Keep your eye on the one-cup

The folks at Budweiser have finally clued into the Beirut/beer-pong market. (NYT. Lead: "The bar is packed, the floor is wet, and dozens of glassy-eyed young people are squeezed around tables trying to lob Ping-Pong balls into cups of beer." Ah, those were the days.)

A few observations:

1. As with any sport, the more corporate influence, the worse it gets. So, never lose sight of the spirit of the game. Drexel senior Chris Shannon put it best in the NYT article: "If you win, you win. If you lose, you drink. There's no negative."

2. Sometimes the New York Times oversteps its bounds, hipness-wise. Jennifer 8. Lee really should have written this article. To recount an e-mail conversation from today regarding this article--

Alison: Apparently, we're hip.
Waage: Dude, we're totally hip! For 22-year-olds.
Alicia: We may be hip but whoever researched and wrote "flippy cup" is not.

3. If this means that someone's going to form a Beirut Commission and publish standardized rules, I support that, and will lobby heavily for "drink on overs" and "drink on empties."