Smurf Cartel

This is the insanity that was yesterday's 2009 Riff Raff Kickball tournament, hosted by Candice Lee, center of the above picture. Six teams and about 100 people showed up. Standard kickball rules from grade school apply: Must have beer in hand at all time, all disputes solved by a beer chugging contest, two handed catches of fly-balls are allowed, but you have to hold your beer in your mouth. Also, every team must have a costume. We attempted to go as Smurfs, but ended up looking more like Colombian Drug Lords. Ace pulled off a good Smurfette.



The tournament itself was fun enough, but some obvious contributing factors led to a few inevitable problems.

Factors:

1. Eight kegs of beer. We finished them all and the heat from the day left a lot of people drunker than maybe they normally would be.
2. No one really remembers how to play kickball. We've all played it at one point, but rules are subject to debate.
3. Most people were more interested in beer than kickball.

Problems:

1. Every game was argued pretty intensely. There were some pretty heated emotions and sometimes tended toward no longer being fun.
2. The huge amount of beer and vague understanding of the rules led to some fights. Nothing serious, and everyone ended up friendly again, but it was just kinda lame.
3. Wrestling.

We must have been quite a spectacle. Locals came and gathered around to watch the crazy foreigners drink beer and yell at each other. The fields are surrounded by a chain link fence, so we literally felt like animals inside a cage, being watched and studied. They took pictures and little kids tried to get our attention. My favorite game was to get a bunch of us lined up and just stare back, wordless.

Cute kids.

Our captains, Jim and Joe, comteplating what to do with our bottle of Vodka. They did not drink it, which was the correct decision.


Keg on the field.

Oh, and we finally put a deposit down on a new apartment. We ended up passing on the one in the hutong; it ended up being too much trouble to sort out. Plus, we found a place in the original apartment complex we wanted, and just decided to take the plunge. We'll move in this week. Yay!

~Kev