All Bro’s Day

Happy Hallowmas! For those of you who don’t know (viz., everyone except Cru members and the Chapel organist), today is the Solemnity of All Saints. As one might question the particulars of how Easter has come to entail bunnies and brightly colored eggs, you’re probably wondering about the relationship between a Christian day of solemnity and the act of donning a slutty Hermione Granger costume to get banged by a drunken Antoine Dodson. I know at first blush the connection seems tenuous at best, but there’s actually a fascinating history that, if properly interpreted, makes perfect sense! I’ll explain.

All Saints Day honors those who have attained the ludicrous concept of the beatific vision in heaven. This is when, according to bros who never got laid, a soul in heaven is able to actually see God through direct, visual perception. Thomas Aquinas states that the experience transcends “both reason and faith,” another preposterous notion and, perhaps not inappropriately, an invalidation of Duke’s pithy (and itself contradictory) Latin motto. In 1334, there was heated disagreement over whether saved souls attain the Vision before Judgment Day or on it, and a consistory was held in the Vatican to stay the controversy.

You have to wonder what goes on at these “consistories” that the Church holds to settle internal disputes, and now I’m approaching the point: Any time a bunch of aging bros dress up like Celia Cruz and get together in a gigantic palace that is also a country they own to argue over the most minute details of S— THEY MADE UP IN THE FIRST PLACE, one cannot help but distrust the sincerity and seriousness of their conduct. I mean, we’re supposed to believe the same group of people who have run the world for millennia actually sat around bickering about whether unbaptized babies go to limbo or heaven or Middle Earth or some other made up dimension? And the funniest part is that they actually come to decisions on this codswallop. Just a few years ago, the Pope reversed Catholic doctrine and claimed “new findings” revealed that there is no limbo, and babies actually go to this new made up place where they are in a “perpetual state of grace.” OK, Pope Benedict... you clearly just called up Christopher Nolan and asked him what sort of deus ex machina contrivance you could use to save you from a failing and hole-filled plot. And while we’re on the subject, if the Pope is somehow able to commune with fantasy and ellicit “new findings” about fictional places such as limbo, the question on everyone’s mind then becomes: What’s the official Catholic doctrine on whether or not Leo was trapped in limbo at the end of Inception? Was it all a dream? Was he baptized?? Why are there no consistories on the issues that matter?

OK, “Gossip Bro,” you’re really losing me. What does any of this have to do with Halloween? Because, dear reader, the Church doesn’t do anything to commemorate All Saints any more than we do. They probably get super drunk and in the best Imperial Red Guard costumes this side of Skywalker Ranch they have the dankest All Saints’ Eve frat party that trillions of dollars of guiltily extorted frat dues can buy. Haven’t you ever wondered why they smoke up some headies every time they elect a new Pledge Master? There’s a reason they call it the “College” of Cardinals, and while a few historians disagree with my analysis of the origins of Halloween, I think it’s pretty clear that the custom of getting effed up and parading around in costumes is straight ex cathedra.

Now that we’re clear, let’s flash forward to 2010. It’s Halloween weekend, and with his trademark satire Gossip Bro is dressed as “Slutty Hitler,” leaving no Waffle House unvomitted in and all the while documenting the experience with photos in an effort to ensure that he never, ever gets a job as anything other than a Gossip Bro. There were a number of stellar costumes this year, and I started to realize that the best thing about attending an elite university is not the potential for intellectual stimulation in the classroom, but rather the utter cleverness of our Halloween costumes. I personally had a lot of difficulty deciding between going as the Westboro Baptist Church, the Smoke Monster from “Lost,” a Slutty Chilean Miner... I even considered going as “Slutty Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill,” but I didn’t really have the legs to pull it off. But in general, the costumes that were afoot this weekend were both topical and provocative, and they really contributed to the already rich marketplace of ideas that we have here at Duke. One costume I saw that I thought deserved particular kudos was a group of girls who went as “The Four Lokos.” Simply brilliant.

So Halloween may be over, and you may be fretting over the reluctant return to your books and pens and Adderall, but fear not! Just remember that you’re only five days and 12 Lokos away from the triumphant return of Tailgate, from which Halloween is really just a minor distraction anyway.

…And all the FourLokos and all his drunk friends / Couldn’t put Gossip Bro together again.