Don't Throw Eggs At People
Throwing eggs at people is not, and has never been, cool.
My colleague Lillian Stone, fellow Takeout staff writer, recently shared that she had been randomly pelted by an egg from a moving car while she was strolling near Chicago's Wrigley Field. Normally when I hear about a friend being assaulted by some airborne foodstuff my first thought is one of concern, but since I have every single word of Paul's Boutique committed to memory since I was 13 years old, it took all my strength not to immediately break into this:
I am mature enough to know it's inappropriate to shout "Holy shit that's awesome!" when someone tells you they were the victim of a surprise egg attack, even if the Beastie Boys made drive-by eggings sound super cool. I know that I would not like it very much if anyone—even King Ad-Rock himself!— threw an egg at me, because I'm freakishly pale and bruise easily. And eggs hurt! Sure, they they shatter when thrown against a hard surface like a sidewalk, but when one only has a soft fleshy coating of flesh to protect them, eggs are essentially smooth, ovoid rocks that taste good on toast.
I began to think about the Beastie Boys when they were young scamps, tormenting the the families, the punk rocks, and the businessmen of Los Angeles with egg attacks as they recorded Paul's Boutique in 1988, and it hit me that one of my favorite songs in existence—one that I have listened to thousands of times and can spit at the drop of a dime—is about a cavalcade of douchebags.
My soul felt as if it was being stabbed like Caesar, my brain rattled as it imagined the words "Get off my lawn!" spoken in my own voice. And yet, after the initial shock wore off, I was not sad to have grown too old to find eggings amusing. If anything, I was angry at myself for ever celebrating egg-related mischief, or thinking it was the apotheosis of cool. I don't want anyone to get hit with eggs unless they explicitly ask for it, or really, really, really deserve it. Did you ever cause any egg-based ruckus in your younger, stupider days? Perhaps on Halloween, or an Easter gone wrong?