And what was 2000? A Pig of a Year, that's what it was. The Year of the Evil Hog, the Vile Hog, but the Live Hog. And who is Swine of the Year? Porker of the Century? Hawg of the Millenium? I'll bet you can guess, but read on for that and other trivia, etc. etc., ad nauseum, mirabile dictu, in excelsis. The Year of the Evil Hog, the Vile Hog, the Live Hog -End-of-Year Review 2000 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. Pyroman sets somewhere south of Trenton. A notable attendee was A Joy to his Mother's Mother. 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 sawn in half. Hash #700.4, February 14, 1999, coincident with Hard Core VII, our Annual G hash, and some massacre or other. In Up To His Waste planned and spent, and the Grande Dominatrix herself set. The result, a long, oh so soft core run through deepest Bucknekkid County. Even Rambo finished. Hash #800.4, November 19, 2000. WeePee tempts fate as he cruises the Nuclear Football. There was clemency from Clem as our old nemesis no-showed. Maybe he knew what was coming. *** 2000: We just missed the record we set in '99 for number of hashes. 2000 55 1999 56 1998 54 1997 52 1996 50 1995 49 1994 47 There were 28 new people who ran more than one hash, and the average pack size was 18, up from 15 the last two years. The sum of all hashes run (no one-timers counted) is now 8045 (7104 at the end of '99). *** The Get a Life Award goes to Discomfort who ran 51 hashes. Hey Yo! Paully! finished second, wasting 45 Sundays. Juicy ran 43, Rojo, Uranus, and WeePee 41, Nonsensei 35. The Geezer and Wacko did 34, Ice Blue Balls 32, and Speed Bumps and Minor Minor Minor Tom, the Army Guy, 30. Once again, you don't make the Idiot list with fewer than 30. WeePee and Pyroman inflicted the most sets upon us (6), Tropical Depression, The Geezer, and Wacko did 5 each, and Hey Yo! Paully set the four corners of the year. *** First Hash: January 2, 2000, #751.4. "Junkyard Dogs" Pyroman sets a postmillennial apocalyptic hash through the refuse heaps and mean backyards of Trenton - A fitting beginning to the year of the Evil Pig. Last Hash: December 31, 2000, #806.4. The Cuban Assassin wimps out and the Geezer subs with a snow-filled set through the even meaner backyards of Princeton. OuiPui finds the directions to the start inscrutable, and shows up late, as does Minor Tom and the wedding entourage. *** Best Hash of the Year: If it hadn't been so short (49 min) Speed Bumps #754.4 "One for the ages (almost)" would have been a strong contender. We choose, Discomfort = Solo's pitifully attended #799.4, "Perhaps the rest of you knew something we didn't?" - a long, painful romp through an abandoned neuropsychiatric clinic. From the shuttered windows came plaintive cries and threats. Can't beat that. *** Worst Hash of the Year: #756.4 was pretty feeble, as, for that matter was #806.4 (both Geezer hashes). #780 by Schwa! and Catch and Release featured a missed train, leaving the pack several miles from the next mark with no obvious way to get to it. But Schwa! and C&R are so young, and the Geezer so old, that they may be forgiven some of their sins. Rubberalan set a 2.5 hour travesty (#769.4, "But this hash had such promise!"). But No - too long is better than too short, or so they say. Worst of the Year goes to WeePee for #784.4, a 29 minute fiasco complete with exceptionally egregious boasting, which gives him the nod over Pyroman's only slightly longer "effort" the week before. *** Best Venue: #802.4 ("Busted") by Pumpkin Pie and Stops Coming gets an Honourable mention for an On In directly below Mr. Barker's office in Frick, but the winner is Tropical Depression's and Ice Blue Balls' # 781.4, which finished atop a particularly forlorn mound of dirt, after a spectacular, genitals-enveloping swamp. *** Worst Venue: Nothing will ever replace the Louisiana Reptile Fancier's #327.4, "The warehouses at the end of time." But there were some bad ones this year. Pyro's #751.4 ("Junkyard Dogs") was certainly grubby, for example. And then there were all those hashes in Buck's County. Any Geezer hash in the snow is likely to be bad. And there was Nonsensei's #795.4 ("Lost in Space"), which actually featured terrain so sparkling that she decided not to mar it with flour. Still, until there is something to rival that terminal wasteland of the LRF's we can give no award. *** Best Events: The two weddings - (we do one every 403 hashes): Tropical Depression and Ice Blue Balls then Road Jaundice and Minor Minor Minor Tom, the Army Guy. The next wedding is scheduled for sometime in 2008. Any volunteers? *** Worst Event: Everything else. *** Best Write-up: #806.4 "The trouble with Rojo." The last writeup of the year, and the only one we can really remember. Honourable mention goes to #753.4 "Enough of these Crazed Ravings," "Schwaberry Shortcake," #757.4, and Nonsensei's lost #803.4. *** Worst Write-up: All the goddamn missing ones, you feeble wankers! *** Weirdest Object of the Year. With the full panoply of headless turkeys, hemi-dogs, and Paully's fish shorts of yesteryear all fresh in our memories, we have no great candidates this year: Honourable mention goes to the half-gallon jug full of yellow non-pee on set quietly by the gate to the Plasma Physics lab. . *** Rookie of the Year: Stops Coming wins by a whisker (20 hashes) over Pumpkin Pie (19 hashes) and Definitely Not A Rat's Ass (18 hashes). They all get the LLoda Memorial Cup, "Timing is Everything" award. *** Name of the Year: Rat *** Best Food: Without any Bitter Melon to speak of, This Space Intentionally Left Blank. Honourable Mention to Uranus' razzelberry frosties on #783.4 and OuiPui's Myers Rum hot chocolate (#759.4, #800.4) *** Worst Food: The cheeze whiz on #751.4 is a runnerup to WeePee's odious Orange Wriggly Things and Keystone Light on #759.4, "OuiPui's Ennui." *** Protests/Whines/Remarks of the Year: Copette to a bloody Rambo on #753.4: "So what's going on here?" followed by the redeeming, "I was a hasher in Europe." WeePee on #759.4: "The tide must have come in." as he studied the several feet of ice water covering his marks. Speed Bumps on #763.4: "I'm never running another Paully hash." Everyone else on #763.4: "I'm never running another Paully hash." Juicy on #767.4: "I'm not in the mood for shiggy today." LLLoda on #790.4: "It's not so long. Have a little water." So many: #802.4 "Purple?!!!!?" Rojo on #803.4: "Oh Boy, we're in trouble." *** And Now, The Ultimate Award...............(Anti)-Hasher of the Year for 2000: 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. She raised the average IQ of the pack by 50 points each time she ran. 1997: Delay LLLama. Eternally lost - miserable sets. 1998: The Louisiana Reptile Fancier, as he echoed the defining person of our time, Richard M. Nixon: "That's it; I'm outta here and I'm not coming back! You won't have the LRF to kick around any more." P.T. Barnum is vindicated again. 1999: This year we honoured our Grande Dominatrix, Road Jaundice, Architectrix of the Hard Corpse that year, runner of nearly 300 hashes, supplier of sky-blue oreos, and Mother Protector Of Us All. 2000: Over a 20 year period we have encountered many an unhappy homeowner. There are, it seems, just a few people Out There who believe that they, not the Great Spirit, "own" the land. There are even some who believe that it is their right, perhaps even their Purpose In Life, to keep honest, harmless, fun-loving folk (guess who they are?) offa their turf. Sometimes we have been able, through our usual refined and reasoned persuasion, to correct their ways, and gently to lead them onto a more harmonious path. Sometimes we have been unable to save them. Yes, we have had to abandon a few poor souls to their savage, generally purposeless, and always empty lives. The roster of the unsaved is all-too long: Clem, The Man with the Rake, The Guy in the Green Truck, The screaming Lady of the Canal come quickly, if not pleasantly to mind. And who can ever forget 1995, YOMAMA, The Year of Many Angry and Malicious Assholes, which featured Fred and Frederika the Huns, Officer Gonzales, Hanging Judge Bateman, Red Shirt, the Ecovigilante, Cablecop, and several other jackbooted thugs? There was also, in that same terrible year, the evil Ratchild (sorry, Rat) an eight-year old assassin in the making who took a potshot at Rojo. But this year, we found the true Anti-Hasher of the Millennium, the Homeowner from Hopehell, Our Friend from Sector 41. We are obliged to annoint him in 2000, the year of the Several Savage Swine, as Anti-Hasher of the Year, Century, and Millennium. *** On On to '01 - The Year of Redemption and Revenge?