1997 End-of-Year Review


First, a little history and some statistics:


Hash #1, October 7, 1979.  The legendary Joe Burns sets a loop starting
from Stevenson Hall, 91 Prospect.


Hash #100, September 13, 1986. The Geezer and Wacko set through the campus,
the grad school, Marquand Park and the Institute.


Hash #200,  May 13, 1990. Dogshrinker and Wacko set in the rainforest-like
Pine Barrens.


Hash #300.4, November 17, 1991. The LRF and Throatwarbler Mangrove set a
Simple Tour of Princeton in deference to 15 simian visitors from Reading.


Hash #400.4,  March 7, 1993. The Geezer sets from Rosedale Park to
Terhune's Orchard.


Hash #500.4, May 5, 1995. The LRF sets in the pouring rain through
Weinstein's freshly plowed field of dreams to the boulders on Province Line
Road. Joe Burns and Dr. No return. Apres at Good Friends courtesy of Hash
Cash.


Hash #600.4, March 29, 1997. Pyro Man sets somewhere south of Trenton.
Notable attendees were A Joy to his Mother's Mother, and Wendy (now known
as Uranus Williams) Sullivan. Pyro kept the pack on the trail by providing
beer one can at a time, but only on the trail. No shortcutting bastards on
this one. There was a dog sawed in half. Remember the headless turkey of
yesteryear? Note: the dog was already sawed in half *before* the hashers
arrived -- dog-sawing was not one of the approved  On-In activities.


Hash #666 Coming in July, 1998.  Rumor has it that Pyro Man and A Joy to
His Mother have scheduled a summer "Hard Core-style run" (for there can be
no Hard Core Hash when it's not really really cold, or when people finish)
for this very occasion.  Start practicing your running-in-hip-waders and
your breaststroke (mmm...) now!


Hash#700 Should come up sometime in early 1999, roughly around the time
scheduled for Hard Core VII, assuming any of you miserable wankers survive
Hard Core VI, of course. It is not too early to set In Up To His Waste to
incessant planning. In fact the Mismanagement has just voted him the usual
blank check big bucks budget.



1997:


We ran no fewer than 52 hashes in 1997 (50 in '96, 49 in '95, 47 in '94 -
onward and upward! Let's do 54 in '98). The average pack was 12.0, up an
ominous 0.5 of a person from '96. The number of idiots who have run at
least twice with the PH3 went up by 25.


Once again, the Get a Life Award goes to the Delay LLLama who wasted no
fewer than 39 afternoons in 1997 (down from a truly staggering 45 in '96),
followed oh so closely by A Joy to His Mother, who ran 38. Other distant
contenduhs were: 242 (33), Rojo (29), Geezer (24), Speed Bumps and Wacko
(23), Pyroman (21) and the LRF (17).  Pyro Man and A Joy to His Mother set
the most (6), followed by the Geezer and 242 (5), Rojo (4), and Speed Bumps
and the LRF (3).


                                  ***


First Hash: January 7, 1997,  #588.4.  A Joy to His Mother flubs his virgin
set in the Mountain Lakes area, even with the dubious help of Pyro Man.
242 complains that it is too easy, everyone else runs in circles.


                                  ***


Best Hash of the Year: Oh man, there are so few possibilities.  We don't
want to encourage him, but Pyro Man gets the award for two summer hashes in
which marks did not merely cross streams, they followed them: upstream,
downstream, crotch deep, you name it.   (Please recall the Hash of the
Mekong Delta, #150, set by the Geezer, an original waterbaby).  Some
highlights:


Selection from the write-up for 616.4: "Two long stream wades, excellent
foot-sucking mud, and some toxic dog-eating green stuff (that last on the
right true trail, not to be confused with the left true trail, and don't
worry, the dog came out OK in the end) later, the hash was over, and only
two stupid hounds had ever seen a mark.  Go figure."


Selection from the write-up for 625.4: "The downstream slog continued,
leading eventually to a road (the only true-trail pavement on the hash) and
some of the nicest shiggy this hash has seen in months.  The highlight was
the inexplicable check mark Jeff Skaar found under an enormous tangle of
thorns.  From there, it was only a short upstream slog to more interesting
shiggy, both thorned and unthorned, and the well-stocked On-In."


                                  ***


Worst Hash of the Year: By contrast, here, of course, there is no shortage
of ill-set, poorly conceived, or just plain fucked up beyond all belief
candidates. No one can argue that #1 in this category of shame should not
go to Rambo, for his pathetically inept attempt at Hard Core V, #595.4.  Oh
yes! Send the pack over the wall in front of the coppers right at the
start. Great idea Rambo! Wacko got busted by rent-a-cops, essentially no
one finished, and we now have gone two years without a successful Hard
Corpse (please recall as well that braggadocio notwithstanding, Rambo has
NEVER finished a single PH3 hash. Will he show for Hard Core VI? Stay
tuned).  Honourable mention goes to #610.4, the LLLama's attempt to set
through the 'hood, and A Joy to His Mother's #617.4 two hours plus in the
dark (losing Hey Yo! Paully! in the process), which didn't really matter,
as there were no marks anyway.  No mention at all goes to #614.4, the
unbelievably shitty hash set by the NYC joggers.


                                  ***


Worst Venue: Well, nothing will ever replace the Louisiana Reptile
Fancier's #327.4, "The Warehouses at the End of Time" but the Geezer's set
down a live runway at Princeton Airport (#623.4) did raise the pulse rate
just a bit, and might qualify for this year's worst 200 yards, at least.
The outright loser was Pinup's #598.4, which ended at a mansion cum tennis
court, thus setting just the wrong tone for an apres, "Do pass the cucumber
sandwiches, Phillipa, won't you?" "Yes, mum, right away, mum, have a bit
more chardonnay, won't you?"


                                  ***


Best Venue:  Pyro Man's stream slogs, mentioned above, were dandy, and the
Apres at the Geezer's place after #613.4 couldn't be beat for sheer
haircutting excitement, but the hands-down winner of best venue has to go
to Table Toes's #619.4.  Toes set a perfectly lovely hash, but the
half-mind hounds could not find the fourth mark.  Two completely separate
packs ended up following two completely separate halves of the trail, both
of them looping back to finish within five minutes of each other.  An A to
B and B to B hash -- a brilliant, bold move by Table Toes.  Honorable
Mention would have gone to The Reluctant Breeder's Backyards of Pennington,
#611.4, but the food was so shitty that he gets a raspberry.


                                  ***


Best Effort by the hounds: Without a doubt, Hand Solo's #615.4, an
abandoned and mysterious army base in deepest Hillsboro crisscrossed with
of weird tracks to nowhere. No marks, but hey, PHHH hounds don't need no
stinkin' marks. Plenty of rain, though, and about 8 miles from start to
finish.


                                  ***


Best Write-up: It wasn't really a write-up, but Wacko's vituperative
amertume-filled #591.4, which consisted of a numbered list of the six
terrible ways that the PHHH had gone down the sewer of no return, was quite
a piece of work.  Honorable mention to A Joy to His Mother's plagiarism of
Arlo Guthrie in the Hard Core write-up and his biblical, Pastor "Jesus is
my Treasure" Tom-inspired #620.4 (see also Wacko's biblical #599.4).  Best
Fake Write-up to Joy for the notorious BCHHH #1:


Date:     September 28, 1997
Weather:  What's it to ya?
Venue:    Not in Bucks County
Time:     too short, or maybe too long
Set By:   Asshole
Hashers:  Asshole, Asshole, Asshole, RoJo, Asshole, Asshole, Asshole,
Asshole, 2Dicks, Asshole, Asshole, Asshole
Rookies:  Asshole, Nicki Bergstrom


Grand Dominatrix: Road Jaundice
Distance from Bucks County: 9 miles


                                  ***


Protest/Whine of the Year.  No contest: Rojo: "I am the Grand Dominatrix.
I run above it all" on #627.4. But see also Rambo's cringing apologia for
his "efforts" on Hard Core V.


                                  ***


Rookie of the Year: A tie between Always Open and English as a Second
Language.  Jacob Microwacko showed for only one hash, but the future looks
bright.


                                  ***


Slogan of the Year:  Either: "All this is true, as are all the stories of
the PH3" (write-up for #604.4) or a sign seen on #607.4: "Eating Euthanized
Meat is Dangerous to your Health." Nothing really to rival "God Created
Disease" of yesteryear.


                                  ***


Worst Food: Wendy (now Uranus Williams) Sullivan, who should have received
a name for it, and still might, for no beer on #624.4.


                                  ***


Wimp of the Year: Wacko, of course. How low has the hasher of the year for
1995 sunk? Very low, indeed.


                                  ***


1997 miscellaneous Hash notables:
#593.4 - Hey Yo! Paully! and 242 engage in Geezervan tug-of war.
#594.4 - The last set through Ringoes for a while ends in a little chat
with Ossifer Buttinski.
#608.4 - Glory is almost swept away!
#609.4 - The Reunions Hash, starring tiger-striped spawn, Hal Shapiro's
immortality by association, and the artificial stadium.
#610.4 - English as a Second Language finds a big pink stuffed bunny in the
'hood.


                                  ***


Overheard in 1997:
#602.4 - "Geezer, I think this is the first time I've ever seen you with
blood on your teeth" - Wacko
#608.4 - "The Geezer Man is dead?!?!" - Niall Hannagen
"No...  Van.  The Geezervan is dead?!?!  Not the Geezer MAN," - RoJo
#608.4 - "I wonder what it's like for a dog to do an A to A hash" - Wacko
#614.4 - "Shitty hash -it REALLY sucked!" - the PHHH
"You can go fuck yourself" - the NYC joggers who set the hash
#618.4 - "I still haven't gotten that smell out of my car... that used
hasher smell." - Pyro Man (referring to #616.4)
#620.4 - "Oh, you're just running?  Well, watch out for the ticks." - A
police ossifer, as the pack hopped a fence into somebody's back yard.
#622.4 - "I can't believe someone wouldn't want to moan and groan with me."
- Hey Yo! Paully!
#627.4 - "I never thought anyone would really cross that swamp"  - Pushnermaybe


                                  ***


And Now, The Ultimate Award...............Hasher of the Year for 1997:


1992: The Hash Ghost- full frontal nude photo included in this
now-a-collector's-item write-up


1993: No Award; apparently there was no 1993.


1994: In Utero (now happily ex utero)


1995: Wacko - first to 365.


1996: Who has run more hashes than any other non-human? Glory, that's who.
And as someone remarked, she raised the average IQ of the pack by 50 points
each time she ran. Cavils that other candidates such as Effross have run
far more are without standing: we are speaking here of non-humans, not
sub-humans.


1997: Delay Lllama.  The epitome of the half-mind.  Special citations for:
getting lost on #601.4 and never being seen again (until the next week,
damn!); dragging co-rookie of the year Always Open to the PHHH (and
instructing her in his infamous setting style); and the notorious Kill Joy
hash through the 'hood, #610.4.  Extremely honorable mention for not making
it from Stevenson to the start of #626.4, even though the PHHH waited hours
for him to show up (the hounds suspect that his so-called beer run on the
way involved something more....).



On On to '98


YBSs