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| photo by brizzle born and bred | via PhotoRee | ||
Correspondent Ed checks in with a report from farlieonfootie's first-ever annual corporate retreat, held at the World Beer Festival in Durham, North Carolina last weekend:
Georgie Thompson of Sky Sports News (Bigger, Better and – would you believe it – in HD!) is smiling tonight, sitting in her tight black cocktail dress and telling us the straight story on some exciting new rules regarding the FA. Oh that’s right, they’re not exciting, they’re just excruciatingly and painfully boring. But boring has become the new fun because we’re still in the midst of a seemingly endless two week international break, a break so mind numbing that I might just accidentally drive that fork into the back of my hand and -- Ouch!!!! – please let it end, PLEASE!!
And what have we at www.farlieonfootie.com been doing over the break? Is it research? Is it in depth interviews? Well, actually the boss-man decided to have our first company retreat to North Carolina for a weekend full of events that would culminate in the annual World Beer Fest celebration. All of this with our farlieonfootie colleagues and some “friends” from our well-known “aren’t they just the bees knees” sister site, www.farlieonfracking.com.
Upon arriving in beautiful Chapel Hill, we were treated to a rigorous twelve minute thirty second game of footie. When it was over, we sat down for some dinner (it's seemingly always pork in North Carolina) and drinks. I’m not sure if it was the weather, the footie, or the realization of some twisted dream, but the bossman got a little bit ahead of himself that first night and found himself as wicked hammered drunk and confused as a Northeastern co-ed at a Northwestern frat party – a curious decision considering this was the night BEFORE the Beer Fest celebration that he’s been waiting to attend all year. Of course, it all came to a rather predictable end when he sputtered out a few profanities, then started laughing hysterically, and then fell to the floor in tears, screaming: “No, Bobo, No!!!!”
The next morning, an adrenaline shot to the sternum helped him out of bed, and after a hearty pork breakfast, the team was off to attend a most delightful and civilized North Carolina golf tourn. . . I mean, football game (“My word, that play was a Jim Dandy, wun’nit hun?”). Afterwards, we put some of our older staff members down with their woobies for some nap time, and then finally, all rested up, we marched onward to the WORLD BEER FEST!
The festival was held at the Durham Bulls minor league baseball stadium (“Hit Bull Win Steak”), and turned out to be like ComiCon without the comics. You know, oddly shaped people dressed in crazy hats and costumes, bearded men in leather vests without shirts, slender but graying forty-somethings in blue yacht club mock turtlenecks with red, white and blue headbands . . . . I think you get it.
The highlights? Well, one member of our staff decided posting some footwear pictures on Facebook would be a good idea (it wasn’t). Our Foreign Desk correspondent became completely confused regarding the relationship between the human genome and bluegrass music (obvious). Our Rugby Correspondent developed a rating system having to do with boots (it's rather hard to explain, but let’s just say a 9/9 in that system is way better than Herman Cain’s 9/9/9). And of course our rather diminutive boss got all “Woof Woof” when a bizarrely tall woman with a goiter gave him the old “Who’s your Daddy?” look over his raccoon hat. Make sense? Well, it didn’t for me much either, but somehow it was crystal clear when the Brother Thelononius was doing all the talking (North Shore Brewery, Belgian complexity, full body, 9.4% ABV, B++).
But hey, despite our best efforts to drink away our international break frustrations, we did make it out of the rabbit hole and home to our hosts that evening without incident. After the boss man was put down to bed with his little dolls, the rest of the staff was able to sit and chat about such things as the direction of this fine website, the joy of days gone by, and the subtle yet meaningful differences between Norwegian and domestic chocolate (who knew?).
What wonderful hosts we had, what wonderful weather, what wonderful pork...!! Admittedly, I was skeptical about this whole retreat idea when our Dear Leader first brought it up. But as I lay down that evening in my upper bunk, spinning from one too many two ounce beers, shaking from the reverberations caused by the Tennis Desk Correspondent’s unholy snores, and dodging a dangerous high speed ceiling fan only inches away from my neck, I found my mind wandering back to that unanswerable question that continues twist and turn in my brain: “Where, oh where, does Rafael Van der Vaart fit in?”
Yep, it’s finally back this Saturday, and not a day too soon.
This is farlieonfootie for October 14.
This is farlieonfootie for October 14.
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