The Year Of The Fonz

A long time ago I mentioned that there's a guy on my floor who initially reminded me of my old piano teacher. He's in his early thirties and is from Chicago. He works as a park ranger during the summer and is fairly neurotic. He didn't really come out of his room a lot the first couple of months we all lived here but that's beginning to change. Shortly after New Year's Day, he hung out in the kitchen with the late night kitchen crew (i.e: The Poet, The Fallen Nun, Mr. Syracuse, Purple Hair, and myself) and announced that he was tired of not being cool.

"I want to be like Fonzie," he said. "Fonzie did whatever the hell he wanted and was always cool."

The whole kitchen crew had the same response: "Fonzie? That guy from 'Happy Days' that was in high school forever and ever?"

"F@#$ yeah! The Fonz was so cool!" he replied.

The conversation continued and by the end of the night, our friend the nervous park ranger decided to reinvent himself with Fonzie as his model.

"This is The Year Of The Fonz!" he exclaimed. "Ask me how old I am?"

"Okay. How old are you?"

"I'm gonna be turning 29 later this year."

And thus The Year Of The Fonz began. From here on out, I will refer to this individual as The Fonz.

Though the concept of aspiring to be a television character is insanely comical, it's actually quite inspiring to watch someone make such a conscious effort to improve their life. The crazy part is that it actually seems to be working. Not only has this guy seemed more confident and outgoing in the past couple of weeks, but multiple women have expressed their interest in him. I am not making this crap up.

Anyway, in my last post I mentioned a fun new collaborative project I'm working on. I think I failed to mention that my collaborative partner is The Fonz. We have the same bizarre sense of humor and like a lot of the same music (not to mention we both gave a report using puppets sometime in elementary school and were both forced to do it multiple times because the teacher loved it...now that's not a connection you make with somebody everyday...). So we figured we would give the collaboration thing a shot. We've gotten together a couple times and have slipped various ideas and sketches under each others doors. It's still a "top secret embryo" of an idea, but if/when it comes together it will be entertaining at the very least.

Last night, I had just gotten off the phone with my dad when there was a deep voice calling my name from right outside my door. I opened the door and it was The Fonz (wearing jeans and a white t-shirt, of course).

Me: Um, did you knock or were you just lurking around saying my name?
The Fonz: I was just saying your name. Is that not cool?
Me: Yeah...that was creepy...I don't think The Fonz would do that...
The Fonz: That was creepy? Oh my god, I'm sorry. I don't want to be creepy.
Me: It's alright, you've just gotta work on your entrance.

He left and came back. This time he knocked and said, "Hey hey! Yo Lauren, it's me!"

Fonzie (the real one) would have approved of this entrance.

What happened next was supposed to be a top secret jam session/brainstorming party for our project entitled "The Mushroom Heads." But we got way too into it and we were so loud and obnoxious that the whole building heard us and our imaginary cartoon British rock band. Apparently there was even a small crowd of people listening outside the door at one point. Everyone had the same questions:

- What the heck was going on in that room?
- Who was the British guy?
- Who was playing the tambourine?

When they realized that the British guy playing the tambourine was really just The Fonz with a fake accent, curiosity shot through the roof.

Meanwhile, the two of us were oblivious that we had an audience and were busy writing and belting out a song about germs. I can't remember the last time I had that much fun being that obnoxious.

Maybe we're jumping the shark with this cartoon band idea, but maybe we're onto something. Either way, it's a fun side project.

After our noisy, pseudo-British jam session, we discovered that my new teenage neighbor was having girl problems. So we joined forces with The Poet (and his guitar) to cheer the poor guy up with a hearty Nirvana sing-along. We also composed a new song entitled "Get Over Her, You Can Do Better." The Fonz played guitar and I accompanied him on the tambourine. The kid seemed significantly cheerier when our song was done.

I'd like to think that the real, fictional Fonzie would have been proud of all of us.