Just as reading the second clause of this sentence won't do you much good unless you understand what whence means, reading this blog really won't do you much good unless you understand whence we come. But instead of giving you a detailed description of the town of Amherst and it's endlessly strange high school, I'm going to give you a rundown of some of the weirdest things we've done.
Today’s post concerns one of our most notorious fiascos: the West Side Story Standoff--or, as I like to call it, the Mexican Standoff. It’s a very strange story and to this day there is a lot of misinformation floating around. For that reason I think it’s time somebody set the record straight. So as soon as you finish reading this, make sure to head over to wikipedia to make sure the stories line up.
Basically, it all started back in 2000 or so when the Jesus fetus was aborted by a lesbian in Northampton. After that blood rained down from the sky for a few weeks and all the crops turned into peanuts due to the high protein levels in the soil. Due to a high demand for cheap labor, a few white supremacists decided to send a giant raft down to Cuba with an invitation to America, but El Nino caused an unpredictable change in the Atlantic currents and the vessel ended up on the shores of Puerto Rico. Enraged by the blatant racism implicit in the poorly-translated message, a large band of Puerto Ricans decided to exact revenge by immigrating to the Pioneer Valley and undermining its subtly engrained sense of cultural imperialism by guilt-tripping privileged intellectuals and stealing class time from public schools with assemblies of dubious value. They devised a rather elaborate plan, gathered several dozen pitchforks, and boarded the raft. Due to their excitement, however, they forgot to pack food. At the end of their three week journey across the Atlantic seaboard only six of the original thirty-two travelers remained, and among the people to draw the short straws were the orchestrators of the revenge plan. Thus upon their arrival in Amherst, the travelers had only a vague idea of what they actually meant to do. So, like most lost, confused, and essentially unskilled people, they decided to try their hand at acting. And as luck would have it, scheduled for that winter was a high school musical that seemed tailor made for them: West Side Story.
Some of the more musically inclined travelers auditioned, and although they gave altogether excellent snapping performances, the director refused to cast them on the basis that they did not speak English and were about twenty years too old to enroll in the high school. The luckless Puerto Ricans went to the administration with complaints of age discrimination, and were promptly thrown out by a bemused, if apathetic, Assistant Principle Ms. Marta Guevara. Twelve minutes later they returned with complaints of racism. This time everyone cared. In fact, some eyewitnesses report that Ms. Guevara actually sprayed molten lava from pores in her abdomen--an event considered by many prominent zoologists to be the female Neanderthal orgasm.
A long and grueling court battle ensued. The conflict evolved from a simple question of policy on the part of the school to a Constitutional squabble, thanks in part mostly to Ms. Guevara’s inflammatory rhetoric and, ironically enough, poor command of the Spanish language, which caused her to completely misinterpret the Puerto Ricans’ complaints. Then on the one hand were the fairly trivial matters of the First Amendment and the status of West Side Story as a classic of American theatre, and on the other was RACISM. And due both to the attractiveness of a one word argument and to the chronic, all-consuming fear of being labeled culturally insensitive--a condition endemic of Amherst residents--RACISM won. West Side Story was cancelled and replaced with some other lousy musical, which nobody went to see and in which no Puerto Rican held a major role. On the positive side, however, progressive proponents of intercultural understanding finally found some common ground with fascist proponents of random censorship. And more importantly, Amherst High School successfully deflected attention from the fact that they were employing exactly no people of color as teachers of core academic subjects. So after a flurry of national attention and intense accusations of absurd political correctness, the furor died down and life returned to normal just in time for people to resume trivializing each other’s religions during the Winter Holidays. And everyone lived happily ever after, except for the still-homeless Puerto Ricans, all of whom died, penniless and anonymous, in the bitter New England cold.
