30 in 8 Recap

Well, the 5th Annual 30 in 8 is in the books. Congrats are in order to Jonny Locke for defending his title in extraordinary fashion, finishing 1 beer short of accomplishing the task at hand. I finished 2nd for the 2nd year in a row. My life has been a parade of good decisions, one of which was my strategy was to go with a beer every 20 minutes, and then make a move late if need be. I tried. Lord knows I tried. But Jonny Locke was just too damn good. I finished with a rock solid 27, and promptly puked. Here's the official score card:
1. Jonny Locke - 29
2. Me - 27
3. Chris Thelen - 23
4. Marc Wiescinski - 20
5. Matt Connor - 19
6. Greg Bohmann - 17
7 (tie). John Ashcraft, Andy Southard, and Ian Taronji - 16
10. Holt Hedrick - 14
11. Doug Eifert - 11 (in his defense, he was only there for about 4 or 5 hours)
12. Brian Ezell - 9 (he was also there for 4 or 5 hours)

Others making appearances, but not competing, were Jamie Belanger and Adam Sadlowski. Overall, at least 217 beers were consumed. Here are some highlights from the day:
1. Purdue lost.
2. Someone accidentally turned on the side burner on my grill (which has a metal cover). This became apparent when we looked out the window to see my giant grill tongs with wood handles engulfed in flames. My strategy was to try to put out the fire with paper towels. Marc's strategy was to blow on it. Thank God Bohmann grabbed a glass of water and did the right thing, or else I might not be writing this. As you can see from the picture, the tongs are in trouble.
3. No one died.
4. Wisconsin beat Michigan, or so I was told.
5. Ashcraft sat on my front steps for close to 3 hours, resulting in some of the heartiest puke I've ever seen, preventing anyone from using the first 3 steps. I swear to God there was a half a hamburger still intact that came out of his mouth. He also left his vomit-covered flip flops on one of the steps overnight. They now reside at the bottom of my dumpster.
6. I discovered this morning that I bruised the hell out of my pinky and ring finger knuckles on my right hand (as shown in the picture). I'm going to have a hell of time explaining that at work. "Uh, I tripped and fell down the stairs." "Oh, I must have slammed it in a car door." "Sunburn." "This? It must have gotten bruised when I punched that cop." "Oh that? I drank 27 beers on Saturday and I might have been punching walls."
7. Several guys made inapporpriate comments to a female neighbor who I've never met. At least that won't be awkward.
8. Amy, for unknown reasons, let Jamie bring baby AC to 30 in 8 for several hours. She's been a mother for just over a month and she's already trying to go Susan Smith on her kid.
9. Spawn's strategy of drinking 4 15 oz. Guinness pub cans, and then moving to Bud Light failed miserably. We even gave him credit for 5 beers for his 4 Guinnesses.
10. After walking around downtown Dayton for a while and apparently having his pride wounded by some girl on the street, Jonny Locke -- I kid you not -- decided to drive back to Detroit. The man just drank 29 beers. Luckily Marc talked to him on the phone and convinced him to pull over at a rest area and sleep for several hours. I only hope he wasn't sodomized.
11. For reasons unknown to me, I turned into a complete meathead. I was head butting things (i.e., people, walls, doors), and I threw a pint glass at Marc's back that luckily didn't break anything (i.e., itself or any bones).
12. No one killed any hookers.

On a completely unrelated note, what the hell is Quizno's thinking? First they stop the wildly hilarious sponge monkey commercials (those weird things that sang "we love the subs, 'cause they are good to eat..."). What do they do to follow it up? They put Baby Bob in their commercials. The same Baby Bob who had a show on CBS for about 30 minutes in 2002 before it was canceled due to outright contempt and a complete lack of interest. Needless to say, Quizno's needs to fire its ad agency. They had gold and they traded it for a talking baby who everyone hates.