"Wildwood Night/Day 2" OR "We hate guidos"

After a much-needed and really delicious boardwalk dinner, most of our team decided to return to the hotel, forsaking the beer garden and beach party. Partly because half the team was underage, and partly because, well, our team doesn't exactly get along with other teams that well. Especially Evan. "I used to think that all CHS players were jerks, but then I found out it was just him." So we kept to ourselves at the hotel for the beginning of the night, planning a late-night raid on the boardwalk and the Bolero.

The night started off slowly, but quickly rose to a crescendo as more and more epic games of beer pong were staged on the room's only table, culminating in a ridiculous 10 cups to 2 comeback after guaranteeing victory. After the miraculous win, one glorious victor called the White Castle Hotline to share his accomplishment, while a mortified loser hid himself in the closet in shame. "How does it feel to know that I just won the GREATEST beer pong game of ALL time!?" the legendary Golden Stick Wiffleball league future Cy Young candidate shouted into the phone at the bewildered and bored White Castle Girl. "What?" "I just won the GREATEST game of beer pong EVER!" he repeated. "Do you have a comment about burgers?" she asked, both annoyed and amused. Puzzled for a second, he regains his composure and ends the conversation, "Yeah! I was eating burgers while doing it. While winning the greatest GAME of all TIME!"

Meanwhile, with this in the background, I'm watching the replay of the Tour de France time trial that I'd seen earlier in the day. They were highlighting the ride of Vladimir Karpets, who was about two kilometers from the finish. I said, to no one in particular, "1:04:40," which I remembered was his time. Our esteemed captain, Ed Frowley, heard me and squinted at the TV before saying in return "1:04:47 - wanna bet a shot on it?" I laughed and said yes, then laughed again as Karpets came in at exactly 1:04:40 and Ed was astonished. Jake saw what was going on, and realized that I'd seen it earlier in the afternoon, and when I went to the bathroom he asked me for confirmation on the final time of Yaroslav Popovych and did Ed in double.


I didn't see Ed for the rest of the night after that, until I came back to the hotel to sleep around 1:30. It turns out that Jake and I had just contributed to the night of his life, during which he had apparently bought many rounds for people at the Bolero bar, and then proceeded to make out with Frank from Slow White, who we had seen puking on the side of the field during his first game only 12 hours before (left). "I made out with Frank, and I liked it!" Ed could be heard telling everyone the next day. Bravo Ed, bravo.

But the night's revelry would not end there. Evan, everyone's favorite houseguest, decided to christen the room by pissing in the suite's kitchen sink, through a plastic dishrack. There's photo evidence of that too, but let's leave that on facebook. I'll consider it part of Evan's revenge on Wildwood after losing his wallet somewhere on the beach during his Friday night frolicking/mayhem. At this point we all realized that true fun was to be found on the boardwalk, and in Jake and Zander's case, trashy beach girls. Woohoo! The two of them bonded over their singular goal: "We're going to rump tonight!"

It was always going to be a case of Zander breaking the ice and Jake coming in to make or break the deal. There were plenty of young and willing pairs of girls wandering the boardwalk - Zander's first approach was to a pair of Irish lasses meandering down the boardwalk, casting furtive glances at people they passed. His wonderfully original and surprisingly effective pickup line was simple: "Are you walking? Walking for boys?" They were indeed walking for boys, and he struck up a conversation, and Jake soon joined in. But as soon as they started, they quickly pulled the plug. Apparently they still had standards, and there were plenty of fillies in this stable.

Their next target was two girls sitting on a bench, just talking, but also eying people coming down the boardwalk. They were amenable to Zander, and once again Jake swooped in, regaling them with tales of something, unfortunately not wiffleball. After some convincing (it didn't take much), they walked back together to our hotel room. When they arrived, they found Evan, ostensibly still clothed, along with Stephen and Jonah (see top picture). Jonah immediately zeroed in on the girls and made belligerent conversation through his missing front tooth and cheeky boyish grin. He dubbed the girls Caitlin and Laura, after girls from Columbia that he thought the two pickups resembled. They chatted for a little while, before Stephen and Jonah left, soon to meet up with me, and Evan ... well, who knows. Zander and Jake moved in on the girls, and Zander's consistent encouraging line was simply, "Don't be a sourpuss! (photo)"

I met up with Stephen and Jonah outside of the Bolero, the tournament hotel, party spot, and their hotel for the weekend. While out there I ran into a staggering Zach Wyatt, and we tried to talk a little bit about Hawaii, but it was all lost in the haze. Who else was out there? Ben Sprung, a college national champion with Brown, said hi to his little brother and the rest of us, and I think we even ran into Jon Lin right after he was unceremoniously kicked out of our lovely hotel. Apparently he was banging on cars in the parking lot and got into an altercation with the manager. Typically mild-mannered Jon began insulting the manager, guessing that he never went to college (and was proved right!) and yelling at him that he made two times, three times, five times, even a *thousand* times more money than the hotel manager! That was the last straw for the manager, who loved everyone else but told us in no uncertain terms that "that Oriental kid is not welcome in my hotel! I want him out!"

After a quick jaunt inside the Bolero, I went to wander the boardwalk with Stephen and Jonah. We picked up a delicious funnel cake and then immediately saw "Caitlin" and "Laura" on the boardwalk with two random guidos. Jonah yells out "Caitlin!" and runs over, the first question that spills out of his mouth is, "How far did you get with Zander???" Calm and smooth, as though we were her best girlfriends, she answered him with, "Well, we were making out and he took my top off, but then he broke my button and I left." Very impressive, Jonah. We talked to them a little longer, and even learned that their real names were Sammie (sp?) and Erin. The two guidos with them looked kind of shocked and didn't say a word during the whole conversation. We even found out that the girls were from Maryland, and in the crazy small world we live in, it turns out that Erin goes to the same school that my best friend Kelly went to and knows her little brother! Also, they were 16, which is fine for Zander but cradle-robbing for Jake.

This is enough excitement for the night for me, and I end up in bed around 1:30 or 2, sound asleep until I'm rudely awakened by Benny and Ed around 8:40. I look around and see that the entire hotel room is trashed. It looks absolutely awful. There are cans and bottles everywhere, furniture and bags and clothes strewn across the rooms, and our styrofoam cooler sprung a leak, so two couch cushions and a bedspread were sitting in a puddle of water on the floor. As we managed to slowly rouse everyone else, I spent a lot of time trying to at least make the room presentable to the maid. I think it was fairly successful, and Ed and I talked with the manager, who graciously offered us two rooms to shower in after we finished playing. Two! At no extra charge! He also offered to sponsor our Wildwood team for next year, although we'd probably have to kick Jon Lin off. Ridiculousness!

We finally made it out the fields by 10 in time for our quarters matchup against Loyola (MD) alumni. We had no problem scoring, but we were anemic on defense until the last few points, when we scored seven in a row to take the game 18-11. Too easy! Before our semi I hit the water again, and it was just as refreshing and wonderful. This time I wore my ankle brace in, which was weird but felt fine. After about 20 or 30 minutes in there, I headed out and found most of our team watching and heckling with other CHS alumni on different teams (hi Nunez, hi Kieffer). The two CHS alumni faced off in the semifinals of HS Easterns, with Kieffer-coached Pennsbury knocking off Nunez-coached Columbia on Pennsbury's way to winning it all. Congratulations Darwin! (are you happy now? are you?)

It's also about this time that I found out that Will Watts was brutally attacked by either four black guys or four guidos or three puerto ricans (the story keeps changing, Bilbo!). No matter who did, the circumstances are clear - Muzzleby was stumbling home to the hotel at night in the middle of the street, when a car slows in front of him and someone yells, "Get the fuck out of the road!" Wicks does not take kindly to this, and responds in kind. "Fuck you," he says softly. "I'M HERE!" Needless to say, this does not go over well. One guy jumps out and pulls a knife on Bill Botts, and another guy punches him in the nose and stomach. Bleeding and alone, Wicketts somehow manages to make it back to the hotel where Benny takes care of him.

It was with this night behind him that Billiam won us the right to receive in our semifinal after he soundly defeated the other team's punk shotgun challenger in about 2 seconds to 6. Too easy! Goodnighted. Unfortunately, the rest of our game did not go quite as well. We played them close almost the entire time, until the very end when we once again got faulty time reports from the sideline and decided to go for the two-pointers. We failed, and what was a three and four point game degenerated into a terrible, terrible joke. The other team scored on a leapfrog, we had 40-yard dump passes, I threw a lefty scoober, and the game was just awful, awful ultimate, even by beach standards. The last point was endzone line to endzone line, and ended with me plopping a scoober into Jake's arms from 30 yard, splitting two defenders. Immediately after, both Amandas stormed off in anger and disappointment, as once again Evan managed to split apart the team and alienate every girl who ever talked to him. But only for a while. Because they can't stay away. They just CAN'T.