The Gravitron Diaries 1.9

Last month while cleaning out a closet and purging bags and bags of clothes to send to Goodwill, I found all my old fraternity t-shirts.   While wading through a box full of ringer tees and expired puns (Volkswagen Fahrvergnügen changed to Fahrfrompuken?  GOLD!), I found an old Open-to-Close t-shirt.   For the uninitiated, an Open-to-Close is exactly what it sounds like:  show up when the bar opens, drink the entire day, leave (or perhaps call some hospitals) when it closes.   My shirt had eight hash marks written in Sharpie on the shoulder, which meant I drank eight pitchers of beer that day, a thought that now makes me want to call in sick until Thanksgiving.  What's funnier is I remember being disappointed in that number at the time (No way I leave Valhalla til I crush ten pitchers, bro);  now I'm pretty sure my kidneys would fall out of their sockets if I just looked at eight pitchers of beer.

I bring this up because our students are about to embark on one hell of a college tradition, which leaves many of us wistful:  the all-day-drunk.   Classes are cancelled Thursday afternoon for the Halloween football game (something President Victory Lane would've never done), giving our students all day to build their fan muscles and crescendo into a four hour zenith of screaming expletives at something called a Sun Devil.

The students have extra responsibility to make noise because they're probably going to be the only ones in the stadium.  On behalf of all the season ticket holders: students, we are sorry.  We're sitting this one out en masse.   We're staying home to make sure our houses don't get egged by some fifteen year old dressed as "Sexy Jesse Pinkman."   But we are all eager to see what you have in store for ESPN flagship's first trip to Pullman in twenty years.   My job is to make sure you actually get there.

Now the first rule of the all-day drunk is there is no shame. I get it; if I had a nickel for everytime I did something in college under the specific heading of "I don't want to look like a wuss," I would've paid for the Football Operations Building myself.   These rules do not apply in the all-day-drunk.   Start slowly, don't break for Jager shots, stay hydrated, lay off the roofies, eat something, eat something again, skip a round or two of High-Low-Red-Black if you're losing, etc.   This is a marathon, not a sprint.   We played one Thursday night game against Montana State when I was in college, so while it's not nearly the magnitude of a conference game on national tv,  the all-day-drunk rules still applied.  My fraternity made this truly awful gameday drink called "recipe" which essentially boiled down to Dimatapp flavored 151.  The drink was perfect for Cougar Football Saturdays, because it got you drunk super-quickly, made you really angry for four hours, and forced you to pass out immediately thereafter.   We tried drinking this on that Thursday night game, and everyone was in bed before dinner time.  For those who were able to stay awake, holes were punched into walls, I'm pretty sure a makeshift bowling alley was set up in a hallway with fire extinguishers as pins (sidenote: we're truly sorry, Pullman Fire Department), and absolutely nobody made it to the game.  Compounding this enormous pressure for the current students that you have the added responsibility of making sure you don't get ketchup on your sexy zombie police officer costume, I need to reiterate, that it's ok to make tomorrow a slow boil.

Just make sure the boiling part actually happens, which brings us to rule number two.

Eventually you will have to step your game up. For the first four or five hours, you really should be alternating beer and water, eating your Pita Pit, injecting your horse tranquilizers into alternating shoulders, etc.  For that last hour or so, you need to get yourself to the next level.  I'm sure most of you already know how to get there, what with your butt-chugging and rampant NyQuil abuse, but if you need assistance, I humbly suggest to you a drinking game we used to play.   It's called the "F*ck You, Drink" game.   Here's how you play:

1. Point at someone in the room
2. Say "F*ck You, Drink!" to that person
3. That person must drink
4. Keep repeating until the room is devoid of alcohol.  It should take no longer than eight minutes.  Six if you're playing from the pro tees.
5. Try not to die (optional)

Just think of treating the day like any WWE pay-per-view:  slowly build yourself up over the course of several hours and then go balls-out for the main event.  Speaking of the main event....

Do not leave the game to go party.  Bring the party to the game.  Yes, WSU officials, I am advocating for students to sneak as much booze into that stadium as humanly possible.  Seal up plastic baggies, carry bottles in your hoodie pouch, hollow out a wheelchair, you get the idea.   You're creative!  You thought of that Sexy Incredible Hulk costume you're wearing!  Go Nuts!   If you rigged one of the liquor hoses from the club section to travel all the way to the other side of the stadium, nobody up there would blame you for it.  They'd applaud you for your effort.    Bring whatever you can into the stadium, because you know as well as I do that if you go home to get more, you're staying at home where it's warm and the game is on tv.  This is failure.  Nobody at home cares about your Sexy Mumford & Sons costume.  Those people are all on the fifty yard line.  Stay in the stadium and bring enough provisions for the four hour duration.   If you've done this you're ready for step four:

Go to the post game after-party in the best costume ever: Sexy Victorious Cougar Fan

Go Cougs (take them and the points!)