Feeling happy and nostalgic

Perhaps two of the most annoying songs that I’ve ever heard are “Shiny Happy People” by REM, and, much more recently, “Happy” by Pharrell Williams. Both songs, however, apparently perfectly describe the people of the Bayou State according to a study that you all have no doubt read about by now. 

Having done a bit of traveling during my former job and being a former resident of Dallas, Texas, it’s easy to figure out why.  

Quite simply, we are bred to have fun. It’s in our blood. And frankly we could give lessons on it to the rest of the country. 

Now there are drawbacks to being so happy and having so much fun. Mostly, it’s because it’s a bit harder for us to discipline ourselves when it comes to accomplishing things at work and school. In fact, the reason I moved to Dallas was to finish college because I was so fun and so happy as a student in Louisiana. 

The food and drinks we enjoy can be a problem too as I touched on in my column last week. Those who are concerned about it have to quietly eat their salads as they watch the people around them chomp down plates of rice and gravy and bags of cracklins. Those who are unconcerned (the group I unfortunately belong to) get to enjoy the best food on the planet as we watch our waistlines grow and perhaps remove a few years from our life expectancy. 

Now aside from things like our food that make us so happy and so fun because they simply exist here, there is an attitude, a way we conduct (or maybe I should say misconduct) ourselves that is just different. 

I’ve always loved going to concerts. Having been to several in Louisiana and Texas, I’ve always thought that musicians must really love coming to cities such as Baton Rouge or New Orleans.

Anyone ever been to a concert in Dallas? 

Nobody dances. Nobody jumps around like they’ve lost their minds. It’s just a bunch of guys with their arms around their girlfriends who will occasionally raise their arms in the air. As far as dancing in public, well ....

Once The Bluerunners, a zydeco band out of Lafayette, came to play in downtown Dallas at a place called Club Clearview. We were excited to go see them and several of my friends from Lafayette had taken the opportunity to come up for a visit.

My friend Fella (actually his real name is Patrick)was always very demonstrative during concerts. That night, he literally couldn’t find one woman who was willing to dance with him. And it wasn’t because he was being annoying or that the women found him unattractive (at least he never had that problem in Louisiana). It was simply that they literally didn’t like to dance. At one point he got so frustrated that he just grabbed one girl’s arm and made her twirl around. 

Of course, part of this may have been due to the fact that Cajun music in Dallas sounded like music from a foreign country. But when bands from foreign countries come to Lafayette for Festival International do we avoid dancing because it’s a style of music we don’t recognize?

Of course not. It can be a drum band from Mali or a heavy metal band from Belgium - we eat it up and beg for more.

I wonder what the people in these bands are thinking when they are playing to a crowd of thousands of people who are dancing or jumping around like they’ve lost their minds (which is how I describe people like myself who can’t dance)? I’m sure they think most of us are crazy and they’d be right. However, you can’t tell me that the words ‘happy’ and ‘fun’ don’t cross their minds.

To the rest of the country - don’t ask us to explain it. We can’t. All we know is that we’ve been bred for it. It’s in our blood. 

On a different subject, a high school buddy of mine named Pat Magee (who works as an Assistant District Attorney from Lafayette) has been putting up these nostalgic posts on Facebook that I’ve really found to be entertaining. He always starts these posts off with “I am old school Lafayette because (fill in the blank).”

The most recent one he put up on Friday said that he was old school Lafayette because “I saw “The Wiz” at the Pat Theater on Four-Corners (Cameron St.); “Grease” at the Nona Theater on Simcoe St.; “Rocky” at the Westwood Theater on Congress St.; and, “Star Wars” at the Plaza Theater on Johnston St.”

As I was thinking about it today this brought back many memories. Mostly because simply seeing a movie in a theater is something that people rarely do these days. Going to a movie at a theater like one of the aforementioned would be exceptionally rare because they were true dinosaurs. They were theaters that played only one movie. 

Any of you older - cough, cough - I mean middle-aged people out there remember when the movie itself was the real event? 

I can remember going to see Star Wars and hiding between the seats so that we could watch the movie three times throughout the course of a day. And as an 11-year-old, I did this several times throughout the entire time that Star Wars (which must have played for the entire summer that year) ran at The Plaza. 

I’m not sure about this as I think about it at my desk in Crowley, but I think the buildings that housed The Pat, The Westwood and The Nona are no longer standing. A couple of people tried to turn The Plaza into a place to go party during the 90s but it never really worked out (even in a fun and happy place like Lafayette). 

I went there a couple of times and it was alright I guess. There was just always something that felt kind of sacrilegious about drinking and flirting with girls in the same building where Obi -Wan Kenobi got slashed down with a light saber by Darth Vader. 

Until next week.  

Howell Dennis is a native of Lafayette, La. He attended the University of Texas at Arlington where he graduated in journalism and public relations.