So, I haven’t posted since I moved to Chicago (which I’m enjoying).  I’d like to say this is because I’ve been super busy, but then I would be a liar.  Especially, since I’ve only had class for 2 weeks thus far.  Anyhow, I have a decent bit of stuff to talk about it so this should be a long(ish) post.

First off, Clambake was last weekend and I returned to Bowdoin to enjoy the festivities.  I was going to give a long, detailed write-up but felllow old-fatter Old Ben did it for me:

For all those of you who couldn’t attend, and for those of you that attended and don’t remember, Old Fat successfully avoided being stuck in the Corn Pool this year.  This was due mostly to the fact that there wasn’t a Corn Pool, but our 0-3 day one record does not really reflect the fact that the majority of our games were only lost by a couple of points.

On day one we played 3 scheduled games.  To Harvard in game one we lost by a score or 5-15, but I am pretty sure that they weren’t hungover.  After a second round bye, most of Old Fat returned even fatter after sneaking into the various dining halls on campus.  This didn’t slow us down as lost our next two games by fairly close margins to the UMaine alums and the Vassar squad.  I missed the majority of the Stoned vs. Old Fat game, so I’ll let a better eyewitness recap that sucker.

Old Fat did the real damage at the party that night.  While I have not heard any official declaration, nobody seemed to be contesting the claim that some sort of Old Fat/Stoned Clown contingent won the party.  The rumor I am going to stick by is that Willy won the party.  When I retired, numbers were dwinding around the 100 mark, and he still seemed to be going strong.  It is certainly confirmed that he won the card game by geting naked for a jack and then upgrading to a pair of Aces…it is also however confirmed that there was in reality no card game taking place at the time.

Stoned, Chaos Theory and Old Fat put together a handful of land shark/land porpoise runs.  Snatch performed the most chivalrous act in years by an Old Fat when he made some douche erase a bunch of nude pictures he had taken of Chaos Theory disrobing.  I believe the short dialogue below is accurate enough:

Snatch: “First off, you are fucking deleting all those pictures right now, then one of two things is going to happen: 1) You and I will step over here and I will beat the shit out of you, or 2) you will go apologize.”

My understanding is that the douche apologized.

I spent a fair amount of time telling stories to the young Stoned Clowns of the old days, it was just like that scene in Jedi where C-3PO is telling stories to the Ewoks, except that I was looking more like Han Solo if memory serves, and the Stoned Clowns all had baby smooth cheeks.

As always the beer was fantastic as was the food and the music was solid.  There was some sort of en masse shotgunning of Budweiser, an ice luge, body shots, other myriad drinking games, blow-up dolls, gorilla suits, and the end result was a urine soaked paintball arena at the Bennett All Weather Paint Ball and Disc Golf Extravaganza.  I must say that despite being about an hour away, this was an excellent location with a great interior and exterior setup and plenty of space to camp.  I hope they keep it.

Late night sights were more of Willy disco sketching a different girl every time I could focus in on him.  Throat was also seen dancing and claims to have not been that drunk…he however, also was disputing his own claim as he slowly realized that he could not remeber how he got into a tent that night.  I vaguely remember catching T-Rex and Mary K8 floating around at some point later, and their night must have been solid as they showed up late the next day and were wearing street clothes.  If I missed other people, I apologize, but one of the last events I caught was the early morning land porpoise pulled off by a bunch of ladies from Sugarshack, the VT/NH travel squad and it was as distracting as all nudity is…not to mention I was drunk and dancing with my thin, young wife who left Old Fat for Sugarshack.

The only cocktease larger than the land porpoise was the coffee cups set out the next morning with no coffee available.  Fuck you, Harvard.  And if it wasn’t the Harvard squad slinging hash in the morning than fuck whoever else, and Harvard too…but thanks for the rest of the food.

Sunday morning our squad actually arrived on time and put 7 on the line to begin assessing points against Red Tired.  By the time they showed we had a 6-0 lead on them, but it was blown when they asked, “Are we actually pretending to assess points”.  Most of us felt that there was no pretending about it, but Powda was ever the diplomat and allowed the score to be reset.  The final score was around 11-15 (as usual) but the adjusted score with 6 assessed points and the 7 points for winning the party gave us our first in the win column with an unprecendented 24-15 victory.

In grand tradition, Old Fat ditched the consolation game at 2 PM.

Thanks should definitely be going out to Theo for all the organization and I hope to hell other people embellish these tales with better ones.

Who’s your Pa?

Old Ben

Adding a few things to Ben’s (excellent) account:  Freeland thinking it was a card party when it was, in fact, not was pretty much the highlight of the party, although the roughly 35 landsharks/porpoises (a number of which were participated in my be) and the solitary firecracker were pretty sweet.  Personally, I spent much of the party dominating at flipcup, stealing Jim Beam from Lampchop, and scamming people out of their little airplane bottles of alcohol.  Largely as a result of stealing (and consuming) everyone’s mini-bottles, I have absolutely no recollection of how I got home.  Various eyewitness accounts, as well as forensic evidence, have led me to believe that I traveled home in a car full of ladies (because I’m a pimp) in which I attempted to gaffer tape (how did I get gaffer’s tape?  SCIENCE FICTION!) Gribble to the seat.  I also was apparently “a sweetheart” and told some “crazy stories”.  Upon arrival in Brunswick, the car pulled past Red Brick House, where I was staying, and parked in the lot of the church next door.  At which point I got out of the car, leaned on the door for a “minute or so” then climbed back in and politely requested that the girls take me to Red Brick.  This is, of course, despite the fact that I was less than 50 feet from the door of Red Brick, where I had lived for a full year.  So, to clarify, I was unable to navigate to my former residence from next door.  Nevertheless, I apparently managed to get to bed.  After losing to the (asshole) Red Tired team, I played a bit with the young and nubile clown in the chumpionship game, which I played quite well in, despite having spent the majority of the day polishing off a 30 rack with Throat and having to be taken out for attempting to play beer in hand.  Good times.

Anyway, now that that craziness is over, here are some mini-reviews of various things I’ve been watching/reading.

Eastern Promises – David Cronenberg has apparently moved beyond the genre of weird-shit to the Viggo-Mortenson-being-bad-ass area of the cinematic world.  I heartily approve of this move.  Eastern Promises is pretty sweet, although not in the same category as the superb History of Violence [which was my favorite movie (along with Constant Gardener) of that year, which saw the execrable Crash win the Best Picture Oscar (something that makes me want to stab babies, but I digress].  The film has less action than Cronenber’s last work, although the steam room fight is amazing (despite the abundance of cock on display), but the slow burn of the first two acts is expertly done.  Anyway, really good and I’ll probably end up re-watching it when it comes out on video.

Pushing Daisies - I caught the pilot of this quietly-hyped new show the other day.  It’s all quirky and bright and weird and I fucking loved it.  Plus, it’s narrated by the guy from the Harry Potter audio books, who is profoundly awesome.  Of course, being weird and funny and good it will most likely be canceled before I finish writing this post.

Mockingbird by Sean Stewart – I like Stewart a lot, despite having only read two of his novels.  He does the urban magic/quiet fantasy genre very well.  Having said that, I didn’t like Mockingbird, which deals with love and spirit possession, nearly as much as Perfect Circle, which I read previously.  Mockingbird isn’t a bad book, by any stretch of the imagination, but I didn’t find the characters nearly as compelling as those in Perfect Circle.  Also as an author who writes about sad (for lack of a better word) characters so much, Stewart risks losing me, as I’m generally not into the whole depression thing.

I don’t really have much else (at least in the pop culture sort of way).  I’m going to try to make more regular, shorter posts in the future, including some dealing with more academic subjects (more academic than getting drunk?  surely you jest!).  In fact, I have one half-written, although we’ll see if it actually gets posted.  Word.