Saturday, May 30, 2009

The Dumbing Down of Beer Pong

Back when I was a young drunk, we used to play beer pong. It was very popular in colleges around the country in the 70's. The rules were generally thus: 2 players on each side of a ping pong table, each with a beer in front of them. The object of the game was to hit the ball into an opponent's cup, forcing him to chug. Hit the cup, it's a sip. No goaltending, and if you spill your own beer you chug a new one. Generally, it was played like ping pong with the ball hit back and forth.

This was a game that required some skill, as it is rather difficult to dunk a ping pong ball in a beer (or a pan, as I once played it on the beach in Canada). Games would be active, competitive and long. My favorite story is that, after a particularly long summer session of beer pong, a friend who was an avid tennis player reported having a dream of playing tennis with oil drums of beer on the court.

Today, beer pong is still popular with the kids, but the game has been dumbed down for a generation that grew up with all their games organized and everyone getting a trophy. They throw the ball into cups across a small table. I'm pretty sure a drunk chimp could do that. It's the Fisher-Price version. NO skill, no strategy.....no wonder the Chinese are kicking our asses!

2 comments:

Budd Bailey said...

You played beer pong with a pan?

Next thing you'll tell me is that you played ping-pong with a shoe, or that you played some sort of crazy variation of ping-poing involving three people sprinting around the table.

Glenn Locke, The Tall Thin Guy said...

Not only did I, but we won, causing our opponents to exclaim "He's beating us with a fucking pan!"