What cards those retiring Joint Masters are! During a recent piss-up, or committee meeting, convened to count the votes cast by the Hash community for a new committee, the assembled luminaries were having quite some difficulty in finding a candidate for Worst Run of the Year. In most years, the award pretty much writes itself: anything set by Bill Janeway is normally way up there, or, as happened last year, a trail of such egregious awfulness is perpetrated that people talk about it for years afterward. Many of these legendary occasions took place before my time: outgoing JM Laird is still remembered as the author of a fairly ghastly AGM trail, Dave Cary's name is often cited in this context, and people are still talking about the occasion when Roark Herron poured an entire pitcher of beer over Charlie Dugan, or maybe it was the other way round. This past year, the only serious candidate for inclusion (Queens H3 runs are unfortunately not eligible) was foisted on us by a lady who for ever more will be known as The Unfortunate Nina Heller. Having prepared for weeks to do the perfect job, she managed to fall a little short of that goal, departed the On-In in a state of emotional distress and has literally never been seen since. The more sensitive types on the committee thought that it would be in questionable taste to call her up and invite her to come along and receive the award, so that proposal of mine was duly nixed. So, as we were still no closer to the goal, some wag suggested that it would be a jolly jape to sabotage Barry's run by erasing a few strategic flour marks, thus having a bit of fun and solving the Worst Run of the Year problem at the same time. Notwithstanding any announcements which may or may not have been made by the time you read this, they made, I must say, a pretty good job of it.
It was another one of those sunny spring afternoons which bring people, dogs, children and other pets pouring out of apartment buildings into Central Park. Even Catherine Guiley, one of the incoming First Ladies, was observed at the start with Gus, her delightful Yellow Labrador, taking advantage of the sunshine. A crowd of somewhere between two and infinity was greeted by Barry whispering instructions, and, in one of those typical mass movements, we headed north from the Engineer's Gate into the Park. Almost immediately, it became clear what a good job the pranksters had done in removing Barry's trail marks, as there was not a single one to be seen, and it was only by the circulation of rumors that the true path of the trail became clear. Early on, I found myself by pure chance with the FRBs, attracting an admiring comment from JM Burke "not at the back of the pack anymore with Alice, eh?", which I am not sure whether was an insult to myself, to Alice, or both. At one point on the trail, we headed briefly out of the Park on the West Side near 100th Street, causing alarm among those who believe that there is actually an invisible barrier running along the middle of 96th Street, below which people are okay but north of which everybody is a crack-addicted, thieving, evil, murderous bastard. Fortunately for their well-being, the pack headed back into the Park pretty much immediately, under the watchful eye of Geoff Baldwin, newly returned from extended travels, who, in observing "not a good neighborhood for the ladies to be running alone," managed to reach several levels of political incorrectness at one stroke. In fact, as Alice subsequently noted, this was not their first Hash of the day, they having just returned from the Walt Thompson Headless Horseman weekend extravaganza upstate. To get up, Hash, drink and then get on a train to do the same thing all over again on an empty stomach seems like too much of a good thing to me, and might explain Geoff's solicitousness.
Finally, we exited the Park definitively on the East Side, whereupon the dastardly work of the saboteurs made itself felt again. Not only did they move the final check from the corner of 97th and Madison to an absurd spot in the middle of the block, they also removed all marks in the vicinity, thus rendering checking impossible. Fortunately, modern technology, as it does with so many things these days, mitigated the ill effects of this evil trickery, and the Hot Line directed a group of stragglers toward Second Avenue and the On-In. The sight of a large group standing out on the sidewalk caused me to fear that we were in for one of those cramped, un-air-conditioned places with a 150-decibel jukebox so common on the Upper East Side, but inside turned out to be a true revelation: spacious, cool and, above all, quiet. A couple of unobtrusive television sets held the attention of those interested in watching grown men in spacesuits beating the shit out of each other with sticks, but this was a minor detail. Among those conducting the ancient art of conversation, the main topic seemed to be the unfortunate incident involving Croft, a young child of the female gender and her father. Details of what exactly happened are a little sketchy, but most are agreed that, prior to Croft's arrival on the scene, the young child was happy, laughing, enjoying a bicycle ride with her father on a bucolic spring Sunday afternoon, and after Croft's departure from the scene, the child was lying flat out on the ground, with her sobbing, hysterical father cradling what remained of her head in his hands, and a clearly discernible pair of shoe prints on her back. Croft chooses to draw the moral from this story that females of all sizes and ages are lining up to fall at his feet; I would prefer to conclude that the evil, murderous bastards are not exclusively confined to north of 96th Street.
After this excitement, not much else to report. The Hares chose to emphasize the ever-popular beer over the food alternative, and to emphasize the ever-popular $12 Hash Cash charge over the $10 alternative. Yours truly was a little peeved that the piss ran out fairly quickly, to be replaced by a steady stream of so-called better beer, although the need to arrive at a prior engagement in a state approaching coherence caused me to be grateful for the enforced moderation. Junko made a rare appearance in the city with her latest beau, and apparently picked up more or less where she left off the last time she was here. The usual crop of people who are now too regular for me to embarrass myself by asking their names was on hand, although I understand that "Hihowareyou?" is quite a popular name these days. Barry proceeded to toast himself several times, and then several times more, for his achievements of the afternoon, and described how he would be missing the AGM on account of the need to attend a highly important, highly prestigious conference, in Washington. Once again, however, the precise nature of his business is so sensitive that I must not reveal any more of what he told me.
| Home | What's New | E Mail to webdom@hashnyc.com | Last update 5/15/96