Hour after hour, quarter after quarter, brain cell after brain cell… no matter what it took, the drive to make it to level 64, defeat Goro or nab more cries of "He's ON FIRE!" than your friends at NBA Jam justified the cost. I mean, you're talking about an adolescent schmuck who grasped that saving the world from space invaders was more of a realistic scenario than actually touching a boob or something. Essentially, this was childhood for many males of my generation. On Thursday, Geeks Who Drink toasted this sad existence masquerading as nostalgic suburban Americana by presenting a round on arcade games that served some serious helpings of hadouken. From Pong and Ms. Pacman to Qbert and Mortal Kombat, the finest finger blister blasters were included. The teams had a grand time, but surely they'll stop coming week after week as soon as Geeks Who Drink quizzes are available on home consoles.

I.C.U.P. scored a Flawless Victory, though the Pop Cultural Anthropologists gave them a spirited challenge and made second. Perennial contenders Faith + One tied Ohhh Jerry… for the third spot, while the 2nd graders in Hugh Jass and the clan known as Mario Brosish battled it out to take fourth and fifth, respectively. Cultural Differences mustered a decent sixth and a winded 2 hours 50 min Marathon crossed the finish line at seventh.

Game Over? Toss in another coin, that asshole Duckhunt dog needs to get some buckshot between the eyes!

What turns you on? Prepuce? Gokkun? Agoraphilia? Surely, one or more of these makes you concupiscent. Unfortunately, I was not able to speak of any of these things due to the PG atmosphere of my bar. It completely killed my priapism-- which is a good thing, if you know what a priapism is. So I recited a more family-friendly version of Round 3, which was originally titled Sexicography and would have tested our Geeks on the technical terms for copulation-related concepts. Questions of a lascivious nature were replaced with queries on pulsars and Thomas Hobbes (no, not Calvin's toy tiger; the boring one who helped formulate the theory of social contract). Self-censoring made me feel like I was afflicted by anorchia, but getting away with a mention of podophilia in a completely different round provided me a degree of solace. All of this is fairly irrelevant, however, when you consider that a question on Rosie O'Donnell in Round 1 served as a pretty effective cold shower. Following that, nobody was in the mood.

Cultural Differences edged out Can't Stand Ya for first place after a tie that had to be decided once more by a Super Über Deadly Poisonous Did I Underemphasize the Deadliness? Emergency Death Round of Death. Each had to deploy their math skills to determine the ultimate winner. Team Jan Jan meted out a respectable 3rd place, while Alabama mosied up to the fourth spot.

And one more thing… I totally lied. Discussing Thomas Hobbes renders me irreparably tumescent.

"(The Town of) Served. Population: You!" With that dismissal by yours truly, the Geeks Who Drink dance-off culminated this past Thursday. A three-way tie for second-place (I already did the ménage-a-tie joke last week. Fuck) and its $10 bar tab prize had to be decided somehow. And since each team preferred any competition other than dancing, I naturally picked that to be the tiebreaker. Canadian Tuxedo and Taste Like Chicken admirably busted some moves, but a lady from D. I. Do U. News Now with Ron Burgundy performed boogaloo-electrifying maneuvers straight out of Breakin' 2. Of course, each team's representative dancer resembled Michael J. Fox being tased, but their Caucasianess was a significant handicap.

The quizmaster all-star team known as the Sally Draper Sleepover Rub Club confidently sashayed into first place this evening. Dancemasters W.I.Do U. News Now with Ron Burgundy shared second with Canadian Tuxedo and We Taste Like Chicken. In third we had The Evil Team while the attention-starved bros at the bar known as Snatch Snackers garnered fourth. Then there was Nerdherd and Duda at the bottom. And if anybody was annoyed/agitated/offended by my playing of that ubiquitous "Call Me Maybe" song during the dance-off, please direct all hatemail to the David Hasselhoff Fan Club address listed below. Auf wiedersehn!