I believe Jones and I are reluctant superheroes. We did not ask for the gifts that make us superior to all other Beer Pong/Beirut players. Yet if and when we play, while the journey may enjoy bumps and suspense, the outcome is never different. Alas, there is no fortress of solitude in this story (unless you count Jones' house... awwww snap!).
Case in point: Dr. Dremo's Beer Pong Tourney. We played because we were bored and sort of wanted to play - but still not be those old dudes who are playing beer pong. We scoped it out, pulled up to the bar and basically decided to pretend as though we had no idea what was going on. See what kind of people were playing (true assassins always case the area of their mark), and perhaps throw down that $5 per team and collect our winnings a mere 3 hours later.
So we did, upon the invitation of 2 seemingly nice girls we knew we could decimate. These same seemingly nice girls, did in fact, turn out to be psychotic hose-beasts.
So we were in, and we were immediately put in opposition of the only two guys we thought had a shot against us. We won the first and third games (best 2 out of 3) with a little tiebreaker in there. Regardless, we moved on and waited for our next assigned victim.
It is at this point that I want to point out how I now feel a previously unfelt empathy for pitchers who get "cold" while being in the dugout too long between innings. They wear their jackets over their sleeve, something - anything - to stay warm. We started to acknowledge we were getting out of rhythm by not playing. Though Pedro Martinez cannot just toss a ball in the dugout to stay warm, Jones and I could certainly just keep drinking to stay... errr... warm.
Next up: psychotic hose-beasts. These girls went from nice-enough and chatty to freaking crazy. I was too drunk to notice and thought that we must have been acting unknowingly confrontational - so I was acceding to whatever they said, making my partner be quiet and just "nod and be happy at whatever they say." This was not good for his game. The evidence is that once again, we lost the second game - the one where I was instructing him to stay nice. We did win the third game, where my partner eloquently, yet firmly, instructed one of these trolls to "fetch" a stray ball. If we hadn't ticked them off before, these ladies were now two small steps shy of living under a bridge and eating billygoats after that. But we won. And they vocally routed against us.
Everyone else in the bar thanked us for beating "those wenches." I like to think I did it for the game itself, yet I admit we took them out because we are damn good and just got tired of listening to them. Alas.
So we go to the finals after a while and play another two guys. We lose. Catastrophe. We were not paying attention, etc. There's a number of reasons. It's like the list of reasons you go through over why you are hungover. It's NEVER because you drank too much. It's always that you didn't have exactly 2 pieces of bread and then a glass of whatever precisely 9 minutes later. Whatever. You shotgunned eight beers. That's why you're hungover.
Anyway. We lost because we were playing poorly (and had basically shotgunned eight beers). But we then beat the next two guys decisively. Fine. Everyone was 1-1, and the winner would be determined by the margin of victory. We should have tied for second.
And this is why I love this game and the people who play it (minus the hose-beasts; they don't play MY game. They play something else altogether. All I know is it's the not the sport I know and love).
Because everyone is too drunk to do math, they randomly pit Jones and I against the kids who should have won. And we beat them quickly, even cruelly. Shouts are shouted. Clapping commences, happiness ensues and my back is still sore from all the patting amidst the celebration. We get money, T-shirts, fame. And then about half an hour later, we're told we sort of didn't win, because that game should never have been played. True. But I can sit here and list off several things that should never have happened (Saved by the Bell mini-movies, A-Fraud to the Yankees, my mom throwing away my Superman bedsheets), but we all lived on and accepted it.
Additionally, we beat the snot out of the supposed "champions."
Much like the rappers of the 1980's and anybody who was playing the World Series of Poker before 2003 - you know, the people who were there BEFORE the country caught on, I believe we are the generation who will know this game and wistfully remember it before it was corrupted and put on ESPN, "The Ocho." Screw the prizes. And that's how it should be. No more contests for me. It's not fun when there's money on the line.
Let's keep the game simple and protected - and make sure the rules always vary from town to town.