Don't borrow, steal: an offseason requires desperate measures, and in a pinch we'll be happy to do the pinching. We present what will hopefully be a running series: Stuff _____ People Like, based on the painfully accurate Stuff White People Like. We begin, to be fair, with our own alma mater, Florida.
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.
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