Going for Gold

This past weekend, I participated in one of the defining moments of my life. I won a gold medal at the 2011 Bar Olympics in the Flip Cup event! Our team, Drinks on the House, simply dominated the event. So now that I am like Tara Lipinski famous I get to enjoy all the perks that come with winning such a prestigious award. No more paying for valet parking, no more convictions in murder cases and no more having to buy my own drinks at bars. Hell, I might even open up my own bar and call it the Gold Club or something where the waitresses will be miniature giraffes who have also won gold medals at some sort of animal Olympics. Also, only fellow Gold Medalists would be allowed in, so suck it Nancy Kerrigan. (Why do I have this much knowledge of early 1990’s era ice skaters?)

There were no silver medalists at these particular Olympics. You either won big or went home. Our team did have a pretty decent advantage over the competition which tended to be a bit older and less experienced in the area of college drinking games. Nevertheless, I will hang my medal proudly on my wall and recount my tale of glory to all who will listen! It was a single-elimination bracket style event with 9 teams. Our team defeated 3 other teams on our way to victory with no opponent progressing past their second player. We literally smoked all of them and they were all left crying in shame.

It wasn’t all fun and games however. Out team participated in several other events and brought much shame to ourselves and our families in nearly all of them. We lost miserably in the darts event due to the repeated failure to close out in a game of 301. The Golden Tee event was just an abysmal failure. Basketball? FAIL. Blackjack started off well and then turned into what Blackjack always inevitably turns into: FAIL. IN 9-Ball, we actually advanced to the second round and then lost in spectacular fashion. At any rate, I don’t care because all I wanted to do was win a medal! Did I mention that it was a Gold Medal? I did? Tyte.

So I guess next year we will have to defend our title. It should be an easy task as we won the thing while having an inebriation level of moderate to high. So as long as Jimmy Carter doesn't cancel next year's games, I figure we are a shoe-in for a repeat.

Painting and Alcohol

*stock photo, mine was a billion times better*

So this past weekend, I went with a couple friends to this thing called "Painting with a Twist”. The idea is that you show up, and these people will walk you through the step by step process of creating a masterpiece on canvas. Oh and there is also booze involved, hence the “twist” in the title. Now if you know me at all, you know I have the artistic skills of a rabid badger that has been drinking too much. However, it turns out that I am able to follow directions pretty well and needless to say my painting turned out to be one hell of a masterpiece. I’m talking Renaissance level art here.

Going into it, I figured that my painting would be, at best, abysmal. But they actually did a pretty good job of showing us how to blend the colors and create tree branches to hide any and all of the screw ups. The whole thing took about 2 hours from start to finish. And while the painting we chose to do was really effeminate (the girls chose this one), I still had a good time painting it while listening to Heather (shout out*) talking about how shitty her’s was turning out. Also, blending colors is a real bitch.

Christine (shout out*) and I each killed a bottle of smooth, delicious champagne that morning. Needless to say I was impressed with my ability to draw well while under the influence of alcohol and orange juice. All of our paintings turned out pretty well in the end. I found that the best strategy to not messing up your art was to just stop painting. The more I tried to fix problems, the more terrible it got. It’s like I always say, sometimes you just gotta put the paintbrush down and take another sip of your mimosa, you know what I mean?

So who knows, maybe I am in the wrong profession. Perhaps it was my destiny to paint the walls of the Sixteen Chapels in the Vatican or something. I would most definitely go do this again although I wouldn’t mind doing a more gender independent work. I always see people buying lame, non-masterpiece art for ridiculous prices at like Bed Bath and Beyond so I figure I could make quite a bit of monies selling my work on the side. Or, better yet, I’ll just start up my own art teaching class. With blackjack…and hookers! In fact, forget the art class...

*Shout outs were demanded by the viewing audience.

Link: Painting with a Twist