The Wrath of Don Flamenco

By: Justin Watson

Posted: 11/19/09

Law school is tough, and sometimes those lessons we need to get through it cannot be found in your casebook. Thus, in sharing with you a life lesson experience that carved me into the burgeoning advocate of law and justice I am today, I present to you the first part of my upcoming series, "Awesome: A User's Guide to Law School and Being Awesome".

The wrath of Don Flamenco

You remember what it was like…..it's 1988, and your mother is calling for you and your Gizmo t-shirt to get upstairs for dinner. You know that if you are late one more time, daddy will drink more of his grownup apple juice and physically express his contempt for his own life on you. As you fly up the stairs, heart pounding, you cannot take your mind off what just happened at your NES console just seconds before. It consumes your every thought and colors your every emotion. You just got your ass handed to you by the Second Don Flamenco.

[If you don't know who I'm talking about, stop right here. You can either accept this reality and ride out your remaining years with a perm and a Miata, or you can take corrective action now by downloading Mike Tyson's Punchout for Nintendo and having that childhood American corporate executives wanted you to have. Then come back here and read on.]

"What just happened?", you think to yourself. Your thoughts linger back to 45 minutes ago when you faced that silly Spaniard for the first time. He came out with a rose in his mouth like your uncle used to, pranced around the ring taunting you and making that little whimpering "mwhe" sound, then unleashed his Flamenco Uppercut, a punch about as effective as the cover letter you sent to Williams & Connely. You dodged left and pounded him like a Miller Lite at an SBA happy hour. If you were horrible enough at this game to take him to the second round, he would try to intimidate you with frivolous taunts like, "People like my hair. Don't mess my hair!" The Flamenco Dance….. "Haha," you chuckle to yourself as you remember how badly you ruined the self esteem of the last kid in your elementary school who tried to imitate it.

But this time……where the hell did that left cross come from? He has a jab? WHO THE HELL HAS A JAB IN PUNCH OUT?!?!? What is it about the new blue ring that suddenly turned this dude who wears Capri pants into a modern day cannibal? Is it the new aqua gloves? Did he put bricks in them? He taunts you, so you try and deck him in his mouth. He just blocked…and blocked again. Flamenco smells blood, and starts hitting you harder than the realization you're adopted. "Flamenco strikes back!! Return of Don!" he screams between round 1 and round 2. Indeed, Don, indeed.

Donny Flamenco taught you a couple of important lifelong lessons on that dark somber day, and you better not forget them:

1) Humility.

Just because you defeat someone once doesn't mean you will always succeed the second time. Stay hungry, and be ready for that appeal.

2) Work smarter, not harder.

I suppose one could make the argument that Mr. Flamenco got wrapped up with a gambling ring and guys having nicknames like "Wrench" and "Knuckles," and had to throw that first fight. I posit it to be more likely he juiced before the second. While one could make the historical case that the Spanish are indeed gamblers (Fountain of Youth expeditions through Florida; bulls rampaging through the streets on purpose; that whole 'send the entire Armada north' thing), recent soccer, tennis, and cycling exploits would suggest the Spanish in modern times are winners, and have adopted a calculated approach to doing so. And sadly, that means performance-enhancing drugs.

I know, this is the kind of thing you'd expect from Von Kaiser, the Berliner at the height of Cold War when the East German werewolf women were winning Olympic Medals with Vienna sausages in their shorts. But Kaiser fought like a guy who's seen Hasselhoff live. I'll bet you a subscription to Nintendo Power he's the one who got Flamenco to the "next level" with the same stuff that turned A-Rod into the only guy in baseball who both hits fifty home runs in a season and drinks wine coolers. Communists can't be trusted, and neither can a man with a curly mustache. Kaiser's both.

'Lil Mac, on the other hand, got ready for his fights by running around in a pink bunny suit chasing Al Roker on a bike. Who was working smarter?

3) Expect the unexpected.

The Spanish have a proven history of dressing in silly outfits, confusing you with sexual undertones, and then whipping ass whilst their opponents are giggling hysterically. Their deceptive tactics reached an apex when in 1997 the world was so entranced with Nick Cage's performance in "Con Air," that Enrique Iglesias was able to silently infiltrate pop music for good. Similarly, you crammed for your Contracts I final by studying waltzes and Harrier jets when you should have been memorizing every Restatement section your professor ever even thought about mentioning in class. In other words, the sexy, fun stuff in the law is merely there to distract you from your real mission: knowing when to choose "e) All of the above," one more time.