Is there such a thing as a "perfect Trinity Ball"? Photo: Martin McKenna
Jack Cantillon
Spoofer-in-Chief
They got it all wrong.
Who do they think they are? A handful of half decent headliners, throw up a few tents, do a hype video and they think they’ll have us all paying 80 euro a ticket? Have they read the papers lately? I’m screwed, you’re screwed, the whole country is feckin’ screwed. This is probably going to be your last Trinity Ball ever. You’re going to be singing “Waltzing Matilda” in Melbourne or “99 Red Balloons” (or whatever the the German national anthem is) this time next year. We need a plan. We need a party. We need to go out with a bang, something to tell the Enkelkinder about. Let’s blow the lot on Trinity Ball 2012 because Enda is not going to be thinking “let’s make a good headliner for the Trinity Ball an non-negotiable” when negotiating bailout numero deux with the troika. It’s time for a ball, a real ball and I know exactly what to do.
First, we need cash. Let’s sell off all our unique disposable assets. The Book of Kells, Cobblestones and Aaron Heffernan should all raise a few quid. We must have a degree-printing machine somewhere around campus. We can use to this our advantage. Unemployed, no qualifications and barely a handful of brain cells but a rake of cash under the bed, Trinity College would love to have you. Medical degrees printed off for 2 grand a pop, English degrees for €500 and Business & Computing degrees for less then the price of the paper it’s written on. No brainer. Why stop there? We should charge for the use of the Campanile to play advertising jingles every hour on hour. Why the hell didn’t we sell the naming rights of the Pav before? I’d love to have a few Bav in the Rabo Direct Lounge. Remember that contraption they had down by the Science Gallery that made words out of water? Let’s sell that to Coca Cola and just have it saying “Drink Coke’ over and over again. We should have a good few million at this stage. Just to top it off let’s sell the nursing building (sure it’s miles off campus and they’re all in Coppers anyway), rent out the Old Library for a few raves and tell all the residents on campus to vacate their apartments so we can get a few quid off the tourists in the springtime. Now, by my calculations, if everyone plays ball, we should have €37.4 million. It’s time to have some fun.
Tickets. Let’s cut out the messing. Everyone is getting a ticket in Trinity this year. I don’t care if you don’t know the front side of a dress suit from your own backside. You’re having a ticket thrust into your claw for this year’s ball, on the house. It’s your last ball; you might as well come along. Now for headliners, with €37.4 million fumbling around in our back pocket we can probably afford to splash the cash a little bit. Beyoncé, I don’t care that you want to spend time with your newborn, that’s nothing 5 million can’t sort out. Bon Iver, I know you just won two Grammy’s so you’re not exactly as ALT as you once were. Still though you might pop over to see us for a million. Jack White, we know you’ve disbanded the White Stripes, but for €3 million, do you think you’d be persuaded to give it another go? Same question to James Murphy re: LCD Soundsystem. U2 loves money, you can pop along for €4 million, just bring your 360 stage with you okay? Coldplay, don’t really like you but sure if you’re in town and you want two million, we can throw you into the mix. Calvin Harris, for 100k you can do a DJ set beside the queue for the jacks. James Vincent McMurrow you can busk on the way in for 10k. Jessie J, in the words of The Rubberbandits in a recent interview, “you’ve no tits anyway” so you can feck off. Grand, line up sorted.
The night itself. As you receive your complementary party bus to the venue you will go through a security check to make sure your carrying at least a shoulder. If not, you will receive, on the spot, an emergency naggin to tide you over. We’ll divide the tents into ways we actually assess acts. The Mainstream tent, where acts that everybody knows play songs that all sound the same and everyone feels like a Hotpress critic such is their deep understanding of the lyrics in a song where the chorus is repeated 17 times the ALT tent where no band will actually play but if they did play you wouldn’t have been there because by reading this article your not ALT enough to attend, sorry. The Power Nap tent, need a quick forty winks to get you through the night just pop over here where we will also guarantee the spoon from someone decidedly more attractive then you are. The “they’re not big yet but they might be, but they probably won’t be” tent here you can find all those acts that are probably shit but might just not be in one handy spot. Throw in guys indiscriminately handing out 50-euro notes (66, yeah?), a free bar and slides to take you from one tent to the next and we’re sorted.
Once the night is finished, you’ll receive a chicken fillet roll, another naggin for old times sake and some young fresher who we convinced you’re the manager of the headline act. Let’s make this dream a reality. It’s only a bit of red tape stopping us, that and €37.4 million. At least now we have something tangible to demand from next year’s Ents Officer.
