Every so often a Pressclubber writes an article that – for one reason or another – never sees the light of day in a newspaper. Most of these are quickly forgotten, but some are too good to stay in the dustbin of history.
Here at Drink The Ink we’ll occasionally bring you one of these stories – stories that were just too hot for the Liberal Media to handle, but now have a second chance at life thanks to the magic of the Internet. Enjoy:
Sparkletights threw down the gauntlet earlier this week via Facebook:
“War of 1812. Hockey. Burning DC down the first time.
vs.
Obesity. World’s #1 Superpower.”
Canada vs. US. Saturday night. Pick a side. Be there.
They came, this multinational group of Princeton University freshmen, to a tiny single-occupancy room in a tiny, unassuming dorm on campus. They came for fun. They came for booze. But mostly, they came for pride. This was binge drinking with a purpose.
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They came wearing the distinct iconography of their respective tribes: girls wrapped in maple-leaf flags, boys sporting wreaths of red, white, and blue.
The room’s owner, a tall blonde, wore an Indian feather in her hair to signal her non-alignment (neither country, after all, could claim sole exploitation of the continent’s original inhabitants). Her room, however, was classic California hippie. Posters of Marley, Hendrix, and Dylan covered the walls. Incense hung thickly in the air.
The Dalai Lama cast a beatific gaze over the night’s opening ceremonies from his perch above a desk.
“Thank you all for coming to my favorite event of the year,” said Sparkletights, who, like the other attendees, wished to keep her real name private (drinking at their age is illegal on this side of Niagara Falls). She wore shimmering red leggings, a white tee, a maple leaf wristband, and war paint.
“Let’s make this biennial… bicentennial…” Sparkletights had started drinking before the other dozen guests arrived, and now searched for the right word. “What’s once a year? …Annual!”
The group then made its way to a tray of red Jell-o shots. Someone had placed tiny toothpick American and Canadian flags in each cup.
“Potent beverage?” a girl in a red bandanna offered.
A girl with a Texas drawl accepted. “Southern conservative family plus underage drinking equals… no good,” she said before downing a shot.
Elsewhere, a young lady with a Canadian flag draped around her shoulders mistakenly picked up a cup marked with a US toothpick.
“Don’t drink from an American cup! What are you doing?” asked her friend, a hockey player.
“I’m annexing territory!” Flag Girl replied.
Everyone then grabbed a can of Natural Light beer and circled up for a round of “Thunderstruck”, a game based on AC/DC’s 1990 song of the same name. As heavy metal blasted from Sparkletights’s laptop, the guests took turns downing beer, switching every time Brian Johnson growled “THUNDERRR”.
Flag Girl, a diminutive pre-med, had the misfortune of being stuck chugging during an endless guitar solo. “Yeah! Whoo! Come on! Come on! I love you! Keep drinking! Keep drinking!” the crowd squealed as Flag Girl pumped her short legs in seeming hopes that her shifting weight would move the beer down quicker.
The second-longest solo fell to a fraternity pledge dressed in a sleeveless undershirt (complete with fake nipple ring) and cargo shorts for a “White Trash” party he planned to attend later that night. Frat Boy coughed, choked, and grimaced as he tried to force down the pale yellow swill. “I can’t do it,” he lamented.
The Canadian contingent quickly claimed victory after Frat Boy’s shocking fumble. But the American delegation refused to concede.
“You can’t spell ‘Canada’ without ‘nada’!,” a young man in a Captain America costume taunted.
As the night progressed, the group moved from drinking to dancing. “Er’body in the club gettin’ tipsy…” proclaimed rapper J-Kwon over the sound system. The partygoers bounced listlessly to the beat. Perhaps the space proved too limiting – cramming more than a dozen young adults into a 130 square foot room is no small feat – or maybe the group had already drunk too much. In any case, repeated calls for a danceoff went unheeded.
A girl stood on the bed. “Public Service Announcement: It’s 9:30. Pace yourselves,” she said.
Miley Ray Cyrus sang an anthem of teen angst as groups of three or four broke off to pay a visit to a bottle of rum. “To blacking out!” they cheered. “To Canada and America!” “To America and Canada!” For a moment, it seemed like ugly international rivalries had met their match in alcohol. Captain Morgan: Distiller, Pirate, Peacemaker.
Frat Boy and Flag Girl stood in a corner, in deep discussion about their relative physiques. “You ain’t got nothin’ on me,” Frat Boy said, pointing to his stomach. “One, Two, Three, times Two, equals Six. Pack.”
But the good feelings ended when the music changed. On came a song from a Molson beer commercial. The Canadians sang boisterously along:
“I know this place is where I am,
No other place is better than,
No matter where I go I am,
Proud to be Canadian!”
Frat Boy looked on, scowling. “There’s a line between loving your country and stupidity,” he said. “This is bordering on stupidity.”
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