Colin spells a word correctly.

So does HHJJ.

.

We win!

Our elixir.

All spelled out.

When it was announced our next competition would be a Spelling Bee, some of our teammates groaned with sentiments like, “without spell check, I’m like a quadriplegic without a wheelchair.” Finally, our full team adorned in gear gathered downstairs at hotspot Crocodile. Before the game, we took advantage of the PBR + Jameson shot combo. With every drink purchase, we got a free pizza. After we were slightly lubricated and fed, it was time for the bee to commence. Every team seemed to be rattling in their shoes as they had to stand in front of all their peers and spell commonly misspelled words like “misspelled,” “liquefy,” and “maintenance” (yeah, I used spell check to write this). All of us were nervous, like a hooker in a church kind of nervous. The last time any of us had participated in a Bee was in fifth grade and that didn’t go so well. And have you seen that Spelling Bee doc? Scary. Those kids should’ve had a few shots before their competition. Anyway, we were ready to embarrass ourselves. The first team got “sheriff” and spelled it right. We misspelled “accidentally,” got “pastime” right, and misspelled a curious “charlatan,” which our team had no idea how to spell let alone knew what it meant. It seemed the more we drank, the better our spelling got. Has there been a scientific study done on this? There was a slight discrepancy on whether we were going with the English or British spellings, and there was at least one do over with another team. There were also some weird medical words thrown in. But, somehow we won! I mean, like there was any doubt we’d emerge as victors. We are the only writing team in the league and one of our teammates did go to Harvard. We got a total of 7 correct, barely beating our archnemisis XRT who got 6 right. So, turns out we can spell. But trivia? That’ll be another story.

White people (and, I’m going out on a limb here — other 20- and 30-something city-dwellers), like to play children’s games as adults.

So who wants to play Red Rover with the MyOpenBarbarians? We promise we won’t hurt you… much.

Want to know more about Myopenbar.com than where to get sloshed for free in Chicago, New York, LA, Miami, San Francisco, and Honolulu? Read on, dear fans:

Myopenbar Chicago consists of professionals. Professional drinkers, of course. We’ve also been known to engage in a few sports, in between doing bicep curls with pint glasses: 

• urban golf (where we came in second place at the 1st Chicago Urban Golf Extravaganza)
• contact standup comedy (where the bar owners hit on us after our set)
• hula hooping (or as those ‘in the know’ call it when you drop it a lot, hoop dancing)
• urban shopping cart racing (where we got disqualified the first year and penalized multiple times the second)

We relish the chance to showcase our competivive natures — honed through years of kicking ass in pub quizzes and challenging traders to down Irish carbombs – into more physical endeavors. After all, when we burn off loads of calories, we can convince ourselves that the post-match drinking evens things out.

If you didn’t notice from our team photo, we have our very own cheerleader AND a real, live, highly ferocious (and possibly rabid) mascot. Chew on that, other teams!

Sure, we might only have a few genuinely athletic people on our team (here’s one them urging better playing to those out in the field):

But that’s not why we’re playing in this league. It’s because of the FREE OPEN BAR after the matches. That is where we dominate. Did any of the other teams let their dog lick beer off their face? No. Did any of the other teams fill the Saucony-provided water guns with beer and squirt it in people’s mouths? No. And do any of the other teams have bee-yoo-ti-ful titties as their not-so-secret weapon? Decidedly not.

Heaven help our rivals if we’re forced by rain to play drinking games in the bar instead of actual sports. Especially if this guy is involved. He may look innocent, but oh, the stories we can tell…