Before we headed up to Leeitnam (our apartment) for the final two events, we stopped by Benidad and Tobago to drunkenly play with that country's newest citizen, Mork Elliott. Ben got out some sangria and beer and we took a break from the Bar Pentathalon.

Things are somewhat fuzzy, but I do recall this: Kim was sitting on the floor with her sangria. On two non-consecutive occasions, Kim stopped paying attention and accidentally allowed Mork to drink sangria out of her glass (which was also on the floor). It was pretty funny and awesome. I think Mork enjoyed it.

We caught a couple cabs up to Leeitnam, and readied ourselves for flip cup. During the first Bar Pentathalon, Gibbs annihilated Ben in this event, leading to a Ben boot. We hoped to see a re-enactment.

In the days leading up to Bar Pentathalon II, Ben did his best to have flip cup removed from the competition. This was likely due to his fear of booting yet again. His "idea" was shot down. Then, on the day of Bar Pentathalon II, Ben incredibly lobbied for a HALF beer to be spread out among the three cups per side. This idea was eventually ridiculed into oblivion, and the usual full beer per three cups was used.

The first match was between Leeitnam and Sarah Leeone. Sarah Leeone might have had a slight advantage, because the rules allowed them to use both of their representatives; one of them would have to double up, but having two people take on one is pretty nice. However, it didn't matter, and Leeitnam advanced to the finals fairly easily.

The next match was reigning flip cup champion Papua New Gibbers facing reigning booter Benidad and Tobago. What ensued was quite embarrassing.

The two countries were tied after the first cup. Ben took a slight lead after the second cup, and then he inexplicably just stopped doing... anything. He held the third cup in his hand and frowned; he just stood there with a sad look on his face. Gibbs continued going and eventually "won." Meanwhile, Ben ran off to the bathroom and continued his streak of booting during flip cup. We took turns listening through the door. It was NOT pleasant, but was hilarious.

After he got done booting, we informed him he was up. Benidad and Tobago had to face Sarah Leeone in the third place match. Ben refused. We all told him he could not refuse. He demanded (multiple times) for us to give him the zero. I weighed the consequences of this disgraceful action - allowing him to do so would virtually guarantee victory for Leeitnam, as the minimum two points for making the finals would give Leeitnam a four point lead over second place Benidad and Tobago, with beer pong as the final event. I advocated for the zero.

Ben finally was coerced into playing, and he miraculously defeated Sarah Leeone. He did run to the bathroom right after the match, but he held it in, declaring he was "fine." After that, Papua New Gibbers steamrolled Leeitnam in the finals. We didn't have any carbomb supplies, and Benidad and Tobago might have just quit outright anyway if we did, so it was just as well. Event four = finished.

Leeitnam: 11
Benidad and Tobago: 8
Papua New Gibbers: 7
Sarah Leeone: 2

That brought us to the final event, beer pong. Leeitnam faced off against its old enemy Benidad and Tobago in the first match. A victory for Leeitnam would clinch the Bar Pentathalon victory. A Benidad and Tobago victory would keep its hope for victory alive.

The match went back and forth with no big swings. The death setup was voiced, neither country could get a bonus, and soon enough it was 2 to 2, Leeitnam ball. The cups Leeitnam were shooting at were in the dreaded "horizontal line" setup (the "2" and "3" cups), which is MUCH harder than a 1/2 or 1/3 cup diagonal line. I threw my first ball, and it plopped into the 2 cup. That clearly bothered Ben.

I took my second shot, knowing this was for the whole Bar Pentathalon (there are no redemptions if you double down onto or on the last cup).

Splash.

Leeitnam had clinched victory in the most satisfying way possible - with a crushing victory over Benidad and Tobago in beer pong. Sarah Leeone then unexpectedly defeated Papua New Gibbers, and Benidad and Tobago wrecked Papua New Gibbers in the third place game. It was about this time that we heard an unexpected knock on the door.

It was FISHMAN!

He declared he had to catch up, so we got out the chuggler. The leftover beer from both sides of the Ben / Gibbs match was poured in, and Fishman strongly put down a full chuggler - approximately two beers of dubious temperature. We were re-energized, and the rest of the evening was spent playing craps, more pong, eating leftover tacos, and taking a 10 PM trip to Dinosaur BBQ.

You may have noticed that the finals of beer pong were not played that night. I guess we just forgot about it, with all the Fishman hub-bub and also because it wouldn't have had any impact on the standings. Well, we played the game the next day, and to its everlasting shame, Leeitnam lost to Sarah Leeone. Sarah Leeone declared a national holiday, as this was on par with Buster Douglas defeating Tyson or the Miracle on Ice at Lake Placid. Just let it be known that, unlike Tyson or the Russians, Leeitnam has the gold medal.

Or it will when Kate gets around to making it.

Final Standings for Bar Pentathalon II

Leeitnam: 13
Benidad and Tobago: 9
Papua New Gibbers: 7
Sarah Leeone: 6

Bar Pentathalon II started with representatives from Leeitnam (me) and Sarah Leeone (Kim) walking into Plug Uglies at 1:30 PM. We were the first people in the bar, and the bartender seemed somewhat annoyed at the early start to her workday. The representatives from Benidad and Tobago (Ben), Papua New Gibbers (Gibbs) and the co-leader of Sarah Leeone (Sarah) soon arrived, and the competition began.

The first event was bar shuffleboard. We threw in credit cards for a random pick of who would face who in the first round. Unfortunately for Leeitnam, it drew Benidad and Tobago, the likely top-ranked bar shuffleboard country.

It wasn't always this way.

The first time I played Ben in bar shuffleboard, we were pretty wasted after going bowling with Gibbs on a Sunday afternoon. I soundly defeated Ben three straight times, surprising him with both my skill and tenacity. Money may have changed hands too, but I don't recall. Anyway, this past Wednesday we had a bit of a Bar Pentathalon warmup, and bar shuffleboard did not go so well for me. I created more points for Ben than myself with ill-advised throws. I lost to Ben three straight times, losing $15 while being demoralized 15-2 in the last game. I was rattled going into the first event.

Predictably, I lost 15-1. It was UGLY. I will not elaborate. Papua New Gibbers defeated Sarah Leeone, although the match was closer than expected. The finals and 3rd place game were without drama, and after the mandatory carbomb, the standings at the end of one event were as follows:

Benidad and Tobago: 4
Papua New Gibbers: 2
Leeitnam: 1
Sarah Leeone: 0

The second event was Word Dojo. It initially was pool, but with the late entry of Sarah Leeone replacing Banglairdesh, we thought this would at least give that female-dominated country a fighting chance. Word Dojo, for those of you who don't know, is a game that you can play on the MegaTouch machine in most bars. That machine is usually used for Photo Hunt, and I actually advocated us playing that instead. But I was soundly overruled by the other countries. So Word Dojo was it.

In preparation for this event, Ben claimed he memorized every three letter scrabble word during his unusually slow Thursday at work. We all predicted numerous arguments between Ben and the machine.

The rules stated that the initial matchups for the round are based on the finish of the previous round. So Bendidad and Tobago would face Sarah Leeone, while Papua New Gibbers would square off against Leeitnam.

Playing any type of MegaTouch game as an individual is different than when you play with friends. In Word Dojo, getting full bonuses in the first two rounds is fairly easy if you have a teammate. But when you are by yourself it is incredibly difficult, as you don't have any crutch to rely on. Getting 99 letters in the second round is actually somewhat challenging. If you get flustered, you feel the urge to just hit random three letter words and pray that the machine recognizes it. "Roo?" "Dan?" Sure, why not. Sometimes it works ("Ben" actually counted), but usually those letters flash red as if you are some sort of ESL student.

The only intrigue in Word Dojo came during the initial match between Benidad and Tobago and Sarah Leeone. Kim (representing Sarah Leeone) put up around 810,000, and halfway through the bonus round Ben was on pace to beat that score. Inexplicably, he tried a four letter word that was a derogatory term for members of a particular religion. It was of course denied, and we all started laughing. Ben got rattled, and he ended up with 780,000, just a few words short of victory.

I put up a couple scores of over 900,000 and noone else came really close. It was decided Word Dojo would never be an event again, unless I got some sort of handicap. I didn't advocate for its inclusion, and in fact railed against it, so I didn't feel too bad about the four points for first. I did feel slightly bad after the carbomb (and the fact that we were charged ten bucks for each), but that was to be expected.

Standings after two events:

Leeitnam: 5
Benidad and Tobago: 5
Sarah Leeone: 2
Papua New Gibbers: 2

The third event was darts (cricket with no points), and it was really the wild-card. Noone knew who was the favorite, and the results could really swing the event. Papua New Gibbers had won darts in the initial Bar Pentathalon, and that gave him the confidence to win flip cup and eventually the whole Pentathalon. If there was a swing event, this was it. We left Plug Uglies and headed to McSwiggins. It was also empty, which was nice.

As the winner of the previous event, Leeitnam faced off against Papua New Gibbers. Gibbs jumped out to an early lead, closing out everything except the bull. I, on the other hand, still had a couple numbers that had zero hits. It wasn't looking good, except for the fact that Gibbs could not for the life of him come anywhere near the bull. We're talking at least 5 turns of no bulls. I chipped away, closed out the numbers, and hit an outer ring to tie us up. Gibbs missed on his turn, I hit a double bull, and Benidad and Tobago's representative slumped in his chair. Leeitnam was into the finals of darts, guaranteeing two crucial points.

I won't elaborate too much on the Benidad and Tobago and Sarah Leeone darts match, other than it took about a half hour and was absolutely awful to watch. Sarah must have missed the dart board around 10 times, and one dart almost hit Gibbs in the head while he was standing around two feet to the right of the board. It was an ugly affair that mercifully ended with Benidad and Tobago barely advancing to the finals.

The finals was almost a replica of the match between Leeitnam and Papua New Gibbers, with the exception of two "accidental" outer ring bulls by Leeitnam early in the match. Benidad and Tobago, however, took a commanding lead aided by THREE triples. Two turns before the end, Benidad and Tobago had only the bullseye (with zero marks), while Leeitnam had 15 (with zero marks) and the bullseye (with the two previously mentioned accidental marks).

I threw my three darts. Each of them hit a single 15. Ben got rattled, missed his throws, and I came right back and hit an outer ring bull. Darts was completed upon the third carbomb.

Leeitnam: 9
Benidad and Tobago: 7
Papua New Gibbers: 3
Sarah Leeone: 2

More to come tomorrow...

Bar Pentathalon II is scheduled for tomorrow.

Participants:

Evan, representing Leeitnam
Gibbs (reigning champion), representing Papua New Gibbers
Ben, representing Benidad and Tobago
Sarah and Kim, representing Sarah Leeone

Events:

Bar Shuffleboard
Word Dojo
Darts
Flip Cup
Beer Pong

4/2/1/0 scoring for each event. And of course, carbombs in-between each event.

LETS COMMENCE PREPARATIONS FOR RUMBLINGGGGGGG!!!!!

This is awesome. Go University of Illinois Law!

When Law School Dean Heidi Hurd balked on accepting the applicant in April 2006, Herman replied that the request came "Straight from the G. My apologies. Larry has promised to work on jobs (5). What counts?"

Hurd replied: "Only very high-paying jobs in law firms that are absolutely indifferent to whether the five have passed their law school classes or the Bar."

And here is a link to the emails produced pursuant to FOIA. They are equally awesome. The best quotes I've found so far:

Yea, I'm betting the Governorship will be open. One of them can have that job. Other jobs in Govenrment are fine, since kids who don't pass the bar and can't think are close enough for government work. UNIVER000012

I apologize for the bluntness of this email, but we are setting this young man up to fail. His GPA in his junior year was [redacted]. His GPA in his first semester of his senior year was a [redacted]. There is no track record of success and when he is faced with the rigor of our program there is aboslutely no reason to expect anything other than failure. UNIVER000016

We watched bits and pieces of four fairly awful movies this weekend.

The first movie was probably the worst. It was The Happening, the M. Night Shyamalan movie widely recognized as unwatchable. The plot is this - some plants release a neurotoxin that makes people kill themselves in particularly gruesome ways. For example, one guy turns on an industrial lawnmower and then lays down in front of it, a bunch of people hang themselves from trees, etc. Apparently, the plants are doing this because they are threatened by our existence, which I guess is some sort of environmental warning to humanity.

I thought the movie was supposed to be a horror movie, but it also tries to add in humor and a love story. Basically, if you had shown me the movie (and I had never heard of it) I would have guessed that WWE studios produced it. And this doesn't even get into the ton of plot holes and plainly nonsensical things that occur. Grade: Epic Fail

The next stellar production was Jumper. In this insult to human intelligence, some people are apparently born with the ability to teleport themselves anywhere they want. The protagonist has this ability, and he uses it to rob banks, have sex with hot girls, and generally be an ass. On the other side of the coin is Samuel L. Jackson, who as a "Paladin" hunts and kills these people because he believes that they all turn bad eventually.

So you probably see the problem - there's nobody to root for. Or, if you're going to root for anyone, its Jackson and the Paladins, although its clear that they are not the good guys. When you combine this strange setup with the... I won't call them plot holes, but there are so many things that just do not make sense at even the most basic level, you have an abomination of a movie. At one point, two of the teleporters are fighting each other, and they transport themselves to Chechnya. There is a war going on there, complete with soldiers and tanks firing at people. Curiously, the soldiers COMPLETELY IGNORE THE TWO PEOPLE WHO TELEPORTED INTO THEIR BATTLEFIELD! This leaves the "hero" to throw or teleport the other one into an electric tower thing. Stupid. Grade: Another Epic Fail

The Assassination of Jesse James never really had a chance. It clocked in at 2.5 hours, and we couldn't understand half of what they were saying. We turned it off after a half hour. Maybe it got better but I don't know, so this was probably the "best" of the bunch. Grade: Too Boring

Lastly, we had Doomsday, which you probably have never heard of. The plot is somewhat interesting in a Resident Evil ripoff kind of way. Scotland gets infected by a virus that kills or will kill everyone. As a response, Britain builds a giant wall to prevent the Scottish from bringing the virus into Britain. For 25 years or so, this works fine, until the virus reaches Britain on its own. The Prime Minister reveals that one of the satellites that has been focused on Glasgow has identified a couple people moving around, meaning there are survivors somehow! Thus, a crack team of soldiers must be sent in to try to find a cure before all of Britain succumbs to the virus.

Despite the fact that the satellite has only recently picked up human life in the Glasgow area, when the team of soldiers arrives, approximately one billion angry Scottish people are there. They attack and capture the soldiers, killing them in some pretty gruesome ways. And then... you know, I can't describe the rest of this movie in any detail. It somehow involves a sort of rock concert, and then a group of people who live in a medivial castle, ride horses, and wear armor, and lastly a car chase that culminates in a bentley driving through a bus (set up as a roadblock) with basically no damage. This movie was awful, but somehow not as bad as Jumper or The Happening. Grade: Fail.

This past Sunday we went to the Big Apple BBQ Block Party at Madison Square Park, and it was pretty awesome. As someone who does enjoy consuming various pig parts, it was a no-brainer to attend.

There were 15 different BBQ places, each serving one particular dish, be it ribs, pulled pork, brisket, etc. Due to the long lines and the fact that Kim made me eat most of her food after she nibbled one bite from her sandwich / ribs / brisket, I sampled four places:

We first hit up Big Bob Gibson's Bar-B-Q. Hailing from Decatur, AL, Big Bob served up pulled pork shoulder sandwiches with spicy southern mustard cole slaw. I ignored the slaw (as I did all day), and went straight for the pulled pork. It was probably the best pulled pork I've had in a long time, maybe ever. There isn't much more to say about it; if they return next year I'll be there. A great start to the day. Grade: A

As I am a brisket man, Gibbs recommended we go to The Salt Lick BBQ, from Driftwood, TX. He said he had some very good brisket from Hill Country the day before, but The Salt Lick's lines were insane on Saturday and they ran out of food in the middle of the day. So we tried The Salt Lick, which served up a couple slices of brisket on some wonder bread, a big slice of sausage, and the ever present cole slaw.

I was disappointed - the brisket was dry and not too flavorful. It needed some more fat, like the brisket at Fette Sau. The sausage was good, but sausage is always good. It could have been Hillshire Farm sausage and I wouldn't have known. A shame, it took up valuable stomach space. Grade: C-

Having tried brisket and pulled pork, I was in the mood for some ribs. We headed to Baker's Ribs from Dallas, TX, as Gibbs said they were the best he had the day before. They were St. Louis style ribs with a dry rub. That's generally how I like my ribs, but they had plenty of sauce in dispensers to suit other people's needs. The ribs were served with a very hot jalapeno cole slaw, which basically combines the two things I hate most in the world.

The ribs were tender and had a lot of kick to them. Luckily, Kim only had one of her three ribs, which meant I got 5. I pounded those down very quickly and was very happy with Gibbs's ribs call. Grade: A-

We were pretty full at this point, or at least I was, as I had eaten the equivalent of 5 plates of BBQ in around an hour and a half. So we relaxed and had some beers in the beer garden, then met up with Ben, Kate, Hayes, Ann, Laura, and the newest edition to the Elliott family, Mork the 2 pound puppy that Ben carries around in his bowling ball bag. At this point lines were getting pretty long and we were getting tired. However, it was getting late in the day, and my hunger was returning. I wanted more.

It was about this time when Kim tried to use a porta-potty, looked down into the toilet, saw some "stuff" she didn't like, and then ran out of the porta-potty and booted in the street.

So after that debacle we went to Hill Country to get that famous brisket. Unfortunately, we were met with disappointment, as they were out of food. It was like 3:30 PM and they were done. And it looked like a lot of the other vendors were in the same position.

We headed back to the area where the NYC BBQ places were stationed. Dinosaur, Blue Smoke, and Rack and Soul seemed to have food. We got in line at Rack and Soul, mainly because they served beans with their ribs, and Kim really wanted beans. The line wasn't too bad either, and while we were waiting I actually got this picture taken with the Pork Queen of Iowa. Awesome!

After a few minutes, we got to the front of the line, only to find out they were out of beans! Disaster! But what were we going to do, not get the ribs? So we got them (no discount on the cost of the plate, but maybe they gave us an extra rib instead, not sure) and headed to an empty picnic table. I took a bite.

Man.

These were the best ribs I've ever tasted. Its hard to describe just what made them so awesome. But we all agreed. I started looking at Kim's platter, but sadly she was plowing through the ribs just as fast as I was. Too bad for me. But we're going to try to head to this place on Saturday (its up in Morningside Heights), where I'll get a full rack all to myself. I can't wait. Grade: A+

Obviously, if you are in NYC next year, you should hit this BBQ-fest up.

I find this article hilarious (it is about a community bank that failed in a spectacular manner), but I doubt it was written for its comedic value.

Some awesome quotes:

Tina Gasner took out a $260,000 loan from New Frontier two years ago to fulfill her dream of running a restaurant based on family recipes like Awesome Artichoke Dip Pizza. She says the loan officer raved about her business plan -- but she now believes she had too little cash on hand to weather a downturn and too little collateral to justify so much debt.

"I'm an accountant," Ms. Gasner says. "I'm not stupid. But you're in a place of trust when you approach a bank, when they're saying, 'This is a good plan, you'll make a profit.' That's why I went forward."

In an interview, Mr. Seastrom says all loans met strict underwriting standards and were fully documented. But he acknowledges taking risks other banks wouldn't. That was a point of pride at New Frontier. "We tried to help people," he says. "We tried to find a way to do things."

For example, he says, the bank didn't automatically turn away applicants with shaky credit scores or recent bankruptcies. Mr. Seastrom let small businessmen take out loans against assets that other bankers considered marginal, such as tables and chairs.

It makes me think of this article from The Onion:

Ridiculous Small-Business Plan Encouraged By Friends