I didn't have much time to BSD-it when I was a student. This was partly because I was a crazy person taking six information intensive, lab-lecture-tutorial based Engineering Epics each semester, but mainly because BSD is on a Friday and the soul crushing, heartless Registrar bullies always loaded up my exam schedule with a Monday Morning Special followed by a straight-flush of an early week Test Streak. These are terrible people who have graduated from Santa's Naughty List and are working on tenure with Louis Cyphre*. But who cares about them when you're Out, when you no longer have the study crunch, when dues have been paid and rewards are being reaped? Not I said the Spy.
But it's not as easy as checking the 2007 Exam Timetable and penciling in a Friday Funday for 16-APR-2010. I'm a working man, I no longer belong to the academic community, I am on the list of Pro-hee-be-da-be-do, I must exercise the sneakiness. Therefore, Jack Webb's 4 Steps to Crashing BSD:
Step 1 - Cut a hole in the box.
Step 2 - acquire a BSD Beer Gardens Wristband.
Step 3 - Do not attend work on Friday.
Step 4 - Smile at security as they let you into the Gardens.
Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson would be so proud.
Things get interesting around Step 2. In order to gain access to the party's epicenter, the ground-zero of Chaos and Mayhem, you must have a Beer Garden Wristband securely strapped around your wrist, specifically your right wrist. Screw that up, and it's BS without the Day. This eliminates the option of having the Wristband swap the Owner, because these things are built as single serving friends. A BSD Wristband comes at a cost of a line up in Mac Hall, a show-and-tell with your drivers license and Student ID, and a friendly eye-down by the Fake Smile that's locking the band around your wrist. A slip up at any of these check points and it's check-mate, tip your King, you lose. So as an undercover student, if you can make it to the Uni during work hours, convince the BSD Suits that your Student ID from 2002 is good to go, and beat back the stare down with a touch of charm, all without raising suspicion, then you're ready for some Step 3.
If your 'work' is a place where saying something like 'Hey I won't be in on Friday, I need to spend all day up at the university out in the sun getting bombed with the college crowd', and you don't get escorted out of the building with your belongings tightly packed in a single box, then you probably don't need to be at BSD, your 'work' is where the party's at. For the rest of us, lying is a good option. I would also recommend 'untold truths', 'deception', 'acting', 'story telling', or 'misdirection'.
Step 4 is all about confidence. These security stiffs can smell fear, fear and weakness and a blood alcohol concentration level of over point-35. And all they want is an excuse to flex their fabricated power. Step 4 is also where Steps 1 through 3 really come together, because if you've put in the time and energy, no one will think twice as they scan your ID, examine your band, and watch you meander into the Beer Gardens... Booyakasha! (They might think twice if you bring your box with a hole cut in it, but then again, you never know, Step 4's confidence can really take you places.)
I checked off the highlights from the 4-Step BSD Approval List, and with the pre-launch work done, it was time to get serious and let the games begin...
Some of the following debrief has been blacked out and classified:
"... frisbees blocked out the sun and hacky-sacks danced around in circles just above the green spaces. I moved across Campus towards the SE corner with a soccer ball that made me apart of the culture. Firing the ball to the feet of random students introduced me into their groups and between the cries of 'Sweet' and 'Dude' and 'BSDeeeeeeee!', the soccer ball was my interpreter; I spoke their tongue. But it wasn't all Love & Peace & Hippie Revivals, just outside the Library a pack of guys, hyenas, riled themselves into a frenzy and circled a pair of..."
"... and the line was massive. We had been following the roaring hum emanating from the fenced off parking lot, and as we got closer the natives got more aggressive. On more than one occasion we were approached for _____________ We rounded the last corner and crossed streams (what ever you do, Don't Cross the Streams - words of wisdom a la Egon) with the morning crowd, the early shift of Drunks, as they staggered away from the Gardens. A paramedic wheeled an unconscious kid passed us. The guy looked ghost white even on the starch sheets of the stretcher..."
"... I hooted and hollered with the half dozen guys behind me in line; my line-mates. The key is to be loud and vulgar without being the most obnoxious jack@ss within ear shot. I built up some line-currency by talking to any girl that I could see. Next thing I knew, I was a man among boys, Mr. BSD, the guy that everyone wanted to tell their stories to, share their secrets with, campaign their ideas to. It's amazing what this kind of currency can get you, especially when _______________ A Long-Touque, wearing a dude in an oversized Tie-Dye shirt, confessed that he wasn't part of the UofC family and that he had borrowed a buddy's ID. I smiled and tossed him a 'Nice Man!'. He didn't look anything like the guy in the Student Card. He wasn't getting in. He was F%&ked. At that exact moment security announced ___________ A girl told me she had to pee so bad that she was just going to squat down right in the line. Twenty seconds later, half way through telling a drunken incoherent joke, a guy keeled over and blew up all over the girls feet. Now she had to pee, was covered in some dude's puke, and was tearing up. The guy groaned, rubbed vomit off his hands into his jeans and then offered the line a full on cheer before________________ There was a guy sporting two pairs of sunglasses that confessed that he had told his girlfriend..."
"... hit me in the side of the head and took out my beer. What could I say, it was basically my fault, it was the same soccer ball that I had brought into the Gardens. 'That's why I have two of these bad boys', I told the concerned face of a tiny girl as I showed her the other half of my double fisting routine. She smile ever so slightly and asked if she could..."
"... no cloud cover and a plus-20 sun. Other than the sunburn-red on pale white winter-skin, a common costume wandering the Beer Gardens was the blank canvas of the plain T. Like a mini-wheat, the Ts were 'sweet' on one side 'not so sweet' on the other. R-Rated slander like the messages covering the walls of a public washroom stall coloured the back of the shirts, while friendly fun yearbook style greetings were scattered on the front. I wrote "Been Here, Done This" on the shoulder blade of _____ ______'s white T, gave her a hug, and winked at the 3 Random d!cks walking passed. ______________ pirates, '70s tennis stars, nurses wearing not much of a uniform, a seemingly endless supply of tall skinny red man-unitards leaving 'little' to the imagination, guys dressed as girls, girls dressed as girls without pants, wearing neon green panties to match their neon green bras..."
"... got more physical as you got closer to the stage - Mosh-Pit meets Make-Out. Big Music, Big-Beer, Hormone-heavy guys, near-naked girls, Beer, sweaty afternoon heat, Beer ________ Beer..."
"... find someone and lose another. It's all a big game of Hide-and-Seek. Everyone in the Beer Gardens was either lost and looking for people, working hard to ditch stage-5 Clingers, celebrating a reunion by hugging-it-out-B!tch, or managing all 3 at the same time. I was hunting down my own group after touching absolutely nothing while in one of the dozens of port-o-potties lining the Gardens south wall, when I caught the back hand of a talking mime. Technically I didn't do any of the 'catching', because I matrix'd myself out of the way just as the hand swung out and back and clipped a beer out of my right hand. The hand belonged to an excited story teller who shrunk as we made eye contact. I addressed him and his listeners with the now fan favourite, 'That's why I have two of these bad boys'. The talking mime laughed, he loved it, he wanted to be friends, he and his troop of ladyfriends circled and asked..."
"... was all smiles. It's amazing that entire groups of totally random strangers can instantly become long lost friends from a different life. It was one big happy BSD family as the crowd chanted along to BEP's 'I Gotta Feeling'. It was a special moment that became too fleeting too fast, since not everyone interprets 'Tonight's the Night' as meaning it's 'going to be a good night'. No sooner had the song started to sing and the bonding begun, than a person standing right next to me ate a fist and hit the ground hard_____________ I quickly faded to black as the music became the sound track to an action sequence. Oddly enough, I didn't feel I needed to stick around to see who took the ten-count..."
"... and then she pulled her shirt back down. My partner in crime had just missed it and returned with two cans in hand. This was a problem because I had given him more than enough for two rounds each. It's such a battle to cross the grounds and navigate the sea of Swayers, that one beer each just wasn't worth the commute. But that's what he had returned with, 2 beers, and no change. 'I got hit by this girl, she was pretty large, portly really, and she took out two of the beers...' WHAT?! REALLY?!?! These beverages were beginning to become a little costly. They were already over priced, but when it takes buying two to drink one, it's quite the financial commitment. He reached out to hand what was left of my combo-round, just as a game of tag crashed into..."
"... threw a massive punch but missed. It was the second fight to breakout beside me in less than an hour. I barely escaped____________ the momentum from the three attackers carried the group of five into a wreck just beside me. They all hit the ground and rolled right into an embracing Romeo and Juliette. The two lip-locked lovers tightened their embrace and spun to the left, continuing the make-out like it was all part of their star-crossed fantasy. The police had already been call and three massive uniforms jumped at..."
"... not just like the slow-movers from 'Shaun of the Dead', these drunkards were zombieing around with just enough energy to make them completely unpredictable. Unpredictable and fluent in slurred gibber-gabber. This can make for a fun side show to the full fledged circus act colouring up the Gardens, that is until these Stumblers engage you, at which point you have no choice but to_____________ I was mid-punch-line when one of the two beer that I was holding in my right hand vanished. Like some special effect, the full can magic'd into the hand of a passer-by, a swaying, stumbling zombie. 'Unbelievable, how is it so hard to keep track of these cans of beer!' I turned back to my audience, finished the joke, and then took off after the zombie. As quickly as the can had left my possession, it was back in my hand after having reached over the little she-zombie's shoulder and pulled the old Indiana Jones swap; my old two-thirds empty for the stolen freshly cracked brew, Zombie was none the wiser. The later the day, the deeper the sun dips, the more the zombie dance becomes the walk of choice..."
"... they clock-in like it's an 8 hour day, but come 5 o'clock they forget to clock-out. Very few people can put together a competitive day. Work's a walk in the park / a piece of cake / a breeze / child's play compared to the 'Seven kinds of Smoke' that BSD throws at you (a little more Owen Wilson for those keeping score at home). You need to have developed the right skills to go with a healthy amount of pure, natural talent, while following a schedule built on strategy. Otherwise you are ________________ The consequences are Zombie, Ghost on a Stretcher, made-to-measure beat-down, memory-wipe featuring all-dressed vomitous, cop cruiser cat nap, poet-worthy regret, death, or any fun mix-and-match combination. The obvious answer might be 'Pacing', but that's not the full story. It's a high energy game with bursts of speed, heavy hitting, and an emphasis on performance and results. It's hockey, but you can't come off the ice, instead ________________ comes down to it, the 5pm last-call in the Beer Gardens is just the end of the beginning of..."
"... it was a friend of a friend. No one you talked to actually saw anything, but everyone heard from a guy who had a buddy that knew the brother of the cop/paramedic/professor/TA/Taxi-Driver/passer-by who saw the whole thing happen___________ thought it would be hilarious if______________ a sweet profile picture_______________ wasn't in the driver's seat for more than a hand full of seconds before being ripped from the ambulance and UFC'd to the ground by a clown-cars worth of aggressive police. Reports on the radio that quoted the newpapers that mirrored the Internet sites, referring to the vague interviews from nameless identities talking about a girl, "who in her drunken brilliance, tried to drive away in an EMS vehicle" are so obscure the imagination fills in the gaping holes with creative chaos that mirrors the disasters of the 'Couch-Races'______________ with wheels installed on them. They plummet down a steep hill avoiding all signs of control. It's amazing that only one individual was hospitalized, and that there weren't more vehicle-sofa related accidents on..."
"... at which point the debauchery is no longer contained in that tidy little corner of campus, and the Bermuda Shorts take to the streets for__________ what happens when the Beer Gardens close __________ because almost every night club in town has there own draw covered in themes and complementary drinks and special treatment. But before students are corralled back inside a four wall quarantine, they race off in search of random mischief. This is when things get really..."
The rest of the transmission was removed prior to publication, due to on going investigations.
The only thing better than having a spy on the inside, than having access to these stories and secrets, than getting a taste for the workings of the BSD machine... the only thing better than the words, are the pictures...
Like I said: 'Bermuda Shorts Day 2010, yeah, I crashed that party'
*Watch 1987's 'Angel Heart' with Bobby DeNiro - it's creepy and clever and a nice little weird addition to the DeNiro gem collection. DeNiro plays a pretty terrible dude... (The movie's hidden deep in the garbage of the '80s movie world. Like most of the decade, you really have to be patient with the 1980's, there's a lot of noteworthy disasters, but if you look in the right places - 1984 vintage 'Jack Webb' is a pretty good model - there's some stuff worth getting into.
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