The Flyer mystique

The ancient Greeks communicated through fire signals. The Allies used cryptography in World War II. Mariners use gigantic flags. At Penn, there are no fire signals or code breakers or red flags waving on Locust Walk to disseminate vital information, like the date of Shabbatones' next concert. We have no need for these rudimentary communication techniques. They are crude, at best, and thus, Penn students have created a more highly evolved system. We have The Flyer.

At first glance, The Flyer may seem nothing more than a neon piece of paper, shoved into your face as you navigate your way to economics. "Take a flyer," they call, desperately. "Come see PennYo and PennSix and PennDance and PennandTeller and PennandPencil perform our biweekly shows." But to say that The Flyer is simply about going to Mask and Wig's 17th show this season is to not give credit where credit is due.

You see, my friends, The Flyer is a not simply a waste of ink and trees. It is an art. And like any art, there are certain techniques to make sure you take your frickin' flyers that end up in the green trash cans dotting Locust Walk. These techniques have been studied by anthropologists, I am sure, but no one has written about them at great length.

But The Flyer's story needs to be told because to avoid its history is to deny its very existence. And since I spent the last week flyering with anyone who would let me, I figured that I'd have about as much insight as that crazy LaRouche supporter on College Green.

To flyer is to experience a river of cell phones and a sea of Ugg boots shuffling by quickly, without looking up. I am not like them. I always take flyers. If you climbed the scaffolding outside my window and looked inside, like the construction workers do every morning, you would notice that the walls of my common room are completely covered in hundreds of them.

Every single flyer I've been handed this year on Locust Walk has been meticulously stapled to my walls in a colorful, yet surprisingly elegant design. It's Martha Stewart meets John Nash chic. The posters complement the poor plumbing and heating and lighting in Harnwell, but more importantly, they make me look like I'm a member of every Asian a cappella group on campus.

Sometimes I'll even double back down Walnut and up Locust again to get multiple copies of particularly awesome flyers. Recently, however, I noticed that I was one of the few, if any, students who eagerly awaited the setting up of the tables and the calling of the parties and a cappella shows every morning.

After flyering for a week, I realized how many Penn students use avoidance techniques for The Flyer. One girl pretended to take a flyer, even reaching her hands out in sweet anticipation of grabbing it, only to psych out Penn Jazz and continue on her way. Others would apologize, look down or pretend to talk on their cell phones, to their friends or to themselves.

The Flyerers realize this. They try in vain to come up with funny catch phrases to catch attention, if only for a second. One group had some guy on stilts. Some groups plead, use guilt or sing. Another music group uses a technique by which three Flyerers extend their hands at the same time. Sneaky, yet effective. The Flyer Bomb, they called it.

I found that by making eye contact, passers-by are eight times more likely to take a flyer. So is calling out their name or guessing their approximate weight. "You're a fucking pork chop," I said to one guy. "Want to go to Battle of the Bands?"

He declined, though he did pause momentarily, which I took as a good sign. "Support PennYo!" I screamed at people. "You don't have to be Asian to enjoy the sultry sounds of Asian a cappella." It was, in fact, quite successful when I screamed for groups where I was clearly not a member. It forced people to pause, and some even took The Flyer.

I suggested to Penn Jazz that they use fire signals, but they declined. Apparently there are rules against creating combustible signals on the Walk. I told Without a Net to dive bomb carrier pigeons. They said no. I tried to set up a table featuring the nicest flyers I could find and was promptly told to vacate.

The next time someone offers you a flyer for the nation's oldest all-male Alaskan Chinese Albino Peruvian Elvish Ethiopian Lithuanian Luddite Alabaman singing group, take it. Where else are you going to get a wall decoration that cool?

Melody Joy Kramer is a junior English major from Cherry Hill, N.J. Perpendicular Harmony appears on Wednesdays.

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