That all said: it’s been a very bad week, month, year, decade, etc. to be an American. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably desperate for a breather from all the horrifying shit happening across this godforsaken land, particularly over the past few days. So! As the unofficial start of summer approaches, let’s lighten the load and cruise into the holiday weekend with a low-stakes discussion thread. I’d like to know any/all of the following:
What are you drinking this weekend? Is it ranch water?
What’s the last really good article you read? Booze-related or otherwise, but preferably otherwise, if I’m being honest.
Hold forth in the comments, compadres! Or just post whatever you want, or ask me questions… truly, I’m just looking to turn my brain off and shoot the shit with you. I’ll be in and out of the thread throughout the day, hope to see you there. Thanks as always for reading—Dave.
P.S.: Commenting privileges are typically restricted to paying Friends of Fingers, but I’m opening this thread up to the whole Fingers Fam. Please, if you haven’t yet, consider buying a subscription to support my work:
At this discounted rate, annual subscriptions work out to less than $6/month. I’m way behind on my monthly target for May, and I can only continue publishing Fingers with reader support. Hope I can count on yours!
Called it beer pong; don't think I heard it called Beirut until well into college. My favorite college drinking game story ....
Scene: Northwestern University, 2010, the off-campus house that my boyfriend at the time and his ~14 roommates live in
Props: Garbage everywhere. That house was disgusting. A grimy beer pong table, sticky as a fly trap.
My boyfriend's roommates were nice people but generally rolled their eyes about whoever would have to be on a beer pong team with me, because they were all dudes who'd been practicing this skill since leaving the womb (apparently) and I .... went to class instead?
Anyway, it's nearly the end of my senior year and my younger brother came out to visit me from the East Coast; he would have been a sophomore in college at this point, the peak of his scrawniness and awkwardness. Of course he has to be on my team, so folks are lining up to play us, assuming our beer pong mediocrity must be genetic. What they don't know—but quickly learned—is that my brother was in a fraternity and spent +/- 5 hours a day playing beer pong in between the wine tasting classes he went to (his major was 'hospitality,' uh huh). Anyway, my dweeby little brother sunk like 7 cups in a row, somehow I managed to also make ~3 in a row, and we absolutely shut out the other team. A top 5 sibling moment, probably.
So strange that you called it "beer pong," I feel like our area of NJ was pretty solidly "Beirut" territory. Do you have any recollection for what you called the Dartmouth version? (If you even knew about it, I mean.)
Lol also your brother must have felt so fucking cool. Where did he go to college?
Hah this is probably correct about our area of NJ and the vernacular, but I was not cool enough to be invited to parties with drinking in high school, and therefor was not hip to the various branches of this game. I'll have to ask my brother, Chris, if he remembers that night of total sibling bonding (he better)—he went to Cornell.
That's another good discussion question — when people started drinking. I only started the end of the summer after junior year of high school, which was fairly late for my peer group.
Here's a drinking game story from college*. A group of us were rounding out a long night of beverages with a game of quarters and I was doing so, so poorly. I could barely get a bounce or two done before somebody would stack their glass on mine and I'd have to take a drink. This happened probably five or six times before I bowed out of the game and decided to just spectate. While watching I realized the rest of the group was also terrible at the game, but I was so laser focused on bouncing a quarter (and, let's be honest, too drunk to realize) that my friends were just stacking their glasses on mine to see if I would notice. Five or six times. So, quarters taught me about trust and I don't think I have ever played again.
*senior year, when we were all of legal drinking age, of course.
Quarters is one of the most stressful drinking games in the mainstream canon. I hate it—the noise, the pressure, the concern that you're irreparably destroying the surface of the rental house's coffee table and you're not going to get your share of the beach week security deposit back... all of it.
Just to pull this thread a little bit: *what* did this experience teach you about trust, exactly?
Congratulations on your Athletic subscription, I don't have one (and don't really watch a ton of sports, so it's not a high priority for me in the budget, unfortunately.) But I'm going to find a friend who does and make them give me their password just to read these, dammit!
The last really good article I read was the interview last week on Will Harris’ Substack about a John Leguizamo pilot titled “King John” that is a fascinating behind-the-scenes of the creative meat grinder that is Hollywood. https://willharris.substack.com/p/pilot-error-king-john-2014?s=r
Drinking Green State Lager. Hate any drinking games involving cards. Called it Beer Pong, then Beirut and now back to Beer Pong while still selectively calling it Beirut. Out of that group Bloody Marys but prefer Red Needles or Tequila Sunrises. All in on Top Gun Maverick! As for articles https://defector.com/there-is-drama-over-irish-dances-first-replay-review/
Wait I need to know more about how/why you decide to toggle between the two names? Were you like, shamed out of/back into calling it Beirut? What gives?
Hell yeah Red Needles. For the uninitiated:
"In addition to his multiple talents, it turns out that Leonard Cohen also knew how to mix a drink. He created a simple three-ingredient cocktail called the Red Needle back in 1975. It consisted of tequila, cranberry juice and lemon, not as sweet as a Cosmopolitan (which came along later) and served in a stem glass over ice."
No shame or anything. During my High School time in Plattsburgh NY it was called Beer Pong and still is. However when I went to College at Plattsburgh State I had friends and members of my track team from Jersey & such who called it Beirut. Plus I had relatives who called it Beirut. Anyways this was the time period I was really attending parties and such and actually playing it quite a bit, so Beirut it was and that's what I still call it. However I'm a Recreation Coordinator for an Agency in the Plattsburgh area and the people involved in those activities refer to it as Beer Pong in their day to day lives. Plus I've only come across a small batch of staff in my agency over the last 28 years who called it Beirut, so that's where the back and forth came from. Of course when I get together with college friends, relatives and such it's Beirut (actually the only time I really still play). Hey I consider it a victory to be allowed to run it as an activity whether it's called Beirut or Beer Pong. Our folks also love that Air Pong game that's out at bars, bowling alleys, pool halls and such.
Beer die is the platonic ideal of a drinking game in every sense except for how unbelievably alienating it is to anybody at the party who isn't playing it. Negative externalities, and so forth.
Dinosaurs, huh? I feel like this recently got made into a docuseries, but I could be wrong.
Called it Beirut-was never a fan. And even would be corrected and correct others that "beer pong" is a different drinking game. Another drinking game that I wasn't a fan of the name was "Bombs over Baghdad" which involved table tennis balls and solo cups but forget the other rules.
it was named adjacently to the Outkast song. And yes, Northeast. i believe the game was paraphrased to just "baghdad" urban dictionary says "2. a term used to describe a game similar to beirut, where vodka is used in place of beer" but i dont recall that. but if that's how we played it would make sense why i didnt recall. i remember it being more like speed beirut or like with multiple balls at a time or some kind of streak play.
We called it Beirut in high school so it’s very weird to me that Kate did not - Dave, what was it over on your hilltop in Morris Township?? In college, I feel like I heard a mix of both, but definitely leaned more toward beer pong. In any case, I am embarrassingly terrible at it.
In my longform magazine article writing class, which was half grad students and half undergrads (would have pissed me off were I a grad student bc we were all real try-hard annoying), the grad students all picked wildly interesting topics for their semester-long piece. One guy did the origins of the game and ended up going to Dartmouth and found the creators etc etc. Another guy did the invention the hoodie. All the undergrads (myself included) did all these very dorky, very serious things. What a waste.
Anyway… I am never not down for a game of flip cup. Survivor-style, musical chairs, really anything. It is my only real skill in life. (This is as sad as it sounds.)
I have no idea if he published it anywhere or even what his name is. It was 2006! I was preoccupied with sorority nonsense! They probably did talk though.
For what it's worth, I grew up calling it "Beirut." I still kind of remember Facebook Groups dedicated to swearing your allegiance to one name or the other. Man what a weird moment in time that was. Does anybody else remember that?
//Back in Pennsylvania, besotted frat bros were reading headlines and hunting for a name to differentiate their new throwing game from Dartmouth’s paddle pong. There was an "analogy between the ping-pong balls flying across the table and landing on the opponent’s side,” Duane Kosten, Lehigh ‘86, told Rathod, plus “an idea that the US should bomb Beirut” in retribution for the ‘83 attacks. Three years later, Hill recalled efforts to dub the game “Libya” in reference to the ‘86 US air siege there.
When Lebanon hit the front page yet again during the Iran-Contra Affair, anti-Lebanese sentiment may have broken the tie. The game would be called Beirut (“Never beer pong!!” emphasized Alison*, Lehigh ‘02, via email). Lehigh legend has it that there was originally a table painted with a map of Lebanon and a star on its capital, but if such a thing existed, it’s long since been lost to the frat basement of history.//
Nothing like seemingly benign American traditions that actually have a history rooted in the bloodshed of empire! We may be falling behind the developed world in every meaningful metric, but we'll be #1 at that shit forever.
Called it beer pong; don't think I heard it called Beirut until well into college. My favorite college drinking game story ....
Scene: Northwestern University, 2010, the off-campus house that my boyfriend at the time and his ~14 roommates live in
Props: Garbage everywhere. That house was disgusting. A grimy beer pong table, sticky as a fly trap.
My boyfriend's roommates were nice people but generally rolled their eyes about whoever would have to be on a beer pong team with me, because they were all dudes who'd been practicing this skill since leaving the womb (apparently) and I .... went to class instead?
Anyway, it's nearly the end of my senior year and my younger brother came out to visit me from the East Coast; he would have been a sophomore in college at this point, the peak of his scrawniness and awkwardness. Of course he has to be on my team, so folks are lining up to play us, assuming our beer pong mediocrity must be genetic. What they don't know—but quickly learned—is that my brother was in a fraternity and spent +/- 5 hours a day playing beer pong in between the wine tasting classes he went to (his major was 'hospitality,' uh huh). Anyway, my dweeby little brother sunk like 7 cups in a row, somehow I managed to also make ~3 in a row, and we absolutely shut out the other team. A top 5 sibling moment, probably.
So strange that you called it "beer pong," I feel like our area of NJ was pretty solidly "Beirut" territory. Do you have any recollection for what you called the Dartmouth version? (If you even knew about it, I mean.)
Lol also your brother must have felt so fucking cool. Where did he go to college?
Hah this is probably correct about our area of NJ and the vernacular, but I was not cool enough to be invited to parties with drinking in high school, and therefor was not hip to the various branches of this game. I'll have to ask my brother, Chris, if he remembers that night of total sibling bonding (he better)—he went to Cornell.
That's another good discussion question — when people started drinking. I only started the end of the summer after junior year of high school, which was fairly late for my peer group.
Here's a drinking game story from college*. A group of us were rounding out a long night of beverages with a game of quarters and I was doing so, so poorly. I could barely get a bounce or two done before somebody would stack their glass on mine and I'd have to take a drink. This happened probably five or six times before I bowed out of the game and decided to just spectate. While watching I realized the rest of the group was also terrible at the game, but I was so laser focused on bouncing a quarter (and, let's be honest, too drunk to realize) that my friends were just stacking their glasses on mine to see if I would notice. Five or six times. So, quarters taught me about trust and I don't think I have ever played again.
*senior year, when we were all of legal drinking age, of course.
Quarters is one of the most stressful drinking games in the mainstream canon. I hate it—the noise, the pressure, the concern that you're irreparably destroying the surface of the rental house's coffee table and you're not going to get your share of the beach week security deposit back... all of it.
Just to pull this thread a little bit: *what* did this experience teach you about trust, exactly?
Trust no bitch.
More and more people are saying this.
beer pong and beirut were used interchangeably when i was playing
best brunch cocktail is a gin and grapefruit with a Campari float
always happy to tell people to read whatever Andre Gee is writing: https://twitter.com/andrejgee
Where did you grow up? What part of the country?
Dope, thanks for the recommendation on Gee. Will check his stuff out.
Gin and grapefruit with a Campari floater sounds refreshing as hell. Gonna try it out this weekend and report back.
this would have been in Los Angeles when I was in school, so lots of folks from all over bringing their regionalisms along with them
"Beirut" where I went to school and anyone who said "beer pong" was ridiculed.
Same. Do you remember what you guys called the Dartmouth version? Was that "beer pong" to you?
A little late, but the best recent articles I've read are Pablo Maurer reporting on water fountains (https://theathletic.com/1448748/2022/05/26/usmnt-2002-photo-shoot/) and Nacogdoches (https://theathletic.com/3323860/2022/05/20/clint-dempsey-usmnt-hall-of-fame/)
Congratulations on your Athletic subscription, I don't have one (and don't really watch a ton of sports, so it's not a high priority for me in the budget, unfortunately.) But I'm going to find a friend who does and make them give me their password just to read these, dammit!
How about a guest pass, since I have an extra: https://theathletic.com/gp/18va2wfjh5
Hell yeah king, I'm gonna read the shit outta these. Thanks!
The last really good article I read was the interview last week on Will Harris’ Substack about a John Leguizamo pilot titled “King John” that is a fascinating behind-the-scenes of the creative meat grinder that is Hollywood. https://willharris.substack.com/p/pilot-error-king-john-2014?s=r
Rad, gonna check it out!
Top Gun Maverick currently 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. I can’t quite believe it either.
Many people whose taste I trust have told me it is Unironically Good™️
Drinking Green State Lager. Hate any drinking games involving cards. Called it Beer Pong, then Beirut and now back to Beer Pong while still selectively calling it Beirut. Out of that group Bloody Marys but prefer Red Needles or Tequila Sunrises. All in on Top Gun Maverick! As for articles https://defector.com/there-is-drama-over-irish-dances-first-replay-review/
Also Green State Lager is so solid, great call. I love everything Zero Gravity is putting out these days.
Wait I need to know more about how/why you decide to toggle between the two names? Were you like, shamed out of/back into calling it Beirut? What gives?
Hell yeah Red Needles. For the uninitiated:
"In addition to his multiple talents, it turns out that Leonard Cohen also knew how to mix a drink. He created a simple three-ingredient cocktail called the Red Needle back in 1975. It consisted of tequila, cranberry juice and lemon, not as sweet as a Cosmopolitan (which came along later) and served in a stem glass over ice."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/dining/drinks/leonard-cohen-red-needle-cocktail.html
No shame or anything. During my High School time in Plattsburgh NY it was called Beer Pong and still is. However when I went to College at Plattsburgh State I had friends and members of my track team from Jersey & such who called it Beirut. Plus I had relatives who called it Beirut. Anyways this was the time period I was really attending parties and such and actually playing it quite a bit, so Beirut it was and that's what I still call it. However I'm a Recreation Coordinator for an Agency in the Plattsburgh area and the people involved in those activities refer to it as Beer Pong in their day to day lives. Plus I've only come across a small batch of staff in my agency over the last 28 years who called it Beirut, so that's where the back and forth came from. Of course when I get together with college friends, relatives and such it's Beirut (actually the only time I really still play). Hey I consider it a victory to be allowed to run it as an activity whether it's called Beirut or Beer Pong. Our folks also love that Air Pong game that's out at bars, bowling alleys, pool halls and such.
I will only be drinking domestic lagers.
Thumper.
Neither I only play beer die, because you get to sit.
Bloody Mary is the champion.
I heard Maverick was very good.
Read this one recently - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died
Beer die is the platonic ideal of a drinking game in every sense except for how unbelievably alienating it is to anybody at the party who isn't playing it. Negative externalities, and so forth.
Dinosaurs, huh? I feel like this recently got made into a docuseries, but I could be wrong.
Called it Beirut-was never a fan. And even would be corrected and correct others that "beer pong" is a different drinking game. Another drinking game that I wasn't a fan of the name was "Bombs over Baghdad" which involved table tennis balls and solo cups but forget the other rules.
holy shit Samer this sounds like a nightmare
Where was this? Northeast?
I vaguely recall "Bombs Over Baghdad" but I think I'm probably just misremembering the Outkast song.
it was named adjacently to the Outkast song. And yes, Northeast. i believe the game was paraphrased to just "baghdad" urban dictionary says "2. a term used to describe a game similar to beirut, where vodka is used in place of beer" but i dont recall that. but if that's how we played it would make sense why i didnt recall. i remember it being more like speed beirut or like with multiple balls at a time or some kind of streak play.
We called it Beirut in high school so it’s very weird to me that Kate did not - Dave, what was it over on your hilltop in Morris Township?? In college, I feel like I heard a mix of both, but definitely leaned more toward beer pong. In any case, I am embarrassingly terrible at it.
In my longform magazine article writing class, which was half grad students and half undergrads (would have pissed me off were I a grad student bc we were all real try-hard annoying), the grad students all picked wildly interesting topics for their semester-long piece. One guy did the origins of the game and ended up going to Dartmouth and found the creators etc etc. Another guy did the invention the hoodie. All the undergrads (myself included) did all these very dorky, very serious things. What a waste.
Anyway… I am never not down for a game of flip cup. Survivor-style, musical chairs, really anything. It is my only real skill in life. (This is as sad as it sounds.)
I would like to join your flip cup team
Back in Chicago for the NBWA conference in October! I bet we can take all those rich Boomers.
We called it Beirut, yeah. Strange that Kate didn't. Just *had* to be different, didn't you Kate?!?
Wait, link that guy's article! If it's online, at least. I want to read it, or maybe I already have. I interviewed the guy who wrote this book: https://www.abebooks.com/9780615986326/Three-Ship-Swan-Song-Dartmouth-0615986323/plp
I bet they talked to each other.
I have no idea if he published it anywhere or even what his name is. It was 2006! I was preoccupied with sorority nonsense! They probably did talk though.
For what it's worth, I grew up calling it "Beirut." I still kind of remember Facebook Groups dedicated to swearing your allegiance to one name or the other. Man what a weird moment in time that was. Does anybody else remember that?
I got curious about the provenance of the name, so I reported it out for Thrillist years ago. The Beirut moniker seems pretty likely derived from American conservatives' demands for Reagan to bomb Lebanon in the mid-'80s: https://www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/beer-pong-history-why-it-s-called-beirut-fun-drinking-games
//Back in Pennsylvania, besotted frat bros were reading headlines and hunting for a name to differentiate their new throwing game from Dartmouth’s paddle pong. There was an "analogy between the ping-pong balls flying across the table and landing on the opponent’s side,” Duane Kosten, Lehigh ‘86, told Rathod, plus “an idea that the US should bomb Beirut” in retribution for the ‘83 attacks. Three years later, Hill recalled efforts to dub the game “Libya” in reference to the ‘86 US air siege there.
When Lebanon hit the front page yet again during the Iran-Contra Affair, anti-Lebanese sentiment may have broken the tie. The game would be called Beirut (“Never beer pong!!” emphasized Alison*, Lehigh ‘02, via email). Lehigh legend has it that there was originally a table painted with a map of Lebanon and a star on its capital, but if such a thing existed, it’s long since been lost to the frat basement of history.//
Nothing like seemingly benign American traditions that actually have a history rooted in the bloodshed of empire! We may be falling behind the developed world in every meaningful metric, but we'll be #1 at that shit forever.