Truesday: Games of Summer
*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors
It’s summer in Texas, y’all, and shit. This year’s heat, quite blessedly, has certainly taken its time to get here. Not that I’m complaining, because I really don’t miss the usual swamp-ass issues which typically darken any experience requiring me to be outdoors for more than two consecutive minutes after the month of April.
I wax ecstatic at this late start of Summer!
Actually, I did not realize that the generally accepted start-date for Summer is June 1st, and only goes through August. For those of us in central or southern Texas, these delineations are pretty meaningless. “Summer”, for all useful intents and purposes, usually begins in April, and ends in October. This is because the only real differentiator in weather between these months is the amount of rainfall we receive, thereby deciding the much more important measurable element of our Summer: the number and strength of the mosquito population.
Obviously there are some who might argue this, making all sorts of pointless claims about Earth tilting, daylight hours, or equinoxes. But they’re full of useless “book smarts” when they try to explain to the sweat-soaked man on a Lamar bus with broken a/c during September, when the temperature is plussing 95 degrees, that it’s fucking Autumn.
The good thing about Summer in Austin, besides the runners on Town Lake, are the outdoor games that we play in order to occupy our minds when the murderous heat comes to claim our lives.
The first thing to understand about all the outdoor Summer games of Austin mentioned here, is that they typically involve, if not require, the constant consumption of low-grade cold beer products. It is impossible to stress the absolute importance that this game element holds in terms of player dynamic, and the enjoyability of the game as a whole. The second is that the majority of the playing field, if not all of it, must be shaded (preferably beneath well-aged oaks in well-known public parks, probably sharing close space with the homeless, who can be found giving each other their Summer tattoos). The third thing to understand is that anyone who keeps tight score, or demands a measured outcome, is a meddlesome asshole who has no clue how to enjoy themselves in the Austin Summer heat, and should likely be heavily drugged, boxed up, and mailed to Minneapolis where people might actually give a shit about such pointless “results”.
Let the games begin!
Horseshoes. --------
The point of this game is simple: after your debatably retarded cousin pounds a stick into the dirt with a broken tire iron, you throw a big metal U at it (at the stick, or the cousin, it really won’t matter after an hour or so).
Drink an entire eighteen pack of domestically-produced beer, straight from the crappily handled and likely torn cardboard box in which it was packaged for sale.
Relieve yourself onto nearby trees, preferably away from small children and/or onlooking traffic, but don’t bother stressing the appropriateness of your actions too much. Repeat these motions until you catch yourself having extended philosophical discussions about the legitimacy of Hawkins’ mathematical proof for the existence of black holes. With your retarded, tire-iron wielding cousin, who will likely be wearing the empty eighteen pack on his head, looking quite rightly like a large brain-eraser, repeatedly asking you to “look at it! No, LOOK at it!”
Tally up everyone’s points and use those numbers as your lotto picks. But of course, you will be too drunk to remember the numbers, so have one of the neighboring bums tattoo it across your forehead so that the Utotem clerk is able to read your winning selection.
Washers. --------
A personal favorite of mine. This game is extremely similar to Horseshoes in general format, except that instead of throwing a big U at a stick/cousin, you are throwing metal Os into holes centered within large boxes of kitty litter. You are probably playing this at your brother-in-Law’s request, at some “retreat” or company picnic (or Freddie’s).
Same treatment with the domestic beer, although it is generally accepted for Washers players to swap out the Colorado Koolaid for something imported, and more exotic. Like Tecate or any of the winners from the Labatt portfolio.
It is highly recommended that you avoid playing this game with any man named “Will” or “Chet”. I’m not sure of the science behind it, but those fuckers tend to be brilliant washer tossers. Plus, they rarely chip in on beer, which is pretty shitty, even for a Washers player.
At game’s end, take everyone’s score and assign them letters of the alphabet (a =1, b =2, n =whatever). If anyone playing with you that day has a name which is spelled or could be phonetically sounded out by the combination of letters produced by your teammates’ scores, then you all must get the name of that player’s mother emblazoned across all of your inner left thighs, by any one of the transient tattoo artists hanging out under nearby trees.
Frisbee golf. --------
What are you trying to do? Oh, well of course you’re trying to throw a plastic disk across a medium-sized prairie or sprawling riverbed/open-sewer into a free-standing contraption made from steel poles and dangling chains, roughly the height of a suburban mailbox! These “goals” resemble what one might imagine the innards of a garbage disposal to look like if they were blown up ten-thousand times in size. Or perhaps a medieval torture device/cage for midgets and/or large chimpanzees, designed to help them find “religion” or settle some massive chimpanzee debt.
The beer situation can easily be augmented by the partaking in any readily available relaxation agents, or hallucination tools. These chemicals should all be consumed in tandem: before, during, and between “throws”. Because there are typically a linked set of “goals” or “holes” to play, and many different sets of players “throwing”, there will likely be time between holes where your crew is waiting to tee up.
Be sure to bring along a hacky sack (or “footbag” if you want to sound like a pretentious art major) to occupy yourselves until you’re weeded enough to ignore how insanely slow that group of fifty frat-bros who are apparently using their clubfeet to throw, sweating ahead of you.
Write down everyone’s personal score after the final hole, add those together, multiply that number by 10, and then go get your lost love’s name tattoo’d on your neck by the most hung-over hobo, sleeping under the nearest tree.
End list--------
This list is far from complete. Perhaps next week I’ll diagram out some NEW Summer games that I hope to see played beneath the soon-to-be-killing-old-people Austin sun, near the slumbering homeless. In the meantime, feel free to send me YOUR recommendations for Summer games… truecraig [at] gmail [dot] com.
