It was twenty years ago today . . . or at least this year.
On September 17, 1988, just under the wire to where it'd technically be the
Autumn Olympics, the '88 Summer Olympics kicked off in Seoul, South Korea. Seoul was not a city extensively familiar to the Western audience, but it was certainly one ripe for puns galore. (The dubbing of Greco-Roman wrestler
Andrzej Wronski as "The Seoul Pole" might have been my favorite.) The Seoul Olympics may be most notable as the last that the Soviet Union topped the medal count, for obvious reasons. (Teejay, Rob's a History major and he'll tell you why some o
ther time.)
That Olympiad was also, in fact, one filled with all kinds of excitement. You probably don't remember Hodori, perhaps the least idiotic-looking Olympic mascot in the last few decades, but you surely remember the highlights. For example...
- You remember the late, great FloJo racking up the medals;
- You remember The Rape of Roy Jones, Jr.;
- You remember the US men's basketball team not getting it done and causing the evolution of the 1992 Dream Team;
- You remember Gabby Sabatini, because she's the most beautiful woman ever to set foot on a tennis court;
- You certainly remember Ben Johnson (the sprinter, not the poet), some world records, and some stripping;
- You -- and by "you" I mean G:TB's own Rhymenocerous -- definitely remember Greg Louganis banging his head on the board, in addition to some diving-related stuff.
Good times.
At the very same time, the 1988 Paralympics (aka the "Olimpics") were taking place in Seoul as well. This has no relevance whatsoever to this post, I just wanted to include that terrible, not nice, parenthetical gag I just thought of. I'm admittedly chuckling, going to hell, and very sorry.
At the very same time, on the other side of the world, an eerily different sort of Olympiad was taking place. These Olympics were hosted in a sleepy college/tourist/retiree/ridiculous
Colonial crap town in the United States' mid-Atlantic region. On the 3rd floor of
Monroe Hall -- yes, the very same freshman dormitory where just two centuries earlier an intoxicated James Monroe had once urinated on his compatriot's hand-wrung laundry stack -- a handful of young men and women came together to witness a singularly unique event. (Singularly unique in that it was simultaneously taking place in college dorms all over America.) Yes, I'm speaking of the
Beer Olympics. Ah, to be 17 and wildly immature again.
Somebody in our group had uncovered a cassette (hey, it was the '80s) of "Bugler's Dream." That's the brass-and-timpani song to open the Olympics, not Geoff's theme song. You all
know it, and even though I'm not as gung ho about the Olympics as Rob is, it invokes chills upon each first listen every Olympiad. Well, with the "real" Olympics happening in South Korea at the time, and the theme song being played on repeat (you know, where you rewind the tape and then replay it a bunch of times), it was a natural progression to commence the drinking game. In a school where even studying sometimes involved drinking games, it only made sense to capitalize on the palpable Olympic mania on campus. ("Really? The Olympics are going on?")
Eventually, the efforts of four brave freshmen led to a Hall-wide decathlon of sorts in the Monroe attic, one
featuring sprints and chugs and cheering and a lot of falling down. What I recall best, however, was the initial foray into the Olympiad by our foursome. The timed
trials, if you will. In a triathlon not at all unlike what comprises a real triathlon (in that you feel God-awful the next day), two dorm rooms across from each other lit the torch (in the TJ vernacular) and commenced a beer bong/16 oz cup/shotgun one-man relay 'twixt rooms that, when repeated in hopes of new world records, left four guys knee-walking drunk and full of bad ideas. But I'm skipping ahead.
Funnel; Cup; Key; Two cases of beer purchased at the local Beer Lion by one boy-faced "Jerry Garcia."
Olympia Beer, natch. Remember, when people ask what makes Olympia taste so friggin' awful . . . it's the water.
The Olympians & The Events:Long Island's own K. "Ahoy" Malloy led off with a solid if
unspectacular bong's worth behind the closed doors of room 309. He had to shut both doors behind him as he then rushed across the hall to 308, warding off write-ups from the homely, red-headed girl RA down the hall we just called "Seaward." A workmanlike chug and a solid shotgun left him with a decent time in the first heat.
B. Cheese
Hightower followed with an impressive bongload and a reportedly dazzling wolfing of the sixteen ounces. Upon re-entering 309, however, he belched up a few ounces of something decidedly liquid, and when he refused to lick it back up off the floor, he was instantly disqualified by the judges. Tragedy for the hometown fans back in Chesapeake.
I stepped up in the coveted third slot, ripped through the funnel allotment,
struggled a bit through the cup, and nailed the shotgun event fairly swiftly. I was comfortably in the lead with a time somewhere just over :30. Feeling good, if a tad bloated. Little did I know, little did any of us know, that we were about to bear witness to one of the great beer-related performances of my generation.
Leesburg native Douglas Earl "Doug E. Fish" Nelson stepped up, took a breath, gave someone the finger, and set the beer bong aside after two scarily substantial swallows. He was back in the room in less than 10 seconds, leaving me stunned speechless. Later reports indicated that if he'd poured the beer in the nearby sink, he couldn't have done it with any more speed or ease than down his gullet. A deftly executed shotgun performance halted the clock at :19, a thoroughly startling finish. Just . . . wow.
After that, we tried in vain to knock him off the perch, but when you're in the presence of the master, there are but many apprentices. We ended up recruiting some of the hallmates to try to top him. Alas, it was not to be.
Sentence Boy Dave slept with his head on the toilet that night, and I'm more than reasonably sure
Rob threw up. Just another night on wild, wacky Monroe 3rd West. Yep, we were crazy like that.
(END long, self-congratulatory nostalgic story that Jerry hates.)
I wish I had a happy ending to give you, but just like Ben Johnson that year, Doug E. Fish was stripped -- not of his title, but of his right to attend the country's second oldest university. Children, take a lesson: drink if you must, binge drink if you're cool at all, but remember that there's a balance between your studies and your rampant alcoholism. Drinking 31 days in a row might've made me a hit with the fellows and a disease to the co-eds, but it didn't serve my GPA particularly well.
So finally, do yourself a favor and get into the Olympic spirit with a listen to "Bugler's Dream" below. You may just find yourself so caught up that you enact the 2008 Beer Olympics. And if so, remember the
Olympic Creed:
"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. It's the water."
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