Trials of the Garbage Man

Today, a champion has fallen, but let us not remember how he failed, but how he won. Today, I tell the tale of the Garbage Man, and his eating challenges.

Garbage Man (GM), has always had the gift of massive caloric intake. Whenever GM received free food or was at a buffet, GM would always make sure that he took in food to the point he was just short of vomiting. It's just the kind of champ he is. Now in instances such these, GM would set little goals for himself, i.e. "Bet I can eat 5 plates of food" (Old Country Buffet), or "Bet I can finish the rest of the tray of mostocolli" (Good ol' mama GM). These were all well and good, but not official house sanctioned challenges. What really brought on the challenges was the infamous "Pizza bite challenge".

One night GM had made his usual frozen pizza and a stroke of genius hit him. Why not test the sporting side of himself while eating? The conversation went something like this:

GM- "Hey guys, you think I can eat this pizza in under 30 bites?"

Roommates- "We don't care."

GM- "I think I can!"

And so the Bite Challenge was born. Every time GM made a frozen pizza, he would count how many bites it took him to finish, but there were also rules: 1.) The pizza could not be folded or cut, and 2.) Single bites were one open and shut motion. Now keep in mind this competition and its rules were all made by GM because no roommates gave two shits about this competition, but he kept fighting the good fight. One time he even gave himself a self imposed 1-bite penalty because of a "suspect bite". That time he could have had 19 bites, but with the penalty it was 20, and it still stands as his record. Again though, one challenge starts another, and we were inspired to start eating challenges.

The Fish Stick Challenge
Roommates were sitting around drinking on a Saturday night, and previously I had seen the GM eating 20 fish sticks. I was feeling in a sporting mood, so I proposed a challenge to him.

"Garbage man, give yourself a challenge and eat the rest of that bag (100 fish sticks) tonight"

GM- "What'll you give me if I do?" (his answer to virtually 98% of requests)

Eventually we made it into a real challenge; 100 fish sticks in one hour. If he won: a fifth of bottom shelf whiskey. If he lost? Shame. Well GM didn't fail, he ate the shit out of those fish sticks in fact. I'll be damned if he didn't get blackout drunk and have sex that night, too. What a man.

Summer Sausage Challenge
Again, roommates were thinking of horrible food that would be tough for GM to eat in large quantities, and summer sausage was proposed. On this occasion, the GM had already eaten, so he was Michael Jordan, game 5 of the '97 finals. Even so, the roommates proposed that if GM at least attempted to eat 1.5 lbs of summer sausage in 30 min, he would be rewarded with a bottom shelf whiskey. This sparked the sporting man in GM, and again he accepted the challenge. At the end of the time limit he had gone through 1.2 lbs of summer sausage. Let me reiterate: The Garbage Man ate 1.2 pounds of summer sausage in 30 minutes on a full stomach. A true man amongst boys who happen to care about what enters their stomachs.

Today, the Garbage Man truly met his eating match, and spurred on this entire post. The gauntlet was finally thrown down...
The McRib Challenge
After a fair amount of negotiation over the course of a few weeks, GM accepted the terms of the McRib challenge last night:
-10 McRibs in 65 minutes,
-He would has to pay for half the McRibs if he loses
-The regular bottom shelf whiskey if he wins
-The challenge takes place in his room
-No picture-taking devices during the competition
-We must get them for him before noon today. Lets get right into it, shall we?

I walked into McDonalds with some pep in my step this morning, moseyed on up to the counter, perused the menu for a second, and said "I'll have 10 McRibs and a medium coffee."

-The woman behind the counter chuckles, "Are you serious?"

Me-"Yup"

The woman does some typing on her computer, and then calls the manager over for something, which is just about when just about every worker seems to have seen the order and each one says "10?" This is when Zola and I start getting thoroughly embarrassed. To have to sit in there, waiting for 10 McRibs with a building full of MCDONALDS WORKERS looking down on you is something I'd rather not be put through again. Nevertheless, after a short while we received 4 bags of McRibs and a coffee and we shuffled out of there.

Upon arriving home, Garbage Man was at his peak of hunger, and not 10 minutes after our arrival he dove into them. We all gathered in GM's room, turned on his HD recording of the Victoria's Secret Fashion show, and started the timer. From the outset GM far outperformed everyone's expectations-
50 seconds-1st McRib
2.5 min-2nd McRib
4 min-3rd McRib
7 min-4th McRib

At this astronomical pace every roommate thought that GM had hustled us with the rules, and we had been played for fools. He had finished 6 McRibs in 30 minutes, and we thought the real challenge would be finding something Adriana Lima could walk in that wouldn't make her look like the most attractive person on the planet. GM pooed at the 35 minute mark though and hit his wall. After lying in his bed for another 5 minutes, he officially threw in the towel, knowing that another bite of saucy McRib would surely lead to vomit. Few thought that GM would see anything but victory, but clearly Ronald Mcdonald had other plans. This surely won't be the last of the eating challenges, but it will always be the most daunting. Here's to you, oh most vile of men.


**EDIT**
How could I forget GM's first eating challenge associated with BOX? We were at the dining hall once, and after eating a full (gargantuan GM-style, i think it was on the order of 5 plates) meal, Bri-Bri offered to pay GM 5 whole bucks to eat another 5 pieces of pizza and a giant milkshake. GM took the bet, downed the food, and napped for half a day. Again, what a man.

The Litte Things I Will Miss

Tonight I received a text message, a text message that seems like I've been receiving on a nightly basis from the same person since the fall of 2006, when we first met: "I'm a mess". The composer of the message was Al, who has been my best friend throughout college. It goes without saying that no one would be surprised that Al was drunk, but I was intrigued when he said that he was reading old blog entries while drunk with his father.

After drinking about six beers by myself, which has become the norm of my summer in Northern Michigan, inspired by Al and the great Steve, I began reading the blog, from its inception up to its unofficial close sometime at the end of the last semester.

What appealed to my emotions most was not the standard, comical drunken moments that are detailed at length throughout the blog's history, but rather, the little things about life at BOX that are intricately woven into the blog. It's those little things that make me proud to be a member of the exclusive fraternity of men - make no mistake, we comprise a fraternity that features a bond much stronger and much closer than anyone in Michigan's Greek life can boast - that have had the privilege of calling BOX their home. It goes without saying that everyone of us will remember tailgates, the big parties, bar nights. Any college student can say that. Only a few can say they lived in BOX to experience the little things, though, which I think made it so special.

As my graduation day on May 1st drew closer, and my days of residing in BOX neared a close during the month of April, I found myself, quite simply, sick of the BOX house. It's something any resident of the shit-hole has felt at one time or another. I was tired of living in filth, tired of hearing about yet another city inspection, tired of being the only one who knew how to use the dishwasher (or maybe just the only one who knew we even had a dishwasher), and quite frankly, worn out by the lifestyle of the genuine alcoholic I had become.

Having been separated from the mecca for a full three months now, I can truly appreciate the old saying that "absence makes the heart grow fonder". Minute occurrences that I thought I despised, I now miss. I think we all knew we would miss the big stuff, but I didn't think I would miss all the things I thought I disliked so much. Time has a way of putting a sweet flavor of reminisce into the memory, I suppose. I tend to have this feeling right around this time, the end of July, every summer, but this time, unfortunately, its permanent for all of us.

The little things I will miss about BOX House:

• Hangover Sunday's.

Having spent most of my hangovers over the past three months by my lonesome, I am quick to lament the loss of that familiar bond of struggle that occurred without fail ever Sunday morning. When Sunday's rolled around in the BOX living room, most of us were left in the trenches to fight the all-inclusive hangover from what was a hangover dating (at least) back to Wednesday night at Mitch's. There was a time freshman year when I used to use Sunday's as study days, but I, as is with all BOX residents, was forced to make Sunday a hangover day during my tenure there. In my mind, at least six of us would pile onto the couches for about twelve straight hours on those Sundays, watching mindless television, quite incapable of doing much else. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing fun about those days at the time, but there's something about retrospect that makes them seem like more fun; at least the company of others in your same boat beats what surely awaits all of us in the future, a hangover with no companion other than the wife and dog.

• The hours leading up to a tailgate

Every college student, save for the extreme nerds and clueless foreigners, knows what a football Saturday consists of. Very few know of the feeling of being at BOX at 5:30 a.m. just prior to a tailgate. I've documented it before on this blog, but it deserves saying again, I believe the time from 5:30 to about 8:00 a.m. is the best time of the tailgate. During that time you are surrounded by those who truly care, the utter die-hards of Michigan football tailgating, you are perhaps still conscious of what is about to occur, a beautiful day worthy of the great days of your life, and you can sip your drink, truly happy with the world about you.

• Pre-gaming events that aren't OK to pregame for

Many of us who have lived at BOX were self-proclaimed alcoholics, me being one of the biggest, and perhaps most sincere, of those. For an alcoholic, it is extremely convenient to have at your disposal someone willing to drink with you at a moment's notice. Quite literally, there was always someone at BOX willing to drink with you, at any given time. And I think it is here that separates BOX from the typical college student. Any college student is used to pre-gaming for football games or the bars, but I don't really remember any events in which we didn't pre-game for at BOX. If you wanted to pre-game for class, there's usually always someone who woke up still drunk who wants to do a couple shots with you before class. Christ, I pre-gamed for my own graduation. As we all move on with our lives and slowly attempt to infiltrate the real world, I think we will all find that pre-gaming many events is simply unacceptable to the real world. When in BOX, you could simply spit on the expectations of the real world and come drunk to anything you wanted.

• Socially Unacceptable Amounts of Pre-Gaming

I often heard college students remarking on how they pre-gamed too much before the party. "Wow, I got way too drunk before the party," I would hear. I remember thinking to myself, "thank God I'm in BOX". Yeah, college students get too drunk sometimes. For each person who got too drunk before a party that one time a week, we were getting too drunk before parties 5 times a week. BOX took it to another level. If we were going to a bar or to a party, it was blackout or bust. People would consume an entire fifth, two 40's of CSI, or 15 beers before going out, and then we would still outdrink everyone at the party after that. Now that I've experienced the outside world for what it is, I've realized that drinking half handle of Old Crow is not what most people do before hitting the bars. That normality, I will surely miss.

That's all for now, I've got more, but I'm a bit drunk to continue writing. If only I had something else I miss from college to keep me going...

Long live the blog. Love you all. If anyone's alive out there, post your own memories.


- Brick (my google account somehow got deleted?)

Poop War 2010

The beginning of Poop War 2010 has been launched. I have been relocated away from BOX for the summer, working in my hometown of Gun Ru (Grand Rapids), but was informed of a recent theft at the home. On Friday night, one of the roommate's bikes and more importantly the "GO BOX-GO WOLVERINES-GO TO CAMPUS CORNER" sign were stolen. This occurred largely due to the Open Door Policy instituted and still supported under the Russell Administration beginning in 2007. The Open Door Policy, as its name suggests, states that the front door should be unlocked at all (at least 99%) of the time and only should be locked over extended breaks. It is advantageous because I am fairly certain no one owns a key to the front door, but also because it is the embodiment of our attitude being welcoming to just about any human. This has its drawbacks in the form of theft and the constant annoyance of street urchins. However, after the recent cowardly acts of last Friday a Poop War has been declared.

Due to important intel from Jello, BOX has become aware of enemies that live right down the street on Hoover. These individuals have made a public declaration of wanting to steal the House letters and may be responsible for last year's stolen letters. While we don't know if it was these same individuals who stole the sign and bike, it makes little difference. A poop now, ask questions later approach has been taken. Since the suspects' home has been identified, the Wetness has called me to inform me of a Hiroshima-style Poop Attack on their grill. I expect a complete breakdown of the horrifying attack. Millions of lives will surely be lost, but since the men of BOX have notoriously vicious and unrelenting poops, it seems fitting that this form of attack ought to be the desired weapon.


Let it Begin...

LT: I Don't Remember My Draft Day

NEW SPECIES DISCOVERED

The Cavanagh Bird: A portly, flightless bird who smokes Santa Fe's and eats exclusively burritos

Antiqued

This is what happens when you pass out drunk circa 4 p.m. at BOX:
















... ANTIQUED!

R.I.P. BOX Tailgating