3 days later, I was wearing a salt lick
Mars: planet, god, candy bar company, and ultimate tourney/scene of debauchery and mischief.
I arrived pretty much on time in pittsburg after a 3 hour layover at Detroit Municipal Airport that I took advantage of to catch up on some correspondence. I was supposed to wait for bryan and cho to get in but as luck would have it, and BK and KC would have none of it, their flight was delayed until 200am. Fortunately farseeing bryan king had alerted mina and carl to this development and after waiting for a long delayed mr. eric abando our happy foursome proceeded to our hotel where I enjoyed a dinner of jerky, apple, and water before collapsing at 1230am EDST.
Saturday we went 1-2. Losing to some people from michigan and to Duck Xing rather badly. There were no amazing things of note except we won our first game 15-9 after being down at half 4-8. I, out of shape and practice, played mediocre at best with no true inspiring plays but some occasional sound dump, swing, and repeat. The cast of characters on our team was Akira, Eric Abando, Eric Guajardo(spelling?) whom gwen mistakenly called GuaHardOn all weekend up to monday morning (it was hilarious when she finally realized that was not the correct pronunciation of his name), bryan, kevin, josh, late arriving but still tall leo, whitney, carl, scully, Roo, trudy (arrived late sat. evening from a wedding and left early on monday to go hang out with sex-starved sailors in the middle of the pacific for sixteen days), gwen, mina, kate (whitney's girl), amy (akira's girl), racheal, Kim, and the newest member of Tea and Strumpets lil'lyla who at 22 years younger than myself ran away with the youth crown. Very sweet baby, for the most part never cried and was entertaining to play with and watch on the sideline. Kim incidentally is the most amazing beer shotgunner I've ever seen. She beat out a gentleman who goes by the name of Iron and I assume its because of his proclivity to consume lots of beer in short durations of time. This was one game after she shotgunned 2 beers with whitney to decide pull and jerseys (the other squad wrote down who they thought would win since they couldn't muster up the courage/feck to compete). Also saw nadine, yaya, and wiggles at the field. Was pretty cool to see them and would have loved to attend the dance party and night time festivities but no one was ever sober enough to drive me back, and unfortunately there wasn't in my opinion a critical mass of people camping.
The food situation was good. Had bob evan's once and denny's twice for breakfast. Denny's incidentally seems to be ashamed of their grand slam breakfast and hides it in very small type on the bottom right of their menus. I missed it the first day, but enjoyed it thoroughly on the second. Had church brewworks for dinner on saturday. Still my favorite brewery/restaurant combo beating out the great dane. Amazing food, try the buffalo loaf and the perogies as an appetizer, the beer is good although as I arrived quite drunk I didn't partake this year, and some amazing malted cinnamon ice cream. The next night ate at Don Pablo's. The food was a major disappointment with undercooked rice, a really bad beef enchilada although the chicken and cheese were satisfactory, but the place was slightly redeemed with a very good but not strong mango margarita, and the fact that they gave us lots of raw material to construct an intricate system of pipes and suck points to connect the drinks of 5 different people, although it proved unsuccessful as the suction mechanisms (my lungs) were a little underpowered. Kevin and Abando then tried to have straw intercourse with eric trying to stick his 3 connected straws into the end of kevin's 4 connected straws. After some good-natured-heckling eric started beating me with his straw penis, but stopped after my protestations.
Copious amounts of beer schtick was played on saturday and sunday. I was not the dominating offensive juggernaut of yesteryear but had a lot of fun and even saw some new beer schtick strategies develop, the fantasy players of note were kim and bryan on offense, and eric guaHardOn on defense. Speaking of silly games the showcase game between O-Pig and Duck-Xing of which thor, liz, and a man named hummer are a part of was most entertaining. Whitney was the unofficial duck-Xing cheerleader, throwing the crowd beer, wrestling a foam finger, and trying to sneak on a point with the aforementioned didget and an official duck-xing jersey (he was sadly unsuccessful). Bryan was hilarious when he tried to deliver a beer to thor but wound up slipping and falling down the hill on his ass. The half-time show was great, and this humble scribe was even a part of it, with a full scale dodge ball contest breaking out between duck xing and T&S with friends. The people who were more drunk, us, lost badly, but I feel we also won in a different more subtle way. Kate also ordered a pizza to the fields which is one of the greatest clutch tourney moves of all time in my opinion.
After dodgeball we went back to the hotel where we entered the hot tub and swimming pool, I broke rule 3 since I was a wee bit intoxicated, but had a lot of fun throwing balls at whitney, kevin, and others with the notable exception of the young mother and toddler-daughter whom I almost hit while trying to deflect a ball off the one cho was holding into whitney's face. The lifeguard was pretty passive and I imagine amused by all of this. Later after Don Pablo's Trudy, Abando, and I went to bryan's room and immediately began playing the hotel lava floor game that every 4 year old in the western world has played. Eric showed some impressive climbing ability and I took a short nap atop the tv cabinet. Later fell asleep on bed/island after certain happenings and goings on that at this point I won't go into.
Sunday we went 2-1. I played slightly better, but not great, we used force middle to great and sometimes amusing effect, played a bit of waa I finished second which keeps in line with my being one of the great circle games players of all time, if there is ever a hall-of-fame for splat I think my face will grace the door, incidentally I think the modesty hall of fame would also probably induct me.
Saturday night after brewworks the elevators were supossedly not working, after climbing eleven flights of stairs while drunk we discovered that none of the lights in our room would turn on. Despite the fact that the TV and clock were working. I wondered for a time who was the idiot who wired the tv and clock to one fuse and all the lights to a separate one. Only later did we figure out that guaHardOn who had been left unattended for a time earlier in our room had unscrewed all the lights in the room, even the 10 or so above the mirror in the bathroom, a very good prank I have to admit.
So I consumed a lot of beer and even the occasional bitch pop over the weekend. I even utilized the sippy beer strategy which is to break open a beer during half of the first game, usually 1130 or so, and just sip at it over the next few games with 1 or 2 other people, abando was also a fan. This dramatically increased heckling capability and general relaxation levels, I reccomend it. This may have contributed to what I alluded to in this post's title. I was wearing a black scandal jersey which after a day was coated in white blotches that was salt I had sweated out. This wasn't a health issue as I drank a fine combination of water, gatorade, and sippy beer (iron city is good stuff in bottle form) but on the back it created a really cool almost symmetric pattern about my shoulder blades. If you imagine the underarmour logo in the top middle as the moon, Kevin pointed out that the stains looked a lot like the outline of clouds on full moon night. It was beautiful. The sippy beer also helps one come up with cheers, after bryan pointed out that if you could dodge a wrench you could dodge a ball, I mentioned that if you could catch the clap you probably could catch a disc. After we all mentioned this loudly in cheering form one woman on the other team remarked that she was probably safe from the clap.
One other brief note, I got to match up against the teacher himself, Jim Parinella. He scored on me. I knew he was fast, but he's actually really quite fast for a man his age and size, not to mention his rather extensive and profitable knowledge of the game. This was in our last game on Monday in the B finals. We finished 10th out of 28-32 teams? and 5-4 which was a better place than last year, but a worse overall recored (last year we were 6-2).
All in all fun time and tourney, and if I may be so bold it even had a rather well defined shape.
I arrived pretty much on time in pittsburg after a 3 hour layover at Detroit Municipal Airport that I took advantage of to catch up on some correspondence. I was supposed to wait for bryan and cho to get in but as luck would have it, and BK and KC would have none of it, their flight was delayed until 200am. Fortunately farseeing bryan king had alerted mina and carl to this development and after waiting for a long delayed mr. eric abando our happy foursome proceeded to our hotel where I enjoyed a dinner of jerky, apple, and water before collapsing at 1230am EDST.
Saturday we went 1-2. Losing to some people from michigan and to Duck Xing rather badly. There were no amazing things of note except we won our first game 15-9 after being down at half 4-8. I, out of shape and practice, played mediocre at best with no true inspiring plays but some occasional sound dump, swing, and repeat. The cast of characters on our team was Akira, Eric Abando, Eric Guajardo(spelling?) whom gwen mistakenly called GuaHardOn all weekend up to monday morning (it was hilarious when she finally realized that was not the correct pronunciation of his name), bryan, kevin, josh, late arriving but still tall leo, whitney, carl, scully, Roo, trudy (arrived late sat. evening from a wedding and left early on monday to go hang out with sex-starved sailors in the middle of the pacific for sixteen days), gwen, mina, kate (whitney's girl), amy (akira's girl), racheal, Kim, and the newest member of Tea and Strumpets lil'lyla who at 22 years younger than myself ran away with the youth crown. Very sweet baby, for the most part never cried and was entertaining to play with and watch on the sideline. Kim incidentally is the most amazing beer shotgunner I've ever seen. She beat out a gentleman who goes by the name of Iron and I assume its because of his proclivity to consume lots of beer in short durations of time. This was one game after she shotgunned 2 beers with whitney to decide pull and jerseys (the other squad wrote down who they thought would win since they couldn't muster up the courage/feck to compete). Also saw nadine, yaya, and wiggles at the field. Was pretty cool to see them and would have loved to attend the dance party and night time festivities but no one was ever sober enough to drive me back, and unfortunately there wasn't in my opinion a critical mass of people camping.
The food situation was good. Had bob evan's once and denny's twice for breakfast. Denny's incidentally seems to be ashamed of their grand slam breakfast and hides it in very small type on the bottom right of their menus. I missed it the first day, but enjoyed it thoroughly on the second. Had church brewworks for dinner on saturday. Still my favorite brewery/restaurant combo beating out the great dane. Amazing food, try the buffalo loaf and the perogies as an appetizer, the beer is good although as I arrived quite drunk I didn't partake this year, and some amazing malted cinnamon ice cream. The next night ate at Don Pablo's. The food was a major disappointment with undercooked rice, a really bad beef enchilada although the chicken and cheese were satisfactory, but the place was slightly redeemed with a very good but not strong mango margarita, and the fact that they gave us lots of raw material to construct an intricate system of pipes and suck points to connect the drinks of 5 different people, although it proved unsuccessful as the suction mechanisms (my lungs) were a little underpowered. Kevin and Abando then tried to have straw intercourse with eric trying to stick his 3 connected straws into the end of kevin's 4 connected straws. After some good-natured-heckling eric started beating me with his straw penis, but stopped after my protestations.
Copious amounts of beer schtick was played on saturday and sunday. I was not the dominating offensive juggernaut of yesteryear but had a lot of fun and even saw some new beer schtick strategies develop, the fantasy players of note were kim and bryan on offense, and eric guaHardOn on defense. Speaking of silly games the showcase game between O-Pig and Duck-Xing of which thor, liz, and a man named hummer are a part of was most entertaining. Whitney was the unofficial duck-Xing cheerleader, throwing the crowd beer, wrestling a foam finger, and trying to sneak on a point with the aforementioned didget and an official duck-xing jersey (he was sadly unsuccessful). Bryan was hilarious when he tried to deliver a beer to thor but wound up slipping and falling down the hill on his ass. The half-time show was great, and this humble scribe was even a part of it, with a full scale dodge ball contest breaking out between duck xing and T&S with friends. The people who were more drunk, us, lost badly, but I feel we also won in a different more subtle way. Kate also ordered a pizza to the fields which is one of the greatest clutch tourney moves of all time in my opinion.
After dodgeball we went back to the hotel where we entered the hot tub and swimming pool, I broke rule 3 since I was a wee bit intoxicated, but had a lot of fun throwing balls at whitney, kevin, and others with the notable exception of the young mother and toddler-daughter whom I almost hit while trying to deflect a ball off the one cho was holding into whitney's face. The lifeguard was pretty passive and I imagine amused by all of this. Later after Don Pablo's Trudy, Abando, and I went to bryan's room and immediately began playing the hotel lava floor game that every 4 year old in the western world has played. Eric showed some impressive climbing ability and I took a short nap atop the tv cabinet. Later fell asleep on bed/island after certain happenings and goings on that at this point I won't go into.
Sunday we went 2-1. I played slightly better, but not great, we used force middle to great and sometimes amusing effect, played a bit of waa I finished second which keeps in line with my being one of the great circle games players of all time, if there is ever a hall-of-fame for splat I think my face will grace the door, incidentally I think the modesty hall of fame would also probably induct me.
Saturday night after brewworks the elevators were supossedly not working, after climbing eleven flights of stairs while drunk we discovered that none of the lights in our room would turn on. Despite the fact that the TV and clock were working. I wondered for a time who was the idiot who wired the tv and clock to one fuse and all the lights to a separate one. Only later did we figure out that guaHardOn who had been left unattended for a time earlier in our room had unscrewed all the lights in the room, even the 10 or so above the mirror in the bathroom, a very good prank I have to admit.
So I consumed a lot of beer and even the occasional bitch pop over the weekend. I even utilized the sippy beer strategy which is to break open a beer during half of the first game, usually 1130 or so, and just sip at it over the next few games with 1 or 2 other people, abando was also a fan. This dramatically increased heckling capability and general relaxation levels, I reccomend it. This may have contributed to what I alluded to in this post's title. I was wearing a black scandal jersey which after a day was coated in white blotches that was salt I had sweated out. This wasn't a health issue as I drank a fine combination of water, gatorade, and sippy beer (iron city is good stuff in bottle form) but on the back it created a really cool almost symmetric pattern about my shoulder blades. If you imagine the underarmour logo in the top middle as the moon, Kevin pointed out that the stains looked a lot like the outline of clouds on full moon night. It was beautiful. The sippy beer also helps one come up with cheers, after bryan pointed out that if you could dodge a wrench you could dodge a ball, I mentioned that if you could catch the clap you probably could catch a disc. After we all mentioned this loudly in cheering form one woman on the other team remarked that she was probably safe from the clap.
One other brief note, I got to match up against the teacher himself, Jim Parinella. He scored on me. I knew he was fast, but he's actually really quite fast for a man his age and size, not to mention his rather extensive and profitable knowledge of the game. This was in our last game on Monday in the B finals. We finished 10th out of 28-32 teams? and 5-4 which was a better place than last year, but a worse overall recored (last year we were 6-2).
All in all fun time and tourney, and if I may be so bold it even had a rather well defined shape.
posted by Joe Little at 8:28 PM
2 Comments:
I only read the first line, but god damn you for being at MARS. Damn you, damn you, damn you.
But, um, I'll go read the rest of the post now...
Hope it was fun...
- Ian
Were you in Kalamazoo last spring and did you go to Bell's? I think that it is my pick for best brewery/restaurant combo (also beating out Great Dane and maybe some others that I don't remember now). Did I mention that our waitress was gorgeous (ask Jason).
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