The infectious strain of Nicely Nicely Johnson’s solo from Guys and Dolls wafts haphazardly about the dusty attic of my addled thoughts. Driving nine hours straight. I cough uncontrollably for 15 seconds, gasping for breath and frantically searching my pockets for my inhaler. (www.creativesystems.com) Bronchitis. I watch the red sun setting over Yates and Glover Park, a slow pan through the evening lull of Red Square, sandals clop clop like reindeer hooves across the bricks. Ah, back at Georgetown! Lacking call waiting, the neural messages from my stomach, on hold for hours, finally bust out in a mad dash for the hypothalamus, prompting the conscious realization that I haven’t eaten since eight in the morning. There can be only one solution.
When one speaks of the Chicken Madness, the individual must wrestle with the temptation to call upon higher academic, poetic or philosophical language to communicate the phenomenological experience that is Wisemiller’s Chicken Madness. Sometimes, it’s not enough. Even for the best of us, the challenge of verbalizing the ensuing metaphysical consequences of the unique explosion of oral and culinary ecstasy, leave any attempt at description looking utterly facile and inadequate. When language begins to break down, when words do not exist to lend communicable meaning to experience, in that moment, we have achieved transcendence. The Chicken Madness is a spiritual dynamo, with each savory bite instantly challenging individual consumers to rethink their notions of happiness, existence and localized sustainable market economics. Even one’s innermost hopes and dreams may be recontextualized and fundamentally brought into question by the mouth-watering aroma of 17 secret herbs and spices.
Noted North Korean herbalist Dr. Ismoka Lotaweed has written extensively on the unique appetite-quenching and hunger- abatement properties of the Chicken Madness. “According to long-term controlled group studies with individuals under severe, chemically-induced, neurological hunger symptoms, often referred in common parlance as the “munchies,” the Chicken Madness far outperforms any other leading commercially-available sandwich, even when we account for variation in sandwich mass. We suspect these astounding results to have something to do with Wisey’s use of only the choicest tender breast-meat, along with crisp bacon, hand-picked tomatoes, peppers, onions and lettuce.” Scientists have not yet been able to crack Wisey’s secret recipe, but suspect it to contain other ingredients available only in the finest bazaars of eastern Tajikistan. In short, the technological design and culinary genius of the Chicken Madness are simply decades ahead of the competition, says Lotaweed.
Despite a well-documented history of diffusing antagonistic situations ranging from roommate disagreements over drunken destruction of ornamental bonsai trees to the 1971 National Guard encirclement of the campus during the Vietnam anti-war protests?during which student leaders of the protest movement had 17 Chicken Madness sandwiches delivered to National Guard Commander Robert Cunningham in a show of good will?not everyone is a fan of Georgetown’s venerated sandwich.
Already, fundamentalist vegetarian elements among the more radical fringes of the Georgetown community are mobilizing to put an end to the Chicken Madness and replace it forever with its bland, tasteless, evil stepchild, the so-called “Tofu Madness.” As Americans and Hoyas, we must unite in support of our sandwich?God’s chosen sandwich. Responsible student leaders have come out in support of the Chicken Madness, pledging to “fight until the bitter end” to preserve the time-honored campus tradition in the face of a small minority of heavily-armed vegan agitators.
Of course, for all of us, the Madness must end sometime. Three years of exposure to Chicken Madness have, for myself and many of my classmates, completely reinvented our perceptions of our lives and the world around us. As we will soon leave behind us the crisp sensation of juicy satisfaction for high-powered Wall Street jobs, Peace Corps adventures in the post-Soviet borderlands or, for us English majors, abject poverty and homelessness, none will ever forget the good times that were made all that much better by Chicken Madness. Nor can we fail to remember those rainy days of soulful contemplation that could only be remedied by, again, The Madness, along with about 64 fluid ounces of Caffrey’s Cream Ale.
Eric Nazar is a senior in the College and contributing editor of The Georgetown Voice. Master Ittei commented: “Matters of small concern should be treated seriously.”
