From Shawn Klein's "Jedi Mind Tricks," Fall '95 From Shawn Klein's "Jedi Mind Tricks," Fall '95Rarely does anyone give you really useful advice when you come to college. Nobody sits you down and tells you the mandatory, do-or-die things you really need to know. Listen. Penn's a great school. I'm certainly not one of those kids who goes around complaining about the social life, etc. I happen to enjoy myself. But one, however, cannot deny that Penn's lacks that certain everyone-running-around-naked-and- drunk-as-all-hell je ne sais quoi which can be found at other schools. It's hard not to wonder what it might have been like at a school like that. Mardi Gras made up for any lacking debauchery at Penn in just four days. Most fun I ever had. Best thing I ever did. For those not in the know, a brief explanation: The two weeks before Fat Tuesday, the culmination of Carnival, (which amazingly has religious origins) are filled with roughly thirty parades which traipse up and around the streets of New Orleans. These parades throw strings of "beads" (among other things) to the spectators. These beads then become a sort of half-assed (yet priceless) sexual currency on Bourbon St. Yes, that's right. Good looking females will "show their tits" (to quote a favorite expression) for those nice, shiny necklaces. All you have to do is ask and the shirts come off. It's nothing short of remarkable. And girls don't stop at just breasts for good beads. The short and curlies come out to play as well. I even saw one girl, whom I suspect must have been choking, clear out her esophagus with the nearest available and conducive organic materials. (In her defense those were big beads.) The funny thing is people go down there knowing the system, and think they'll be immune to it. Why would they care about getting beads? But once they get there, they do. They do a lot. I even saw a couple of Penn's own showing their couples. The first day I was there I walked around for twenty minutes and couldn't have paid a girl to talk to me. Of course, that was because I hadn't gotten any beads yet. (Yeah, that's the ticket.) Then I got beads and, well, you should see my pictures. If you have nice beads, everyone on Bourbon notices. Everyone wants them. It's "supply and demand'' in the theoretically elusive perfect marketplace. But what is the basis for exchange in this marketplace? How can Mardi Gras work? Mardi Gras is just an excuse to rid ourselves of our sometimes restrictive society. Things are put in a more direct, purer form where even the ugly have fun. The Id comes out to play. But where do the rules come? There was no arbitrary selection of random things to do. Mardi Gras could not, for example, work if people were supposed to congregate on Bourbon and tell knock-knock jokes while eating a traditional feast of charoset and veal patties. There's real reason behind the mayhem. The breast-for-bead system did not come out of a vacuum. To massively oversimplify, men and women have evolved with different biologies and as such, they use different reproductive strategies to optimize their reproductive success. Men have been conditioned to seek fertility, while women are interested in finding a mate who will provide for them. Our cultural evolution has in some ways preempted our biological evolution leading to a sometimes altered expression of some of our fundamental attributes. (For example, women now often provide for themselves quite effectively.) But we cannot, as hard as we may try, escape our genetic blueprints, and our true nature asserts itself in most everything we do. Sometimes society's little rules, via conventions which designate "proper" times and places, are removed mostly or completely. Mardi Gras, God bless it, is one of those times. The fundamentals come out. Women demand the act of providing in return for sex. The men give to them -- the beads. (Even to the ugly ones.) For the male efforts of providing, women complete their end of the bargain. They show evidence of their fertility, a young nude body. Mardi Gras is a watered down version of what our biology has designed us for. The women don't really have sex for the trinkets. Economically, they cannot afford to because the men aren't exactly providing shelter and provisions for the women and their offspring. But the essence of it is still blatantly in tact. There is little space here to thoroughly discuss it, but suffice it to say, the reason Mardi Gras is so agreeable to those who can tolerate the crowds is because it brings out in us what we are built for. We get to do what we're supposed to. At Penn, that's not so easy. Girls barely ever "show their tits," say in Smoke's, and even less frequently in class. (But I understand that may be changing if Project 2000 gets through intact.) That's why not a single one of you should graduate without going. You'll get down on your hands and knees and thank me. And you're welcome. Return the favor by sending beads and copies of your pictures.
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