"Riot Van," Arctic Monkeys

It was the Virginia Tech game at Clemson, the year was…2007? 2008? The memory gets a little hazy here, and here’s why: I was coming off an epic drunk when the game wound down.

What, me drink? Shocker! Yes, kids, I drink, or have drunk, alcoholic beverages, sometimes on a regular basis, sometimes once or twice a year. Lately, no alcohol has passed these lips. But anyway, this was on a day during which much drinking was done by myself and my buddy Will.

Come to think of it, the actual memory might be of the Boston College game in ’07…yes, Boston College. Because it was after this game (a loss for the home team) that I decided to cheer up my fellow Tiger faithful with a speech.

Specifically, the “friends, Romans, and countrymen” speech from “Julius Caesar.” That’s right, I dropped some Shakespeare on everyone’s asses.

We were streaming out of the stadium after the kicker failed to get the ball through the up-rights. My exact memory of that moment is “yes…yes…fuck!” To say that everyone was depressed would be an exaggeration. I had been drinking before the game, of course. Like I said, Uncle Trevor has known the demon rum (especially when mixed with Coke). I had completed a course devoted entirely to Shakespeare, the guy who basically wrote every kind of play (unless he didn’t…yeah, that’s one conspiracy theory I could never buy into. It’s basically “this country rube couldn’t possibly write that well.” As a country rube, I resent that kind of thinking). So it was fresh in my memory.

I mounted a tree bank that put me slightly above my audience, and I started to recite the speech. But I ad-libbed, of course, tying the recent loss into the speech Mark Anthony gave over Caesar’s body (the one where he’s saying “let’s not mourn Caesar” while basically whipping up the crowd to mourn Caesar and move against the conspirators). I wish someone was recording it (my buddy Will was too busy laughing and egging me on), because if I’m remembered at all amongst my peers from our time at Clemson, that would be high on my list (along with the time I yelled out a derogatory comment about Chuck Norris’s height within hearing distance of Walker, Texas Ranger himself).

But you can’t pick what other people remember you for. Ask Steve Bartman, or Bill Buckner, or the Mayans. Ask the captain of the Titanic, ask the cast of “Saved by the Bell.” History will remember you for what it wants to remember you for. When you get drunk, you do stupid things (such as forget to put on your panties while clubbing…ask Britney Spears). Was my speech that night brilliant, or stupid? The fact that I can’t remember much of it should tell you where I think it falls, but hell, I could be wrong. Youthful indiscretions when you’re a politician come back to bite you in the ass. But I’m not stupid enough (or drunk enough) to ever run for office. So if this ever comes up as a mark against me, well, I brought it up. I’m owning it, for what it’s worth.