“Pain exists in the mind.” – from America’s Best
“Pain exists in the mind.” – from America’s Best

“Pain exists in the mind.” – from America’s Best

Date:2024-03-14
QIC:America’s Best
PAX:Yankee Jeaux, Honeysuckle, Paradox, Goose, Pope, Smooth Operator, Enron, Safety Valve, America’s Best

What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An ear (ehr)worm?
No… a free men’s workout. Resilient… highly contagious. And once an idea for a beatdown has taken hold of the brain, it’s almost impossible to eradicate.
Months ago, the idea for this beatdown was planted into YHC’s fragile eggshell mind by Paradox.
Now, YHC had not seen Inception in years, so a refresher was necessary.
(Since the movie is currently available only on Canadian Netflix, YHC may have had to commit some “light violation” of Netflix’s terms of service in order to view the movie.)

Began as usual, with Warmarama, but YHC wanted to set up the disorientation and confusion early. Only 3 SSH were done; Enron looked up from setting his Whoop, and it was over.

The first thang:
The entire PAX enters together into the first dream layer:
Dream on (Aerosmith)- Hold Al Gore during music, SSH during lyrics. Burpee on “sing,” merkin on “dream”, then change to hold plank and and merkins all subsequent “sing”s and “dream”s.

Second Thang: for the next dream layer, it’s necessary to break into smaller groups.
So we divided into partners and performed a Musical Dora – one partner does curls during song 1, and thrusters during 2nd song. Other partner is running a lap, and doing 5 derkins on the hill.

Deepest dream layer: Limbo, on your own.
In the world of Inception, Limbo is an “expanse of infinite raw subconscious,” described as “unconstructed dream space.”
And so it came to be that we would suffer the deconstructed burpees of Yankee Jeaux’s dreams (Jurpees) in unconstructed dream space. AMRAP. On your own.
For your listening pleasure: Sweet Dreams (are made of these) and Good Old Fashioned Nightmare.
Not sure if the entire PAX experienced the extreme time dilation YHC did here, but these two songs seemed to last about 4 hours.

“Non, je ne regrette rien” was the song used in Inception to alert the dreamers to wake into the higher dream state.
So when it played, we ran a lap around the civic center to “kick” back out of limbo and up into the second dream.

Second Thang again:Repeated Musical Dora, this time with sit ups on the (up) hill.
May I submit that this exercise henceforth be known as “the drug mule”? Because when I was done I had so much grass in my crack I felt like I was crossing the border with Cheech and Chong.

“Non, je ne regrette rien” played again, so again we ran a lap around CC (before song ends!) and reunited entire PAX to finish up in the original dream.

And the last thang:
“Wake Me Up” : flutter kicks until chorus. Big boy sit ups during chorus, Big Boy Sit Up Ups (stand ups)on “Wake Me”; Freddy Mercury during breakdown

“Non, je ne regrette rien” was supposed to play one final time. Maybe we were supposed to run one more lap?
Either way, not sure if we got to that final bit… but I hope this blast has summed up the rigorous confusion of the beatdown.

COT. Goose prayed us out.

Thanks for showing up for the mayhem. Always an honor to lead you maniacs.

AB Sees…
A parallel between Han Solo and Yankee Jeaux:

How was I confident that we could make the lap around the Civic Center before that French song ended? First, a story:
Han Solo claimed that his Millennium Falcon “made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.” Critics and nerds love to point out that this makes no sense, because a parsec is a unit of distance, not time.

A few weeks ago, YHC was planning this beatdown and so asked YJ “how long does it take to run a lap around the Civic Center?” His answer: 0.3 miles.

So how was I confident we would make it in time?
Not at all. But Goose was back! And showing up only minutes after me, informed me “I’m going to run a few laps to warm up.”
Giving me the perfect opportunity to time him… as long as we can all run like Goose, we should be fine. How confident was I that we could all run like Goose?
Not at all. But sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. Or otherwise, “become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone.”