eating cake at autzen

Eating Cake at Autzen

Yamamoto Tsunetomo was quoted in Chapter 2, verse 38 (Littering Laughed Off) of the Hagakure: "In the Kamigata area they have a sort of tiered lunch box they use for a single day when flower viewing (hanami). Upon returning, they throw them away, trampling them underfoot. As might be expected, this is one of my recollections of the capital [Kyoto]. The end is important in all things."
So it was on Saturday evening.
My wife is a debt-ridden University of Oregon alumnus, so she was entered into and won tickets to the Touchdown Terrace at Autzen Stadium. Even coming in was nearly as strange an experience as I expected it to be. I've worked as a "blue shirt" at Autzen before, and recognized about one staff member in four; about one in three recognized me, which was unsettling. To be inspected, carded, stamped, and to impress others with our fancy tickets, was also unsettling. Employees who had been abusive slave drivers treated me with slightly bitter deference or with awestruck chivalry. We were not herded like cattle, but rather were quickly told where to go, in fine detail, whenever we asked. Shops and restaurants must pay a great deal for the honor of selling their wares at these events; having no competition and a captive audience of people with no reasonable expectations of cost, the prices were high.
The Touchdown Terrace is a Club level box, the front balcony open to the air, with free catering, several televisions, and well-groomed people who cared very much about looking like they didn't care very much about their appearance. Most people wore t-shirts, but I quickly noticed, for example, that I was the only person with an elbow on a table. I have to admit, I hoped I'd scandalized somebody. Certainly it was not long before my wife and I had a table to ourselves.
The wine flowed freely, one might say. My wife became relaxed under the influence of free pinot noir and muscatel. For my part, I drank too much coffee, and so was comfortable as well. When my wife accidentally knocked over a glass when going to lift it, the table also became comfortable. As I suspected, this was not a crisis to the staff, who were quite prepared for such an eventuality and quick to comfort us, all smiles, that we had not committed a grevious error. I'm sure I was a curiosity, a zoo exhibit, which amused me perhaps even more than it might have them.
It was all rather daft. Bottomless wine glasses and plastic beer cups on a carpet floor. Commercials on the television advertised for Autzen Stadium as if we were not already willingly present; they wanted, needed in fact, to sell their product to those who had already bought it.
At some point I became aware restaurants competed to cater the club level, as two other patrons were discussing the last game's caterers by way of comparison.
The portabello mushroom and beef was more to my wife's taste than my own, so I settled for chicken in a caper sauce. The most bizarre part to me was that tasted bland. The same was true of the large quantity of bacon twice baked potatoes. The food was clearly expensive, and again free and in copious quantity. I have little basis for comparison, but have been informed by a dear friend (who has more experience with a rather more absurd level of opulence than myself) these were made to emulate comfort food, and were indicative of the ridiculous cycle of resources and popular dishes between the upper and lower classes.
I actually like football a little, and took a great deal of interest as each team in this very lopsided match-up nevertheless had panicked struggles at the other's touchdown line. Fourth and goal came up thrice. Nevertheless, I spent most of the game reading the Romance of the Three Kingdoms on my battered, glitchy, used smartphone. Oregon scoring another touchdown against Washington was a little less interesting to me than the death of a fictional version of Zhuge Liang on yet another excursion into Cao Wei. I wonder if they erroneously thought me lonely. Certainly none came to my dubious aid, and all the better.
My phone had no signal, my wife's did. Hers is paid for by her parents. I married up, so I have to assume everyone else present had service, and my carrier simply had no relevant repeaters. Like the catering, cell phone coverage must have been limited to a privileged few.
The staff were quite zealous about keeping the plasticwear and paper plates cleared. This was not to discourage eating, which was in fact encouraged. The entrees were available past halftime. My wife, being quickly overwhelmed, left around that time, leaving me to continue the bizarre experience alone. In that time I accidentally went through three paper bowls, two paper plates, five paper coffee cups, two plastic knives and two plastic forks. I had not resolved to eat myself sick. That was more or less an accident born of Puritanism, the bad habit of cleaning one's plate, in the presence of never-ending nachos. Eventually, too late to save myself from a great deal of pain, I realized I could stop, and was expected to do so regardless of how much food was left in my paper bowl.
At one point I was asked to watch four full cups of beer, which I did fairly diligently until I established the patron wasn't going to return for them. Presumably he'd replaced and forgotten them.
One thing which struck me as I was leaving was a line of pavilion tents near the parking lots. Televisions, tables, everything a tailgate party probably should lack, all arranged and ready for rental. Most, probably all, had clearly seen use.
On reflection, it was not merely conspicuous consumption. The paper plates, plastic forks and knives, the plastic cups, these were intended to simulate a tailgate party; the twice baked potatoes a lower class comfort food. These people were slumming it from the comfort of their insulated, carpeted room, unable quite to let their hair down in the presence of their own.
They don't understand us. Their insulated club and private balcony are negation, defining themselves as distinct from us. Our free tickets from the Alumni Association were a rare chance to see how the few live, and what I saw was a distorted fetishization of people they do not want to be; they wish to be seen as poor, or at least middle class, but not to be so in any sense at all, so they take their paper tiered lunch boxes out for hamani, then trample them underfoot. Even at play they feel the need to be seen. The result is waste and exploitation, to take care to not care. Charles Colton, whom I've never read, once said imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In this case, I think it would be more accurate to say imitation is the sincerest form of condescension.

Solidarity,
M. Stingray

Title consultant: Jillian Littel
Lingual and cultural consultant: Subspace Wumpus