Audio By Carbonatix
A friend recently called me on a Wednesday evening and asked if I wanted to play Capture the Flag. His request was so flummoxing that I was forced to retreat to my regular domicile for such discomfiture: a bunker constructed almost entirely of panic, save for the support beams, which are fashioned from giant sheets of hysteria. Suddenly it was 1993, and I had forgotten to study for a math test, and nobody at school liked me, and my fly was down, and they were out of skim milk, and my dad was late picking up the carpool, and what the fuck do you mean we have to change in front of the eighth-graders! But as I was preparing to hide in my locker during passing period, reason politely tapped me on the cerebrum, informed me that I am, in fact, an adult, and noted that, as such, I should not be receiving offers to play Capture the Flag.
“Don’t you think that might look a little weird?” I asked my friend. “The two of us playing Capture the Flag with a bunch of children? They don’t take kindly to that type in prison.”
My friend then informed me that this was a more adult version of the game, with slightly altered rules, and that we would be playing with a group of our peers in a park, after dark. “It’s actually quite fun,” he said.
“I’m sure it is,” I said. “But I’m going to go out drinking instead and then cry myself to sleep. Like a grownup.”
I found his offer strange, but the more I thought about it, not unprecedented. Earlier this year, I’d been offered a spot on a kickball squad — and though I have many friends in the local kickball league and know that some of them are having the time of their lives, I couldn’t bring myself to accept the offer. Because when you really get down to it, kickball is for kids. Just like Capture the Flag.
In our unending self-awareness, we hipsters have decided that recapturing pretty much anything from our youth is cool. We wear tight ’80s T-shirts because that’s what we wore back then. We have collections of funky buttons on our backpacks and saddlebags because that’s what we collected back then. We guzzle PBRs and smoke Parliaments because that’s what we did back then. And now we embrace these games for the exact same reason.
What’s next? Four Square leagues? Tetherball tourneys? Nocturnal-emissions squadrons? Child’s play.
Allow me to show you the hipster wave of the future: urban dodgeball.
Here’s how it looks in my official league commercial: Hipster is seated at a bar, holding court with two smoking-hot hipsterettes. One’s got HUGE boobs. They’re all laughing and having a great time. Then, out of nowhere, the hipster dude gets smashed in the face with a miniature cherry ball, knocking him backward out of his seat and spilling drinks all over everyone. The shirt of the hipsterette with the HUGE boobs is utterly soaked. Cut to a shot of another hipster in just-completed-an-awesome-throw pose. Hipster #2 screams, “I got you, motherfucker!” and sprints from the scene.
Basically, the game is non-stop. By signing on to be a member of the Urban Dodgeball League, you agree to always be susceptible to a hit from anyone in the league, 24/7. I’ll create player profiles that we’ll keep online with your picture, the neighborhood you live in, the area you work in, and known hangouts. If you’re an ambitious player, you can scour the league website, find out which players you want to hit, then stake them out across the city and blast them with a cherry ball when they least expect it! Hey, look at me, I’m just walking out of the office on an important business lunch, do-do-do, hey, did you see that new quarterly report, Johnson.ŠWHAM! Point-blank popped in the face by a dodgeball, sucka!
Once you’ve hit every single player in the league, you climb a level, with the highest level having some cool name like “Master Warlord” or something. Oh, and I’ve got another idea! We could also have duels! How cool would that be? Like, in addition to sneaking up on people, you can call out another player, and you have to go meet him wherever he says, and you have to bring miniature cherry balls, and then you each walk ten paces, turn and fire. But there are penalties. If you call out a higher-ranked player and don’t take him down, you have to go back to the beginning or something. And there could be a team that dresses like the cast of Mad Max. And couples could be on a team together. The possibilities are endless! I mean, I could really see this league taking offŠ
Sweet Jesus, I’m practically foaming at the mouth like the hippest of hipster hipperoos. Here I set out to bash hipsters for their childish attachment to bygone games of yore, and what did I do? I wound up inventing my own. All right, hipsters, I see your point. Maybe I will play your kickball someday. And perhaps I will try and capture another flag, too. Just as long as we can drink a few PBRs together afterward — and I get to smash you in the face with a cherry ball.
Urban dodgeball, people. Who’s coming with me?
