I’m writing to praise everyone involved with Midnight Madness. I came expecting to see the usual Midnight Madness: Silly contests and giveaways combined with an emcee who no one can hear (which is a good thing, since hearing them is usually worse than not hearing them).

Instead, this year we were treated to a spectacle of Las Vegas proportions. It was cornier than Iowa. It takes skill to create such corn. Referring to the concept of Scheissbedauern made popular by Joel Queenen’s book Red Lobster, White Trash, and The Blue Lagoon, things that mildly suck are much less entertaining than things that truly know how to bite the big one. It’s like the difference between seeing an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical that sucks, but not enough to make you watch it, and Yanni, who sucks enough to keep you entertained for hours.

Midnight Madness, instead of just throwing together performers who, on their own are cheesy as hell, created a masterpiece of suck. According to Queenan, to create a mosaic of suck, the greatest blunder one can make is to include a performance that displays some talent. Midnight Madness made no such mistake.

They knew that having a guy juggling on a piano must be followed up by a troupe of exploited children jugglers. While someone less adept at suck might have wavered and gone off to some contest, Midnight Madness continued the barrage a cheese and gave us the Friday night gang from the local United Skates of America. And for the Grand Finale, which is where other programs usually slip up and let some actual talent slip out, Midnight Madness awed us with unimpressive fireworks and an inept fire juggler. The night was worth it if only to watch the Smith Center staff’s faces as the flaming torches fell to the floor, and the juggler, on her stilts, was unable to pick them up.

Thank you GW, for the corniest show I’ve seen in a long time.

They did mean it to be corny, didn’t they?

-John Igrecsenior