You’re sitting at a Mexican restaurant with some friends trying to enjoy a veggie fajita when out of the corner of your eye you spot a patterned vest. At first you think it’s a waiter or some shit, but those doilies glinting under the lights tell a much different story. Out of nowhere comes an accordion, a violinist, and seven guitarists with brilliantly patterned vests and they swarm a family, breaking into a song loud enough to conjure the spirit of Vicente Fernandez.
In this moment all you can think is “Fuck, they’re coming for me next.” Your mind is plagued by feelings of helplessness, shock, dread, and even life-threatening fear. “am I supposed to eat with a Mariachi remix of ‘Back in Black’ blasting in my ear?” you wonder. Fear not. Here is a list of 101 proven techniques to get you out of danger and into your flauta.
- Make yourself appear larger than you are. Remember, Mariachi bands are more afraid of you than you are of them
- Date the lead singer of the mariachi band and, carefully increasing your influence and clout within the group over a period of many years, slowly destroy them from within.
- Filibuster their performance by reading aloud the entire 45 page menu
- Ask If They Know Anything Off “OK Computer”
- Convince them that you are the mariachi band and they are the patrons and they have always been here and it has always been this way
- Suicide by cop
- Start a rival mariachi band
- Try to open up a pit
- Wear a Mariachi El Bronx t-shirt
- Say “I have a boyfriend”
- Spray yourself with the urine of a Peruvian flute band
- Go back in time and kill Hitler causing a ripple effect preventing your own birth
- Envelope within the people around you like a Russian doll
- Start a hostage situation
- Take advantage of the little known rule that their Mariachi band can’t play for you if you bring your own Mariachi band with you to the restaurant
- Question their scene cred
- Pretend to be part of the mariachi band until they pass
- Order the pulled pork burrito with guacamole, substitute pinto beans for black, no mariachi band
- Have a convenient heart failure
- Stand you’re ground: Make direct eye contact with the band and sing Annie Lennox songs, getting louder as they approach
- Quickly gentrify the the neighborhood
- Join the baseball furies and quickly establish your table as their turf
- Bring large pieces of fruit to comically stuff into their instruments
- Request to eat the remainder of your meal in the bathroom
- It doesn’t matter because you’re already passed out drunk after your 3rd jumbo Corona margarita
- Put on your MAGA hat. (Mariachis Are Going Away)
- Build a quick wall between you and the band
- Cry
- Choke on something, anything
- Politely request that they move along
- Do a quick “I’ll Have What She’s Having”
- Sprinkle a circle of sand around your table
- Get off the train 4 stops early
- Grab the guitar case full of guns
- Give them the ole’ Alabama Funny Fuck
- hi’ three times fast and they walk away backward
- Pull your plane’s yoke back so hard that you do backflip, and now you’re behind them and can fire at will
- Order the mucho grande margarita, crawl inside the glass and hide
- Sign them to your label and exploit them
- Get them to avoid you by being way too into Deadpool
- Call them nerds
- Offer to read their palms
- Draw a door. Knock three times
- Ask them about their influences
- Boldly shout “Kimota!” Transforming yourself into Miracle-man and then fly away
- Demand the band “cease all motor function” and then loose your shit when it doesn’t work
- Travel with an emergency polka band
- Bear spray
- Run away in a zig zag pattern
- Paint a mural of a tunnel on a wall and run through it to safety
- Request Despacito
- Announce to everyone that you’re “Pickle Rick”
- Be Mitch McConnell and get booed out of the restaurant before they arrive
- Start an All Lives Matter chant
- Assassinate the president
- Smoke bomb, crazy move
- Sell them your fire mixtape
- Make eye contact and start punching yourself in the face
- Warp Whistle to the next level
- Trick them into saying their names backward so they’ll be banished back to the Mariachi dimension
- Try to convince their horn players to join your ska band
- Don’t move. They can’t see you if you don’t move
- Start doing a John Edwards style medium act
- Convince them there is a fine case of amontillado in the wine cellar, then seal them inside
- Ask if they have a moment to talk about Climate Change
- Try to escape to the light house, but find that they’re mirroring your every move. Exploit their behavior to place a phosphorus grenade in their hands, and activate it before fleeing
- Austin Powers Quotes, Baby!
- Dip into the noise show. The music is probably worse but its still an option
- Ask them what happened to Tower 7
- Challenge them to a kissing contest, no pants
- Use the stress of the situation to finally trigger your latent mutant abilities
- Strategically ask Louis CK to drop in and do a set
- Cleverly disguise yourself as a plate of fajitas
- Mime
- You’ve had a lethal peanut allergy you’re whole life, cash in
- Politely sit through the performance of a mariachi band
- Use Dianetics
- Offer to work their merch table
- Go to the bathroom
- Slam poetry
- Laugh maniacally as if the mariachi band playing at your table is all part of your evil scheme
- Show them your prison style knuckle tattoos: “Hate” on one hand, “Mariachi” on the other
- Say “check please” for comedic effect but then realize that’s an actual option in this situation
- Implore them to pray the mariachi away
- Flash your wallet, claim to be the mariachi inspector, hastily write a list of citations on a napkin
- Complain about the lack of diversity in the band
- Didgeridoo
- Force them into a horrible improv scene
- Pull out an even bigger acoustic bass guitar
- Unveil your larger, louder mariachi band. They will have no choice but to submit to you as the alpha
- Walk 50ft over to the Pizza Hut side of the restaurant
- Carve ‘Slayer’ into your arm
- Try to sell them on a collaboration project
- Tell them they sound good, kinda like Green Day
- Good ole’ barrel roll
- Expose an offensive tweet the band wrote in 2009
- Hold a flashlight up to your face and tell the tale of the mariachi band that was killed 30 years ago this very night
- Invite them to dine with you
- Make yourself big and loud OR play dead, it depends on the type of mariachis band pursuing you
- Demand proof that the band has been ethically sourced
- Just give in and dance, dance!