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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Time to replace
UH Warrior
with a real meanieMy problem with the University of Hawaii football mascot, "Warrior Vili," has always been that he's kind of a wuss.
The garish makeup, the shell necklace, the bouquet of foliage, the skirt ... Come on, the guy's like a tropical version of Bette Davis. On steroids.
Sure, he yells a lot and makes angry faces at crowds, but so does Madonna.
UH has been under some pressure to sack the Warrior mascot, who actually is actor Vili Fehoko, because he is too "savage" and "rude" to visiting teams and their cheerleaders. Look, if the cheerleaders hate Vili, it's because he's better accessorized than they are. They wish they could look so good in ti leaves and five pounds of mascara.
As far as being savage, please. I've seen more ferocious house plants. If we're going to have a warrior mascot, I want that warrior doing warrior kinds of things like chucking spears into the opposing teams' huddles and pillaging their locker rooms.
What we need is a really frightening football mascot, one that will terrify and mortify opponents and their supporters. We need a mascot so fearsome that members of the other team will be afraid to take the field, and if they do will be so apoplectic, they'll be unable to walk, let alone run, pass and kick. That's why I propose the new mascot be the UH Warrior Lawyer.
Vili can even stay on to play the role. But instead of getting dolled up like a cross-dressing banana tree, he'll don the apparel and accouterments of a blood-chilling Warrior Lawyer.
His $10,000 sharkskin suit and baby seal fur boots will put the crowd on notice that there's a new sheriff in town. He won't yell. He'll stalk the opposing sidelines with an expression of cold disdain, whipping subpoenas and writs out of a rattlesnake-hide briefcase.
RIVAL CHEERLEADERS will swoon and change teams when the Warrior Lawyer offers to handle all of their future prenuptial contracts pro bono. Opposing coaches will freeze, unable to call a play for fear of being slapped with a preliminary injunction.
It will be a horrible, horrible sight for our poor adversaries when the UH Warrior Lawyer wades into their camp coolly brandishing cease and desist orders and search warrants and whispering fearful Latin phrases.
All the while, Timmy Chang is flinging passes downfield to open receivers, their defensive counterparts cowering by the goal posts for fear of treble damages being lodged against them for restraint of sports trade.
Supporters of the opposing team will sit mute in the stands, knowing whatever they yell can and will be used against them in a future civil suit filed with extreme prejudice by the merciless Warrior Lawyer.
Yes, my friends, we need a new mascot. One that kicks butt, takes names and charges by the minute.
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Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com