Gator Steve” as a kind of sonic defoliant, killing the happy green thoughts in your mind like Agent Orange sprayed on a Vietnamese hillside. We sometimes forget that there are quarters of this world where men wear tanktops, listen to country music, and watch CSI because they find the murder scenes sexy without apology. You forget there are people who annoy you almost as much as NPR-listening fauxhemians who find Sarah Vowell “droll.”*

And then you hear this:

Bull Gator Steve!

MP3 File

*If you use this word and are not British, you will be punched in the teeth.

Then, of course, we mock them ’till they bleed like Jerry Cooney on blood-thinners.

Kick the stuffin’ out of ‘em–in an amiable country music kinda way. We’re old enough to remember when country could in its own way generate a legitimate air of menace, even when a song sounded cheerful on first listen. “Fightin’ Side Of Me” by Merle Haggard? “Country Boys Can Survive” by Hank Williams, Jr? Or, most notoriously in our mind, “Copperhead Road” by Steve Earle, a song that makes us want to set fire to the nearest flammable object not attached to our body? They all have the glower of a dude in tight jeans skunked on gallons of beer ready to put a knockoff Tony Lama in your canines, or at least thankin’ about doin’ just that.

Totally wants to kick the shit out of you while wearing a silly railroad hat.

Unfortunately, country music is run by total, unremitting pussies, which is why you get Faith Hill instead of Loretta Lynn and Tim McGraw instead of Merle Haggard. Merle, who’s actually been to jail for–oh god this is good–getting drunk with three guys, robbing a restaurant, and then getting caught because they were too shithoused to flee the scene properly. (If that ain’t country, you can kiss our ass and David Allen Coe’s.) Even burly manheap Toby Keith admits to trimming his pubes–can you see a proper country scoundrel like Willie Nelson doing this? Did you just see that very image in your head? Go lie down for a while, or drive your office stapler through your temple to dull the pain, then.

Anyway, Alabama fan Tony Martin was and presumably is a very, very optimistic man, since he wrote “Back on Top” two years ago in the gloaming of the Mike Shula era. Click here to listen to it, because it’s the most genteel WOOOO US song we’ve ever heard. It’s almost as genteel as Mike Shula himself, a man so savage he once ordered the spicy fries from Checkers to prove it.*

And we’re gonna be great–
Wait and seeeee…
We’re gonna kick the stuffing
Out of Auburn and Tennessee!!!

…and then Alabama went 1-3 against the pair, with only the 31-3 thrashing of Florida at Bryant-Denny to claim in the meantime for substantial wins. See? We mentioned that, because we’re fair and have a long memory, and also because we’re holding back the tears by dabbing them with the pages of this commemorative National Championship Sports Illustrated. Just don’t tell that to Demeco Ryans–we still check the closets for him at night.

The point should be that under no circumstances should Tony Martin be allowed to write a pro-Alabama song ever again given this empirical evidence of its effectiveness. To be fair, he should write an anti-Alabama song just to see if the opposite happens. The song is so gentle, it made us grow breasts listening to it. (Thanks! Whee!) It made us thank our foremothers for their hard sacrifices under unjust patriarchies. It made Colin Firth seem rugged and sensitive simultaneously; it made us consider taking calcium and potassium supplements for our health. It made us cry for all the beauty we don’t appreciate in this life. It made us, in short, realize how much of a woman we really could be.

It sounds precisely like the Shula years for Alabama fans, in other words. Saban, on the other hand, should have Alabama fans yearning for red meat, wenches, ill-fitting khakis, and all other things that are man. Like Dethklok, but with red and white pom-poms.

*Sadly, Shula had to back off the devilish spuds after two and give them to Joe Kines, who covered them with thumbtacks and cayenne, downed them, and washed them down with a vial of whiskey and pepper spray. If you don’t love Joe Kines you want the terrorists to win.

This nearly happened as South Carolina almost beat Auburn 24-17, with only a clanking pair of traitorous hands keeping the Gamecocks from tying it up in the dying last seconds of the game. Brandon Cox was forced to convert 4th and 6 and 3rd and 21 in the third quarter to hold possession. The buzz line is that Auburn held the ball for the entire third quarter–astonishing, especially since Tuberville engineered the cock-free third quarter by going for an onside kick to get the ball back and eke out another Irons rushing touchdown.

Auburn: almost fumbled away the Narrative last night.

The pressure of a road game had Al Borges saying…strange…things: From John Solomon’s blog:

To say Auburn was relieved to prevail is an understatement. Al Borges spoke about “swallowing hard” if Tommy Tuberville hadn’t made two gutsy calls – then Borges acknowledged they were “swallowing hard” anyway at the end.

The general thought among Auburn fans we spoke with was that Auburn’s defense were the ones swallowing hard for most of the night, befuzzled by Spurrier’s going to a spread formation and passing at will despite Auburn dropping eight men into coverage. (This paragraph truncated in order to prevent embarrassing Spurrier man-love spewing across the page. There’s been quite enough of that.)

TCU lost last night, scrapping the TCU “BCS-buster” tag and the nation’s longest win streak simultaneously. If there’s a positive in all of this, it’s the fact that our campaign to get jets installed in TCU mascot’s eyes that spray red fluid may have just found some extra push, since we blame Super Frog’s inability to intimidate opinions for TCU’s loss. Thanks to Austin Murphy, we now know the red fluid is not blood, actually, but something even worse:

We’d spent the previous half hour killing time in the office of associate athletic director Scott Kull, who’d made several important points about the school’s distinctive mascot. “The horned frog — actually a spiny lizard — subsists on a diet of red ants.” It had long been believed that this creature was capable, when angered or frightened, of directing a four-foot stream of blood from its eyes. Kull tells me that’s not blood, but rather, pre-digested red ants.

An animal so filled with rage it vomits through its eyes. That is a mascot.

Kids, come say hi to SuperFrog…AIIIIGGGGHH GOD WHAT IS THIS!!!

To properly appreciate FAMU, you have to see the choreography up close, and since most of the videos of the band on YouTube are straight pressbox shots sprinkled with occasional close-up shots, you miss out on plenty of quality pelvic thrusting and leg grabs. The practice videos show their whole routine, though, complete with crowd participation and singalongs. The best comes about a minute in, and yes, you get bonus points for getting people to attempt this in the office.

The stuff nightmares are made of.