The Truth
Official Organ of the Greater Gotham Full Moon
Hash House Harriers
G2FMH3 Hash #205 – Friday, February 22, 2008
Hare: Ed Lunch
Start: Chambers Street & West Broadway
On-In: The Patriot, Church Street & Chambers Street
Punk Ass Bitch (Scribe): Noah’s Dinghy
Remember the movie Dirty Harry? If you haven’t seen it (commie), there’s a sequence where Clint Eastwood, as Inspector Harry Callahan, is forced by a crazed sniper who has taken a girl hostage to r*n from phone booth to phone booth. He’s only given a brief amount of time to get to each phone and answer once it rings; if he misses the call, the girl dies.
It’s a taut sequence, not just because the sight of Clint “r*nning” makes the viewer worry about his health even though the film’s over thirty years old and he’s still with us. (Fun fact: the plotline about a murderer terrorizing San Francisco and sending letters to newspapers was inspired in part by the real-life Zodiac killings, which were very much fresh in the minds of the city’s residents when Dirty Harry was released. Slightly less fun fact: the conceit of the villain making the hero chase phone calls has been ripped off by any number of lame Die Hard knock-offs, including Die Hard 3, with ever-diminishing returns.)
With Old Man Winter finally making an appearance and dumping a few inches of snow on New York City which then turned to rain, the job of Old Man Hasher became a bit difficult. Fortunately, Ed Lunch is nothing if not resourceful. (He may be other things, but we won’t get into that.)
And so inspired by the mad sniper who made Clint Eastwood r*n around the Streets of San Francisco, Lunch announced that there would be no trail. Instead, he handed out maps to the dozen or so hashers who had nothing better to do last week, and told us to r*n to a phone booth on a nearby corner. There, we would find a clue to the next phone booth, which would lead us to the next, and so on.
Hashers are an agreeable lot, and so off we went in search of the title to the last good movie Colin Farrell made. It was odd: in this ever-changing world in which we live in, when was the last time you had cause to look for a pay phone? There are quite a few of them as it turns out, but seriously, we all have cell phones now, or those hideous Bluetooth things.
Looking for a phone booth in Manhattan is almost like asking your doctor for the swine flu vaccine. How was the trail, such as it was? Actually, it was quite enjoyable: we went down to Battery Park City to Wall Street to under the Brooklyn Bridge downtown to Little Italy to Chinatown. At this last spot on our tour of Lower Manhattan, we received word to head for the Patriot. And so we went from the land of the ice and snow, to the midnight sun where the cold beers flow.
Down downs were given in reasonably short order – the hare received his customary one, plus another for at one point directing the pack to a non-existent intersection. We found the phone with the clue, but I’m still not sure how. Girl Scout Nookie and Rich Kammerer, two GGFM committee members who are apparently too good for the GGFM these days, were made to drink as dishonored visitors. Scot had r*n the trail in duck boots, but he skipped out pre-circle, so Ted and Blackout drank in his place. Greg Hairy Ass was made to drink for driving to a hash. Rich and Ted drank for getting lost or something. Fluffy was given a down-down for reasons known only to the JMs and perhaps not even them. Mean Jean, Tit-totaler, and Wet Connection were then brought up because they were haring the following Sunday. No, I don’t get that one either. Finally, Bottom nominated Fast American Dave for racist behavior on trail: Dave was accused of elbowing his way past Bottom at each phone booth in order to be the first to read the clue. Not a word of this was true, but Cree’s made it a point to call Dave out for such imagined behavior at a number of hashes, and you’d hate to see it end.
Once the mandatory drinking was concluded, we got back to the voluntary drinking, as Lunch and ladies of the Patriot kept the pitchers coming. In fact, there was so much beer, that the unthinkable occurred: the pack was unable to rock and roll all night, and left beer undrank. This is truly a shameful mark on us, and we should all be embarrassed to call ourselves hashers. I don’t want to point any fingers, since who know where that thing’s been, but I would say it’s your fault. Yes, you. But it’s in the past now, so drink that beer in your hand, and then another several that, and just don’t let it happen again. See, beer makes everything better. Groovy. On out!