I am writing this week's column from Memphis, Tenn. I wanted to mention this because Memphis is an awesome city. I had no idea how cool it was.
First, there is Beals Street, which is pretty much the city's Bourbon Street.
The streets are closed to cars, every building is a bar or club, all of which are open 'til 5:00 in the morning (including the kitchen). They also have beer take-out windows.
Music is one of the city's proudest assets. It is one of the greatest blues, soul and R&B cities located on the Mississippi, and every restaurant has live music at night. They also love Elvis, even more than my grandma does.
Then there's the food: true Southern barbeque. Last night for dinner, I had Memphis-style ribs, barbecued pork shoulders, fried catfish, barbequed beans, garlic toast and alligator gumbo. I can't really think of a meal I have had that has been better than that. And I ate it while listening to a live band, Howlin' Wolf, in a place with guitars autographed by everyone from U2 to Billy Gibbons (from ZZ Top) to Sid Vicious. And today I saw two ducks having sex in a hotel lobby.
The only problem I have with the place is that I cannot understand a word people down here say; it's mush - think Ying Yang twins with marbles in their mouths. My interactions with these people are definitely worthy of Neil Padover's "Man, I'm Awkward" column.
Enough about Memphis, and on to Seven on Seven. If you've been watching the World Series of Poker, you've seen the hilarious Milwaukee's Best Light commercials. If you haven't, the beer company has come up with the slogan, "Men should act like men, and beer should taste like beer," which is funny in itself, because anyone who ever went to an AEPi party knows Milwaukee's Best tastes like cattle urine.
In the commercial, there is always a group of guys, and when one of them does something unmanly, he gets crushed by a giant beast can. It's hysterical. There's one where a bunch of guys are watching TV and eating pizza, and one of them dabs the grease off of his face with a napkin, and then he gets crushed. In another, four guys can't set up a tent, so they get crushed by a six-pack.
Our love of these commercials has gotten a little ridiculous. It started off pretty harmless: any grievously non-masculine act would lead to a reference to the ads. It has thus escalated to the point that if any one of us does anything questionably unmanly, another housemate will jump at the opportunity of yelling "Crush!" and making the "beer-falling-from-the-sky" hand motion, often coming out of nowhere to humiliate the offender.
I have been in my room alone with the door shut, channel surfed onto "Laguna Beach," and gotten an IM from a housemate downstairs that only says, "Crush." I still don't know how he did that. I even got crushed for writing for the school newspaper. We are very close to throwing full cans of beer at each other, but we refuse to buy Milwaukee's Best. We even decided to keep a scoreboard of who gets the most crushings.
The winner - actually loser - by far is Greg. He has the worst "girl phone voice" I have ever heard. The girl phone voice is when a guy's voice changes when he talks to a woman on the phone. Usually, their pitch gets higher by about five octaves, they start off the call with a "heyyy," extend the ends of all other words, have unnatural rises in pitch, and say words like "sweetie."
Greg is a completely different person when on the phone with his girlfriend. It's the way someone would sound if they watched E! all day and then got kicked in the balls. A giant beer falls on Greg at least twice a day for this alone. He tries to counteract the crushings by telling us he has a girlfriend. No dice.
Somehow, all the crushings led to a reinstatement of the Safety and Doorknob game. I don't even know how. Probably because the things we were crushing each other for were getting less and less mature.
If you don't know what Safety and Doorknob is, you aren't a guy who went to middle school, so ask the closest male student. He will be happy to tell you.
Luckily, it only lasted for about 24 hours, and had to be ended when we were all sitting on the roof, someone forgot to call "safety," and was wailed on for 30 minutes.
To end the article, I wanted to propose what I guess you could call a contest: my housemates and I have been trying to create a list of things that are always funny. For example, a guy getting hit in the nuts, and someone running into a telephone pole or stop sign while running after a bus.
The person who sends in the best list gets it published in "Seven on Seven" with his or her name attached. My name is at the bottom of this column on page 9.
