Party pooper says her piece

My cousin Abi sent me a very amusing Guardian article that echoes my opinion of clubs and the clubbing lifestyle as a whole (read it before proceeding). One passage I found particularly funny and spot-on was where the writer described something "frightening" that struck him about the crowd in the "fashionable London nightclub" he went to:

"They were all photographing themselves. In fact, that's all they seemed to be doing. Standing around in expensive clothes, snapping away with phones and cameras. One pose after another, as though they needed to prove their own existence, right there, in the moment. Crucially, this seemed to be the reason they were there in the first place. There was very little dancing. Just pouting and flashbulbs."

I can sense several of my students glaring at their computer screens and Ms.Lim's blog post right now (bato-bato sa langit...), but hey, they hafta admit the guy's got it right. One need only scan their Multiply albums for the incriminating evidence. :p Not that a camwhore like me is in any position to criticize, but I digress...

A few weeks back, over dinner with my cousin Joy and her boyfriend Steve, we got to talking about how we don't understand the allure of clubbing: dancing on a crowded floor with strangers' asses grinding up against you, smoking or inhaling vast clouds of second-hand smoke, enough to shave a good few years off your lungs' lifespan, and drinking overpriced beers and cocktails until you're wasted enough to do something stupid like climb up on a ledge in a micromini and stiletto heels (or worse, flirt with someone who looks good in the dark, but turns out to be some butt-ugly perv in the light of day). Or, as the Guardian article puts it, clubs are "cramped, overpriced furnaces with sticky walls and the latest idiot theme tunes thumping through the humid air so loud you can't hold a conversation, just bellow inanities at megaphone-level". And it's hard to comprehend how anyone finds them cool or fun.

I pretty much skipped that entire partying phase of my life during my teens and early 20s (my friends weren't and aren't the type who enjoy having to scream in each other's ears), and now, even if I did want to unleash my inner Tim Yap (*gag*), I just feel too old to be fighting for elbow room with hordes of college kids high on E or whatever designer drug is in right now. I have no regrets about not having been a wild child, and when I see photos of my students at "Emba" or Alchemy, drinks in hand, party poses honed to perfection, I only feel a mixture of wry amusement and faint concern. I don't judge them and their idea of a fun way to spend a weekend night, and I'm certainly not about to go Sister Dina-ballistic on them and lecture them on the evils of alcohol and short skirts, but when I see those pix I can't help thinking to myself that if I have a daughter someday, I'm chaining her up in her room until she's 30. Hopefully by then, people would have gotten sick of clubbing and come up with alternative ways of passing weekend nights, like clay pigeon shooting, quilting circles, or Chinese checkers tournaments.