Simian Mating Rituals

I am up and down with my opinions of Dr. Dremo's. This used to be one of, if not singularly, my favorite bars in Arlington...the jukebox, the smoke, the PBR, and the dank. Oh, let's not forget the dank. One of the nicest things about the bar was that it was a great place to sit and have beers with your friends, listen to good tunes, maybe meet some people, and do so in a very relaxed environment. This of course was before the opening of the roof, the closing of the bar by the county, and the subsequent rebirth of the establishment with -- wait for it -- beer pong.

Now I am both a proponent and avid player of beer pong (or Beirut as the kids up north call it) but the ramifications of introducing such an activity to my neighborhood dive bar were startling. Business improved drastically; glad to see them doing well. The crowd began skewing younger; fine, I am not an ageist. The ladies were more eye-catching; OK, but also drunker and far less interesting. There were lots of meatheads; damn, I really should be hitting it harder at the gym. One or two of these symptoms may have equated to a minor head cold but all together it was more like avian flu so I decided to stay the hell away. Not my scene so much. Well this new Camelot could not last forever and eventually the Arlington police shut down the beer pong citing some county ordinance regarding the prohibiton of "alcohol-related games." With the pong tables relegated to furniture status the crowds eased a bit and things were a little more like the salad days to which I had preminisced no return. So I slowy began a pilgrimage back to my house of worship.

But a new golden calf has been erected and once again the infidels have execrated my sepulchre. The unholy idol has this time taken the form of a coin-operated electronic boxing machine. How it works is you pay a dollar and then punch a hanging speed bag...once...for a buck...and then the machine does the rest. Potential energy is converted to kinetic energy. Force is equated to the multiplication of mass and acceleration. Numbers are crunched and finally the machine displays a number. From what I have been able to glean, this figure can be used to determine a number of qualities inlcuding the hitter's virility, the hitter's Badass Quotient, the size of the hitter's penis, the hitter's deftness at instigating the female orgasm, and possibly the county-assessed value of the hitter's automobile.

All of which I assume is the case because this activity seems to be engaged in for the purposes of attracting the ladies. There were guys lined up to wail on this thing and stare it down with flexed muscles and huffing breath. And all of this without the slightest trace of irony. Believe me, I looked and looked and prayed for it. Not a drop.

Alas, poor Dremo's! I knew it well Horatio -- a place of infinte jest, of most excellent fancy.