 "Photo:")
Dear Chico,
What did you do last weekend? Dinner, dancing and a riot?
If you were lucky, you might have been in attendance at the greatest sporting event this side of the Mississippi: Beer Fest 2009.
For those of you unfamiliar with this competition, there's a movie with the same name available at your local video store. It's pretty much like that, but with fewer German accents.
Four-person teams from all over this town gathered to compete in a myriad of drinking competitions, all in the hopes of taking home the gold.
In this case, that meant a beer can sculpture crudely glued together and painted gold.
My team, The Papasan Express, placed a respectable second. But as we battled other teams, it became clear that winning wasn't really the point.
Regardless of the results, we were all having fun. People were ingesting copious amounts of beer and making friends.
Close to 100 people showed up. Some of them were total strangers. Many of them dressed up in team outfits - including one group of gentleman sporting sexy denim dresses.
But all of them were polite. All of them met each other with open minds and open arms.
It was beautiful, Chico, because it showed our potential. Not just the potential of some drunken college kids to get along, but the potential for human beings to get along.
It's the same reason I love going to concerts. You don't care about people's political beliefs or where they shop. You become one with the crowd. You sing and scream and dance. You sweat with a mass of individuals as they meld into one organism.
And that's what entertainment is all about: forgetting our stupid differences and having fun. Escaping from the bullshit of life long enough to remember why living is worth it in the first place.
So, go for the gold, Chico. I know I will. The training for next year starts tonight.
Sincerely,
Eric can be reached at
entertainmenteditor@theorion.com
Be the first to comment on this article!