WEEK IN REVIEW: The most incredible game of roto caps ever

Monday was Qingming (Tomb-sweeping) Festival, which meant we all had the day off and spent it at Chaoyang Park playing some beer frizz before getting Sultan for dinner and going to Kevin's new apartment for roto caps. Then this happened:

We were down to our last game of roto for the night, and it was Jim and Andy (7 individual wins) vs. Sam and myself (6 individual wins). The cross-game featured Kevin and Alicia and a couple others, but for the purposes of this story, they don't matter.

Andy and Jim go up 1-0, and Jim counters one of my shots. Fair enough. They go up 2-1 when I counter one of Andy's shots, only to have Jim double-rebut me. Fair enough.

We tie it at 2, and that's when things get silly. I proceed to hit THREE CAPS with the game tied at 2. Jim counters ALL THREE SHOTS. After the fifth rebuttal of the game -- TO THREE POINTS, mind you -- everyone goes nuts. The other game practically stops to watch. Jim can't stop laughing. I'm incredulous. Moments later, Andy hits, and my rebuttal goes off the rim.

CAPS MADE THAT GAME:
Sam, 2
Andy, 4
Jim, 5
Tao, 5
POINTS THAT GAME:
Sam, 2
Andy, 3
Jim, 0
Tao, 0

Un-fucking-real. 16 total caps made in a game to 3. Put this one in the Hall of Fame.

(For the record, Kevin and Alicia were up 2-1 over Angela and Nina that game when it ended. Somehow they made 3, during which span we made 16.)

Oh, and that win gave Andy the overall night win over me, 8 points to 6.

PICTURES OF THE WEEK:

Well, we haven't done this in a while ...






EMAIL OF THE WEEK:

Tao, to Stuart Ralston's comment about Rebecca Black (to Rob Hogg's YouTube link (to Mike Shyu's email asking for English teachers)), 4/7:

I've been thinking a bit about Rebecca Black in all the wrong sexual ways recently and I've come to the conclusion that she raises a very pertinent eschatological question: what happens if Saturday does not come after Friday, and yesterday was not Thursday when today is Friday? What if these "days" are all arbitrary tags masterminded by the Great Blogger Above to keep us from realizing our free will to "make up [our] mind[s] / [over] which seat [we can] take"? Would Rebecca Black's eyes then be sunken coals wherein demons of the planet Anareta lurk as antipodes to all our earthly creation?

I am reminded of the poem by Linda Pastan, "In a Northern Country," in which "yesterday in a northern country / my last aunt died," and "the litany / of months, September ... October ..." drags on, tiring the writer to "the way the seasons / keep changing." I can't help thinking that Rebecca Black too is tired of the way our days merge into the next day, Friday to Saturday, and before Friday, Thursday; how nights become a sort of purgatory where our sun -- which is not really the sun, you understand, but a symbol of individual ego in a universe hurtling toward destruction -- may decide, one day, "to hell with it, I'll stay here." Would we then thumb our desktop calendars to the next page? What is "next day"? What is anything.