3 Stars of Ocean City!
August 25th, 2015Written by JW
3rd star: Craig LaCombe – Sea Section
When the final wasn’t entertaining us (“booooooorrrrrrinnnnggg”) Craig took it upon himself to do so. As soon as the horn rang to indicate that the 1st half was over, someone randomly said “what’s the halftime show?” and Craig knew what he had to do. He quickly stripped down to his underwear, threw on his jock, ran across the rink, humped Olivier on his way, stole the cup and ran back across the rink and gave the cup to the fans. The rink door remained open for some time and the refs didnt drop the puck, seemingly thinking that Craig or someone else might bring the cup right back. That wasn’t gonna happen. The cup remained in the stands for the rest of the game. Occurrences like this are the reason OC is great. Craig is the reason OC is great.
The amazing footage:
Craig steals the cup OC 2015
“I’m a father!!!”
2nd star: Lime Walker/The John “Lime” Walker Experience/John Walker and the Limes/whatever else they called themselves
(Ben Chadwick, Tia Lendo, Jamie Batuwantudawe)
Man, my cellphone camera is just awful.
To clarify, I was not in this band, yet somehow they named themselves after me. Little did I know how much of an honor that would be…..until I saw them perform. Those of us who found ourselves in Room 333 of the Seahawk on Saturday night, rather than at Seacrets, were treated to something really special.
So, this is how the story goes……a few of us were hanging out in my room at the Seahawk early on Saturday night, waiting for a few others to get there before we left for Seacrets. The plan was to go to Seacrets, this was the plan the whole time. Things don’t always go as planned, and many times that is a good thing. While waiting, Chadwick was strumming on his ukulele, eventually Tia showed up and started kazooing along, then Wick handed Jamie the 2nd ukulele….and the magic that is Lime Walker was born. The New York Times called the trio “the greatest cover band that ever lived” and we couldn’t agree more. As they played cover after cover, more and more people poured into Room 333, all planning to go to Seacrets, but all unable to tear themselves away from the sweet sounds that filled the room. Complete with people shouting out song requests (the band was happy to oblige) dancing, singing along and endless applause from the audience; this performance had all the great elements of an intimate show. Each time the band thought they were finished they were instead met with chants of “one more song” or “encore, encore”. The crowd couldn’t get enough. I was lucky enough to have a front row seat to this impromptu show and I wouldn’t have traded it for any other ticket you can think of.
Zach, Rem, Abby, and Michelle T. can all attest to how great being right up front was. This show was my favorite part of the weekend, and it was everything that Seacrets isn’t.
Here is an exclusive video:
(unfortunately my TERRIBLE voice is drowning out the other people singing along, and the music itself.)
As mentioned above, I was not part of this band. I was, however, invited up to the stage to perform their final song of the night along with them. Because they know that The Outfield’s “Your Love” is one of my favorite pop songs of all time, they surprised me by making this their final song of the evening. Hear my HORRIBLE monotone voice ruining the song, below:
(I realize now upon watching/listening to this that I screwed up one of the lyrics, to a song I know by heart. That’s how taken aback I was by their amazing performance.)
1st star of Ocean City: The people who made it happen.
I have been asked not to get into all the specifics of everyone who made this happen. In addition to the obvious people who kept the weekend running smoothly there are a lot of people who need to be thanked for all their effort leading up to the tourney. A huge thank you to everyone on each of the planning committees. There really are too many people to name here, so I am not even going to try, so that I don’t inadvertently miss anyone. Also, again, it was felt that it would be best if we didn’t go into all the specific people here, and their roles.
I did however try to catch up with a few of the key people who kept the weekend running smoothly……
I attempted to interview Worky to ask him how he pulled off the awesome feat of BeachTSH but he was unavailable for comment due to finally getting his life back.
I reached Eric and Ashley in order to thank them for reffing and for their contributions to developing the rules. I asked them how their weekend in stripes was to which they both responded by blowing their whistles loudly in my face and yelling “Faceoff! Inside the zone! Oops, sorry JW, we’re so used to reffing that we have forgotten how to normally speak with people.” I completely understood.
I asked MDF how it was running the scoreboard most of the weekend. She simply handed me an envelope, without a word. I opened it and it was a wedding invitation. It read ” You are cordially invited to the wedding of MDF and Daktronics All Sport 5000 scoreboard controller.” I’ll be there with bells on.
We hope that MDF and Daktronics will be very happy together.
Thanks again to everyone who made it happen. Your hard work did not go unnoticed.
See you on the beach next year!
In Cold Pulp: The Unauthorized, Untold, Unresearched Story of Lime-Toss
August 20th, 2015In Cold Pulp:
Sex, Drugs, Schadenfreude, Mopery, Extortion, Sodomy, Ennui, More Sex, Graft, Treason, and Loitering:
The Unauthorized, Untold, Unresearched Story of Lime-Toss:
Complete and Unsliced
by Truman Wolfe (feat. Nate Dogg)
Editor’s note: the “In Cold Pulp” manuscript, evidently a history of Lime-Toss written by modern-day “New Journalists”, fell into the possession of Dr. Byron Clavicle, the BTSH writing staff’s foremost reclusive nonentity. As BTSH’s Oklahoma City “Beach” tournament nears, we’re publishing this excerpt to help newcomers understand the origins of a game that has taken America’s shorelines by storm (not literally; limes grow on trees or vines or something, they do not fall from clouds). Lime-Toss, in its modern renaissance, has come to symbolize unprecedented levels of stupidity.
“In Cold Pulp” Book Jacket Cover
Chapter 1: Uh-Oh, Lime Comes to Town
August is the second cruelest month, but for a small-town jive turkey named Freddy “Sticky Fingers” Norblatt, it was so much more. For a small-town jive turkey with an idea and a dream, August was rancid with hot, buttered opportunity. On the twelfth of that soupy month, 1965, he rolled into Ocean City, Maryland, or possibly Delaware, in his 1988 Iroc-Z with a dream, a sack full of nickels, a sweat-stained Army raincoat, and a trunk full of limes.
He’d seen it all. You just needed an idea, an idea and a dream and a vision. An idea, a dream, a vision, an ambition, a concept, and a hot-tub full of moxie, plus also a lime supplier, a zester, and maybe a fried clam once in a while–
He’d seen Whammo hit the big time with the “Frisbee.”
He’d seen Duncan hit the big time with the “Yo-Yo.”
He’d seen Oswald hit the big time with “Kennedy.”
Now it was his turn.
LIME-TOSS.
On the O.C. boardwalk he’d strut around in a sandwich board, shoving around a wheelbarrow piled high with limes. He passed those sweaty days screaming at passers-by: “Lime-Toss. Five bucks a lime. Twelve bucks a throw.” The rules, chalked onto his signboard, were simple. For seventeen bucks you could chuck a lime out to sea. If it landed on a sailboat, you could keep it. If you whacked a swimmer, he or she became your permanent concubine. If you knocked out a seagull, you could stick it on a skewer and eat it. The skewers were offered free of charge.
Last known photo of Freddy “Sticky Fingers” Norblatt.
By the end of the month, beachcombers turned up “Sticky Fingers” Norblatt, floating in the reeds of the waste canal behind the dunes by the Seahawk Motel, starved, beaten, drowned, and deceased. The poor man who’d come to make himself a rich man left town as a poor dead man, his viscera so much stuffing for Ocean City’s crab-human-crab food chain. Limes were strewn all over the goddamned place, roosted upon by colorblind ospreys. Those green eggs would never hatch. Stupid ospreys.
Freddy didn’t hit the big time. History does not remember Freddy Norblatt, and neither should we. History never found his wheelbarrow or his sandwich board, but history did find his raincoat, and the rest is history.
Freddy Norblatt’s Last Gasp
Chapter 1, Part 2: A Sub-Lime-inal Message involving Limes
It was the best of limes, but it was, paradoxically, also the worst of limes. Nineteen seventy-four. Citrus fruit worldwide suffered an outbreak of Bohemian Weltschmerz, growing too apathetic to fall from the trees. The international lime shortage thrust Gerald Ford into the White House, while a young Donald Rumsfeld secretly negotiated to trade Gavrilo Princip to the Iranian Sandinistas in exchange for surplus helium.
But come October, a young botanist named Kookie Apsigurgle made a discovery that would change the course of history forever for a few days. It was a raincoat, stained with dead moths and rutaceous angiosperm. Freddy Norblatt’s name stitched on the inside collar. In one pocket Kookie found a crumpled up napkin, with a note inside, a note written in shaky, drunken letters, each letter painstakingly inscribed using a system for recording handwritten words that involved ink in some way, and the words were:
1. get limes
2. people throw limes to one another
3. points are for style but points mean nothing since game is not actually scored
4. limes can never go over the tallest man but that’s not really a rule
5. game makes hands smell good, cures scurvy, great for kids and assertive pets
6. there are no prizes
7. there are no winners
8. …get SUPER RICH!!!
9. use riches to settle bar tab, buy warhead, kill Billy Joel
Kookie Apsigurgle knew genius when she saw it. She quit her pointless botany gig. Bought a lime farm. Convinced the damn things to grow again. Spread the game across the East Coast. Changed her name to Kookie Limepleseed. She founded Seacrets, and eventually, ISIS. The rest is history.
A lime tree in full bloom
Chapter 1, Part 3: Lime Me to the Moon
It was early 1986 when a young President Ronald Reagan…
Editor’s note: “In Cold Pulp” continues for another twelve thousand pages, explaining the role of limes in ballistic studies and eventually as propellant for the early Saturn-V rockets, plus Neal Cassady and Ken Kesey’s tour of the country in a giant lime. Unfortunately we at BTSH are about to run out of pixels so we will end our excerpt he
Different editor’s addendum: that was actually a typo. We meant to write, “we will end our excerpt she”
Third editor’s codicil: just to be clear, these editors’ notes are not pa
Ken Kesey’s Citric Kool-Aid Automolime, which toured the country, freaking out the lemonheads.
BTSH (Mock) Playoffs Part 2
August 18th, 2015No games doesn’t mean no content. Instead, for the second day in wrestling a row its tw0-a-days! Will your team advance in the mock playoffs? Games are today so take off work and get to TSP! We have a special guest writer.
My fellow Bash Brother Brian H. will finish off the Round of 16.
If the playoffs started today… Part 1
August 18th, 2015So if the playoffs started today…what would happen? Besides everyone being pissed at me for Tim Brown starting the playoffs randomly on a Tuesday, with me having nothing to do with it, here would be the matchups. In the Round of Hockey Teams that aren’t very Good
Elves at WTP
Mega at Karma
Rainbows at Gut Rot
Poutine at Riots
Striving for Adequacy
3 Stars of the week!
August 17th, 2015Man I am getting tired of all these hat tricks. They just aren’t fun to write about. I remember when hat tricks were rare in this league. Also, back in my day I walked to school in the snow every day, uphill both ways. You kids today don’t know how easy you have it.
Not only are all these hatties not fun to write about, are they even exciting when they happen anymore?? I mean, it’s like every. damn. week. with you people.
In protest – no hat trick scorers are getting stars this week. Period.
James Stewart scored 4 goals (!!!), and his hat trick came in the first half (!!!) Amazing, but, you score all the time, James. Nothing for you. Also, save that shit for Ocean City, J-Stew. (insert gratuitous Instant Shawarma shout out here.) Jeff Ruel from Poutine scored his first career hat-trick this week. That’s awesome, and congrats Jeff…..but you picked the wrong week to do it. Some guy named Zach Fein (???) on the Demons who no one’s ever heard of also scored a hat trick. Maybe it was his first career hat trick. You know what, I don’t care anymore. Lastly, some dude named Gabe scored one. I don’t know who he is, but apparently he now has 24 goals on the season.
Ok, hat trick rant over. Now for your 3 stars of the week…
3rd star:
Anyone who stayed and watched all of the Mega-Karma shootout (and didn’t fall asleep)
This shootout went 11 rounds. (That’s right, I said 11 rounds!) That’s 22 shooters. How many of them actually made moves and had a chance to potentially score? Maybe 5 or 6. Maybe. There was a lot of shooting it right into the goalie. There was a lot of the ball getting away from the shooter and them not even getting a shot off. It was kind of like watching little kids pick up a hockey stick for the first time and try a shootout. But, like, 2 year old kids. Not like, 7 or 8 year old kids. The most exciting thing about this shootout was the heckling. All of you who stayed and watched deserve this star, and a pat on the back. When the shooters failed to entertain you, you entertained yourselves. To stop yourselves from nodding off you screamed, you shouted, you pointed and laughed. You hoped all this action on the sidelines might inspire someone to actually score so that the intense misery experienced by everyone involved would finally end. But it just kept going on, and on…..and ON. It was like 8pm, all your friends were already at the bar, all you wanted to do was leave to join them, or go eat, or literally anything else. You weren’t sure which you would die of first – starvation or boredom. But despite all this you stuck with it. You stuck with it and you made it fun. While you really deserve much more for this feat of patience, all I have to offer you is the 3rd star.
Seriously, watching Jamie’s gear dry would have been more exciting than watching that shootout.
2nd star: Brady Caldwell – Mega Touch
He’s so dreamy.
Brady stepped up and did what no one else could (well, at least, what no one else on Mega or Karma could, clearly). He ended the 11-round Mega Touch/Instant Karma shootout. Brady shot first in this shootout, it then went 10 rounds through Mega’s ENTIRE order and got back to him. He pulled up and ripped a shot right past Jamie, and that was the end of it. When asked about this shootout captain Julie Katz said “This was all part of my plan, I let them borrow Jamie because I predicted an 11-round shootout, and I know that once a shootout goes past 10 rounds, Jamie can’t make any more saves. That Ben Chadwick is a fool. Also, do you have any candy, John?” Life doesn’t always give you 2nd chances, but Brady got one on Sunday, and he made it count. For giving your team a much-needed win against a favored team (and for finally ending everyone’s anguish) I award you 2nd star. At the same time, Alex Eben Meyer said it best when he said “You should’ve just done that the first time.”
Side note: Personally, I wasn’t sure that Brady didn’t kick the puck in. I wish there was a video somewhere to confirm that.
1st star of the week: Mike Tuckman – Mega Touch
Ok, so I had jokes about the ineptitude of the shooters in the Mega-Karma shootout. But in reality, Tuckman had to make some tough saves….and make them he did. Certainly not 11 tough saves, but a handful. There were at least a couple occasions where Karma shooters tried to go forehand-backhand on him and he did the ol’ 2-pad-stack. We were loving it. Not only did he excel in the shootout, making every single save against ELEVEN SHOOTERS, he also kept his team in the game throughout all of regulation. It should also be noted that Tuckman refuses to wear anything except old school street hockey gear. Not only does this make him far cooler than you, it arguably puts him at a disadvantage in net as compared to his ice gear-wearing counterparts, thus making his feat on Sunday all the more impressive. Tuck, for overcoming the odds and pulling out an amazing underdog victory for your team, I award you 1st star. But, please, never let a 5:30 game shootout go on that long again, we implore you.
