Pinned

At the end of the evening (for me), I was standing at the bar watching, from the corner of my eye, the oddly-compelling Olympic track cycling team time trial and reflecting on the noble human aspiration to work together in order to create something beyond the abilities of a single person while continually striving for ever-higher levels of performance, but, of course, it wasn’t the onscreen cyclists who had inspired my ruminations, but rather, the activities and actors associated with yet another of tehJobies’ (annual) pre-Dead Baby Downhill Drunken Slip-n-Slide Dance Party extravaganzas.

The idea of “outdoing oneself” is fascinating because it suggests that we have at least two selves, one of whom surpasses another; I might conjecture, however, that in this latest incarnation of the Thursday night ride that precedes the self-styled “Greatest Party Known to Humankind” that the neon mastermind behind things must have had many more than just a pair of identities in order to pull it all together and, even more impressively, convince others to play along.

Tom Sawyer, after all, only had to persuade a couple kids to paint a fence; tehJobies, by contrast, induced several score of (putative) adults to consume cocktails made with grain alcohol, strip down to their skivvies or bathing suits, adorn themselves with glowing plastic, and then proceed to not only hurl themselves downhill over a wet plastic tarp in the dark, but even more impressively, to climb into a kiddie pool filled with a gelatinous goo and wrestle one another to the cheers and catcalls of a rabid crowd.

I myself refrained from most of the shenanigans, believing that, when the cops showed up, it would be easier to explain things if I weren’t topless in a bathing suit, enjoying instead the efffervescent “Pink Elephants on Parade” visuals made possible by bikes and people wearing glowsticks; wonder of wonders, though, the authorities never did appear.

Perhaps next year, though, when selves are inevitably outdone once more.