Today as I strolled in I found a press release on my desk about a company called Port-o-Pong. First, I was moderately offended that my office presumed that I’m that heavy of a drinker that I would be interested in any form of drinking toy they found. Then I realized I’ve been here a year and they’ve got me pretty figured out by now, so I typed in their URL and started to look around.

The Port-O-Pong is an inflatable beer pong table that looks like a one-man raft. With indentations for all 20 cups and a bonus hole for 2 water cups (ironic that it’s intended to be a floating beer pong table, yet has room for water cups…), I’m assuming it would be a great time to throw down some pool pong on it. Immediately I thought of busting it out on our own watering hole, the Sacramento River, but it’s like 100 ft. deep or something like that and treading water while playing drinking games seems like a stupid, yet epic, way to die.

It would be useful if the fine people at Port-O-Pong would send us over one of these bad boys, you know, so we could do a thorough review of their product… we’ll review the hell out of it.

In celebration of the Olympics starting in two days I bring you… Beer Olympics! Jimmy Clausen, Notre Dame quarterback, recently got himself in some hot water for partaking in the Beer Olympics when pictures of the games surfaced. Proof that Facebook really can come back to haunt you.

Basic rules & regulations:

Equipment: Keg (or 2), bat, ping pong balls, hard alcohol, shot glasses, a funnel, red cups, ten+ worthy drunkasses. Matching jerseys will definitely up your teams morale.

Games played, quickly & in order: Dizzy bat, beer pong, flip cup, quarters and the funnel (aka beer bong).

For some reason “The Thong Song” is the theme song of the opening ceremonies and the Baja Men are supposed to play as the winner stands on the podium.

The Rules, Events, and Ways to Become a Champion:

In the real Olympics (the one without the beer) there are multiple events with solo and/or team competitors all vying for medals in a variety of sports. You don’t have the time, energy, or alcohol tolerance to do any of this, so the best way to have the most fun while getting the largest number of competitors involved is the Team Relay event. Take your participants and split them in half, preferably in old school kickball pick-teams style, and be sure to choose your team wisely as they’ll have to be skilled in all areas of drinking and boast a very high alcohol tolerance, an uncanny ability to play drinking games, and most likely an embarrassing GPA. Now that you’ve got your team and forced them through the random drug testing, to make sure that they are inebriated, you can move on to the competition.

Unprotected beer pong play is almost as bad as unprotected sex according to the Center for Disease Control.

There has been a huge increase in Herpes transmission and reports of the virus have gone up 230% from last year in people 17 to 21. This is traced to the sharing of cups during beer pong. The type of Herpes increasing is the Simplex-Virus 1 that causes cold sores. EW!

Universities are starting to take notice. Arizona State University is even providing new, free red cups to all students in the dorms because they realize that playing beer pong is inevitable and there is no way to prevent it.

And you can always play a different game. According to CDC spokesman, Dr. Cole Desorio, “Flip cup is great because each individual has their own cup. If it’s absolutely necessary to play beer pong, use the waterfall method. Many young adults, when asked if they practice safe pong, responded that they rinse the ball after it bounces off the table.”

Surprised the CDC knows what beer pong, waterfalls and flip cup even are. Props, I guess?

Table Tennis needs to be taken seriously, according to Nike and Puma. The two companies have collaborated  to make new products specifically for ping pong enthusiasts everywhere. Nike’s new shoe, the Sportswear Star Classic TT, are some hott kicks that are quilted and have a paddle rubber sole for the ultimate pong experience. Puma has made a paddle carrying case, part of the PT3 Ultramagnetic Collection. I guess if this doesn’t work out they can always market the items to hardcore beer pong-ers.

The Nintendo Wii now has a beer pong game. That’s the greatest thing I’ve heard in awhile. College boys everywhere must be crapping their pants. JV Games is trying to clean up the game by changing the title to “Pong Toss” so they can market it to younger kids. This is pretty funny: it was produced by JV’s Frat Party games line. How douchey! It is rated “T” and is the first drinking game of its kind. Reviews all say it sucks badly but oh well. I already hate people who take beer pong too seriously and now mix that with hardcore video gamers and all hell will break loose.