2015 The psyche of PBP had suffered a staggering wound & the mood of the PBP Nation was somber each of the last couple of years as PWP time rolled around.  With the anniversary of the loss of one of our founding Musketeers falling just days before the PWP planning session, the passion to compete just wasn’t there anymore.  No one ever said it but all surely wondered if PBP would ever lace up the Competitive Picnicking gloves again.

During the 2015 PBP Winter Symposium,

Dharma issued a mandate to CEO TDT for a return to the PBP tradition of kicking posteriors & recording identities.  Even before the winter meeting ended, TDT had taken up the gauntlet & the PBP Coming Events countdown reflected Dharma’s instruction to “Just Win Baby” some 170 days before the big event.

Adhering to PWP tradition, the gang met the Monday before PWP.  After dinner, when potential themes would normally be discussed, TDT dropped the bomb that even though a list was prepared, there was one overwhelming issue on the collective consciousness of Lexington.  Sealing the deal, two PBP board members guessed the theme with no prior knowledge of the selection TDT had effectively made months earlier.

The theme, Picnic With The Pitte!  The 8 year unmitigated disaster in the middle of downtown Lexington, The Webb Companies’ constantly evolving, constantly controversial, constantly stalled hotel, office, restaurant & retail development CentrePointe, or as PBP dubbed it, CentrePitte.  Purely coincidentally, just after the theme was decided, surprise developments in the long dormant project thrust it back into the glaring media spotlight & all local media outlets covered it heavily for the rest of PWP week.  That kind of pre PWP publicity you just can’t plan or buy.

With an ensemble cast of 2 architects, an engineer, 1 former & 1 future developer, a financier, 3 preservation protestors & an acrophobic crane operator, none of the players in the colossal screwup avoided a skewering that only PBP can deliver.  The table decor featured multiple blueprint table cloths, representing the 7 & counting different designs for the project to date,  Around the table’s edge, a 21’ long mural of the 35’ tall stone wall blasted out of the Kentucky limestone 2 years ago, creating the multi acre pitte that remains untouched to this day.  Atop the table sat the signature feature of the project site for the last year, two 20 story tower cranes that haven’t moved or lifted so much as a 2 x 4 since the day they were installed.

Even before the table was complete, visitors arrived en masse.  Word that PBP was back in the ring & the subject of their theme raced thru the crowd like a brushfire on a California hillside.  Soon it was 2 & 3 people deep all around the table, all clamoring to take photos, or get the treasured PBP freebies of 2 different special edition magazines, buttons & bumper snickers or to offer their own opinion on the urban planning cluster %*&>.  Long before the music started, every memento had been scarfed up.  By the end of the evening a spot check on eBay saw the “CentrePitte, A Hole New Lexington” buttons already going for $250 a pop.

Not since 2000 & the great Spam handout of “Trailer Trash” had the PBP table been so inundated with visitors.  There was a palpable buzz in the air.  Amidst the dozens & dozens of “Mardi Gras” or “Voodoo” or “New Orleans Jazz” tables parroting the musical theme of the evening (how so incredibly imaginative, yawn, oh wait, NOT) the PBP creation stood out like a Deadhead at an Amish family reunion.

The 3 teams of dual judges lapped it up like starving puppies.  There were tears of laughter & I think one of them may have peed a little.  Of course the judges’ gifts of Payday candy bars wrapped with a PBP million dollar bill couldn’t have hurt.  It always pays to grease the skids a bit.  After the judging was completed & as a pair of them moved to their nearby table to dine, a knowing glance & a wink in TDT’s direction signaled what had been obvious to all since the first crane was erected, PBP was in like Flynn for victory #8.  Later during the intermission the emcee made it official, “& The Winner Is Dharma Swinford & Picnic With The Pitte”, at which point the crowd erupted in approving applause.

After a couple of years absence from competition, for intensely personal reasons, & with whispers making the rounds of Competitive Picnicking circles that PBP might be too long in the tooth, over the hill, all washed up, this win was as satisfying as any PWP victory for a number of reasons.  Most important of those was as the answer to Dharma’s request from back in February to “Just Win Baby.”

This one’s for you Greg!

After toiling in the gut wrenching darkness of anonymity for three decades, with numerous close calls, several runner-ups, a butt load of honorable mentions & more than a few crowd (but not judges) favorites, yet no winning entries, it looked like a Competitive Picnicking title might never be in the cards for PBP.  The list of cutting edge, timely & flawlessly executed losing themes includes:

   •  “Zackronized Swimming”  (1984,  Spoof of the L.A. Summer Olympics inclusion of Syncro & the famous SNL skit)

   •  “Memphis”  (1991,  Ode to the groundbreaking Italian design group, not the smelly, sweaty Tennessee city.  This roared over the

                judges heads like a FedEx cargo jet)

    •  “Vegas, Baby”  (1995,  This one had the stench of loser all over it)

    •  “Picnic w/ The Pups”  (1996,  Homage to that year’s remake of Disney’s 101 Dalmatians)

    •  “Picnic w/ The UPS”  (1997,  Ribbing the UPS strike of that summer & another should have won)

    •  “Picnic w/ The Pimps”  (1999,  Absolutely should have won, we wuz robbed, the judges had no stones)

                From the nearby table of “Paddington Bears’ Picnic”, PBP had a former high ranking Lexington Official, dressed as a teddy

                bear, reaching for his wallet & asking, “What’s it gonna cost for a bear to have a good time tonight?”

    •  “Trailer Trash”  (2000,  KY stereotype send-up & a definite crowd favorite that should have won, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam)

    •  “Mad For Plaid”  (2001,  Just because we could & were getting really pissed at not winning)

As the years passed (imagine pages flying off a calendar), & PBP was slogging away at biting satire, social commentary & bleeding edge topical issues “of great social & political import” (sorry Janis), the Biff & Buffy crowd below the fence at the Horse Park were winning every year with their safe, mayonnaise &  white bread themes, many designed & prepared by paid professionals in direct violation of PWP & NCAA regulations.  Themes like: “Dance of The Sugar Plum Fairies”, “Phantom of The Opera”, “Swinging to The Pops” & many other daring, avant-garde, boundary pushing topics.  And of course, every one done straight up as if they’d Googled a theme & copied verbatim the top result.  No localization, no au courant, no twisted, demented, 50 years of Mad Magazine influenced sarcasm.  Who wants to win if you have to check your creative soul at the door?  BORING!!!

Then the PBP front office did what was painful but necessary, long time veteran players were cut, trades were made for free agents & a few key draft picks fell PBP’s way & the Juggernaut that would become PBP’s Lexington based Competitive Picnicking Team was born.

2002  PBP finally breaks its maiden with a revolutionary, future portending, merciless grilling of dear old Martha Stewart & her, at that point just beginning, troubles with the SEC (no, not the South East Conference).  A full TWO YEARS before Martha traded her light blue oxford cloth shirt & khakis for a government issue, one size fits all orange jumpsuit, PBP was on the story like a monkey on a cupcake.  The first edition of what would go on to become the most anticipated annualish publication in Competitive Picnicking history, “Martha Stewart Jailhouse Living”, poked a hand-hammered platinum shish kabob skewer w/ hand carved Bubinga handle in Martha’s ribs as PBP turned her hugely profitable Martha By Mail sales empire into the theme of “Martha From Jail.”

In retrospect, the revolutionary nature of this theme, the likes of which the sleepy little world at the Horse Park hadn’t dreamt of in their worst nightmares, can not be overstated.  It sent a cold chill through the Talbot wearing, Volvo driving, Junior League set in front of the fence.  The same fence that for decades served as the physical, symbolic & impenetrable boundary between the haves & have nots, the winners & losers, the us & “those people” was instantly gone.  Oh yeah, it was a brand new world baby & PBP was its newly crowned king!

2003  After securing the first victory & simultaneously raising the bar for generations of Competitive Picnickers to come, the second PWP victory was like shooting fish in a barrel.  Thanks in no small part to the semi-alert folks at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet & their crack staff of graphic designers, who apparently contracted the design of the new license plates to Miss Sarah’s afternoon kindergarden class.  As if Kentucky wasn’t already the punch line to every cousin marrying, toothless, non shoe wearing, inbred, cracker, redneck joke, these bozos at the DMV came out with that moronic smiley face thing & the “Kentucky, 4.3 Million People, 15 Last Names” or whatever their slogan was.

The age old adage in Competitive Picnicking that “You Can’t Go Wrong Making Fun Of The Government” proved true yet again as the entire PBP Board of Directors donned yellow face paint, & foam sun-ray headgear to ridicule the already ridiculous.  A jumbo sized license plate with a cutout where the smiley guy should have been proved immensely popular for snapshots & all manner of PWP attendees lined up to have their picture made with their head poked through the hole.  Even perennial gubernatorial candidate Gatewood, queued up for his chance at an heirloom.

2004  On a roll with two straight wins, The Pressbox came into the 2004 picnicking season apprehensive.  Like players late in an in-progress no hitter or perfect game, no one dared say it out loud but all were keenly aware that the others were thinking, ThreePeat!  Never in recorded picnic history had a PWP ThreePeat been achieved.  Could it actually be done?  Many old timers said it wasn’t possible, but if it could be done, surely PBP was the outfit that could pull it off.

Possibly going back to the well one too many times the theme this year again centered on KY state government & the ineptitude thereof.  Heading to Washington, DC to attend the Reagan funeral, then KY governor Ernie Fletcher was flying in the apparently far from state of the art Official State Sopwith Camel.  The fact that the initials “OW & WW” were carved into a wooden bulkhead near the cockpit should have been a tipoff that this was not a plane fit for cross country travel.  Not yet 3 years removed from 9/11 & with security at a fever pitch surrounding all of the Washington metro area, VIP’s of the highest magnitude were arriving from around the world.  Into this scenario flies the KY State Plane with a non existent or non functioning transponder, a device that sends out a continuous signal allowing air traffic controllers to monitor & identify each aircraft.  With an unidentified, possibly hostile, bogey barreling straight for the nation’s capital, the Air Force went into DEFCON 2 & scrambled a squadron of F-18 Hornets to intercept the UFO.  The Capitol & other important buildings were evacuated as a precaution but just prior to being blasted from the sky they somehow sorted out who was on board & escorted the plane to a safe landing.  Some believe it was the vinyl siding on the plane’s exterior or the red duct tape over several wing tip lights that allowing identification as a KY based flight.

With that too funny to make up background, the choice of a theme was clear, “Ernie Goes To Washington” it was.  In addition to almost causing an international incident at a state funeral, PBP’s special PWP addition of the National Enquirer tabloid revealed for the first time anywhere many other disasters laid squarely at the feet of the Governor,  from the Lindbergh kidnapping to the crash of the Hindenburg.

The overwhelming crowd favorite once again, PBP did the unthinkable & entered Michael Jordan territory with the first PWP ThreePeat.

2005  With the first model released in late 2001, the iPod, although selling well, had remained a niche device.  With the introduction of the iTunes Music Store in mid 2003 & an entire new series of the devices late in 2004, with greatly increased capacity, functionality & battery life, the iPod exploded in 2005 & it seemed you couldn’t go anywhere, read or watch anything without hearing about the iPod.  By this time an entire ecosystem of 3rd party accessories had matured to support the device & the good folks at the Apple Computer Company of Cupertino, California could not crank these bad boys out fast enough.

Tapping into iPodmania, the PBP team featured five “life size” versions of the iconic white device along with five living, breathing black dancing silhouette against neon background ads.  In addition, a special PWP edition of the famed Billboard Magazine, which revealed many previously unknown secrets about Conductor George Zack & his ancestry.  Getting word early on of the PBP table, Dr. Zack made a bee line to the by now hallowed ground around table B-E-6.  Leafing through his copy of Billboard he was crying he laughed so hard.  Posing quickly for a group shot, he returned to the stage to announce to the still assembling crowd, “If you don’t see any other table tonight, you’ve got the see the iPods.”

Well, with an endorsement like that the judges had little choice but to award PBP an unthinkable 4th consecutive victory, pushing them into a mythic realm in the world of Competitive Picnicking.  A FourPeat, WOW, just WOW!

2006  Treading into unchartered waters entering the 2006 Competitive Picnicking season with back to back to back to back championships, the PBP team was firing on all cylinders.  When the time came to choose a theme for PWP, the choice was clear.  Earlier that year the Vice President of these United States had peppered his friend in the face with buckshot while quail hunting (no not Dan) on a Texas ranch.  There was so much fodder there, a hate him/love him divisive national figure, shooting a Republican lawyer in the face & then the lawyer apologized for getting shot.  You just couldn’t go wrong with a true story like that to work with.

And go wrong PBP did not, churning out another smash success that brought howls of laughter from both judges & competitors alike.  Complete with a sucking chest wound victim, several hunters, a member of the fourth estate, a Secret Service detail, a special PWP edition of Field & Stream Magazine, & more camo than an Arkansas wedding, PBP painted a complete & comical (if not historically accurate) picture of the event.

In the end it was another PBP victory for a mind boggling FivePeat.  Take that Michael Jeffery Jordan, FivePeat BAYYYBEEE, that’s 2 more than a ThreePeat.  Eat our Hanes ComfortSoft Waistband Shorts!!!!!!  Bet he’s singing, “I Dream I Move, I Dream I Groove Like PBP, If I Could Be Like PBP.”

2008  After 6 straight years of critical & public acclaim, The Pressbox shocked the world yet again & decided to sit out the entire 2008 picnicking season.  After fighting so hard for over 40 years to obtain that first elusive victory, & then having them come so easily for 6/10 of a decade, PBP stood at a crossroads.

The same traditional meeting was held, at the same undisclosed location, on the Monday evening before the PWP event.  The year long list of possible themes was reviewed, just as always.  There was just something odd in the air that year.  No one theme seemed to spark the burning interest of the PBP Board of Directors.  No one seemed to have the usual searing passion to poke fun at someone or some thing.  No topical, current event seemed a worthy challenge.  In short, the thrill seemed gone.

So there it was, it was decided that PBP, who had set the Competitive Picnicking bar unreachably high, would sit this one out, giving another group a chance to bask in the glow of PWP victory.

While it was a unanimous decision at the time, the group knew in the back of their minds that it just wasn’t natural.  So they showed up on that strange Friday night in a pensive mood.  There’d been no Tuesday morning prime directive email, no late night editing sessions for a special edition PWP magazine, no trips to Goodwill for that perfect costume or accent piece, no collecting the perfect tableware to reinforce the theme & no Friday morning pilgrimage to Kinko’s for printing the crowd favorite handouts.  There was just a few pichurs of PBP in its glory days, that poor table just looked naked.

PBP sat quietly as dozens of other attendees filed by as if at a funeral visitation, each with a shocked or sorrowful expression.  Each looked quickly at the table like glancing into the casket & there were the same forced pleasantries like:  I’m so sorry, we just heard the news, they look so natural, it’s sad, just sad.  The meal was eaten, some adult beverages were consumed & possibly the orchestra played but the whole night is just a blur in the minds of the entire PBP Board.  In the end all realized what a tragic mistake had been made.  PBP had let themselves, their adoring public & the international Competitive Picnicking community down.

2007 To cap a SixPeat run of victories, (a triple double) that will certainly never be seen again in our lifetimes, PBP once again went to the always dependable local government as fodder for their theme, “Yellow Bike Happens.”  Dedicated to the rocket surgeons at City Hall that came up with the brilliant idea of placing about 80 loaner bicycles all over downtown.  In their Civil Service brains here’s how it was supposed to work.  You paid a small fee ($5(US) if memory serves) & received a key for the locks.  You could then go to any bike chained up downtown, unlock it, hop on & pedal your environmentally friendly brains out.  When done, just chain it back to some permanent object in the city core for use by the next granola eating  carbon neutral citizen to come along.  Great in theory, but crappy on implementation!

As with most things governmental, this plan had numerous inherent flaws.  Mainly that it was 100% dependent on the honesty & cooperation of the general public.  Yeah, that should be no problem at all!  In reality, since each bike had the same lock, you’d ride your bike to the library or grocery, pickup an armload of books or a week’s worth of groceries & come out to find your yellow steed gone & you’d have to schlep 40 pounds of crap all the way back home.  After only a couple of weeks, people learned that by supplying their own lock, or just removing the seat, they could permanently guarantee their own personal transportation.  Then many of the good folks living on the edges of downtown decided they’d just ride the bikes home each night & store them in their garages or porches, purely as a security measure to keep the bikes from being stolen you understand.  Another group of less civic minded individuals decided they’d just take the bikes wherever they dang well pleased with no intention of ever using them or returning them.  Dozens ended up miles from the downtown area stripped to the frame as if attacked by a school of bicycle piranha.

In less than 3 weeks the initial herd of bikes had dwindled to less than 20 & it was virtually impossible to drive thru downtown & see more than 2 or 3.  Didn’t see that coming did you?  That’s why you don’t work for the government.

2010 Breaking a century of tradition by moving PWP from the Horse Park to Keeneland, changing from two nights to one & eliminating the Competitive Picnicking Summer Nationals (Friday, Friday, Fridayyyyyy) that had been the life blood of the event, marked the period known by picnic historians as DACP (Dark Ages of Competitive Picnicking).  Without the anticipation of what PBP was going to do this year, attendance fell to an all time low & scores of tables sat unsold, eerily empty & silent.  The few tables that did decorate were just going through the motions as without the constant variety of sport, the thrill of victory & the agony of defeat.... the human drama of athletic competition, all seemed futile, gray & hopeless.

I mean just look at it, a stupid plaid tablecloth & two pathetic flower arrangements.  Sickening, just sickening.  It was truly a sad day in the storied history of Competitive Picnicking.

2009 After a year’s sabbatical that allowed another table the chance to feel the thrill of victory (although one that will always be asterisk marked in the official PWP record books due to the absence of PWP powerhouse, PBP), the Pressbox again was on its A game, this time poking fun at their own kind, Boomers.  Marking, almost to the day, the 40th anniversary of the seminal event of their generation, the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in Bethel, NY, August 15 thru 18, 1969.

As always, the PBP team was the heavy crowd favorite for an unprecedented 7th title.  However, something seemed amiss this time as the day before the Friday night event a PWP spokesman was heard on local radio hawking unsold tables & commenting on how, “The winning table is usually one that goes along with the theme for the evening.”  Having attended every PWP since its inception in 1923, PBP members knew this was incorrect as most early years had no theme & even once themes were included, NEVER had the winner matched the year’s theme.  Only a predetermined outcome by the judges & event organizers that “coincidentally” picked the same winning theme for both Friday & Saturday nights (yeah sure........ that could totally happen) prevented PBP from returning to their rightful place as Kings of All Picnickers.

And what winners did they pick you ask?  ABBA, 8 people dressed in white jump suits with ABBA tunes playing on a CD player.  CD’s?  You’re freakin kidding me, if you’re going for authenticity you gotta go 8 Track or go home.  That’s the kind of attention to detail that PBP is known for but did these pretenders go the extra mile, no, HELL NO!  And since the evening’s featured performer was an ABBA look alike group, WOW, how in the world did they ever think of that, I mean it’s so clever, so topical, so funny, so creative.  Oh wait, no IT SUCKS!!!!

When PBP was announced as the second place winner, the crowd reacted with widespread boos & calls for the judges heads.  As the “pretend” winners were announced, fist fights & small arms fire erupted throughout the crowd & the Horse Park’s SWAT team had to be deployed, lobbing teargas canisters & tazing several unruly fans to restore order to the proceedings.  Actually, it felt kinda like the 60’s all over again, it was a real rush!  God help me, I love the smell of teargas in the evening.........

After that the ABBA impersonators performed (oh the excitement.......), a couple of adult beverages were consumed & a far out groovy time was had by all.

2011 Order is restored to the known universe & all is again right with the world as PBP ascends to their rightful place as ruler of all that is Competitive Picnicking.  In another not even close slaughter rule landslide victory, the Revenge Of The Pressbox is complete.

During a night that saw the PBP table constantly swarmed with visitors & potential future customers, it appeared they must have been handing out hundred dollar bills.  Justifying the lavish $146.37 (US) budget & grueling 3 1/2 days it takes to mount a winning effort, PBP CEO TDT said, “The money & manpower to put on an event of this sweeping scope is peanuts when the ROI is considered.  We write the whole thing off as a marketing expense & tonight alone we were offered no-bid contracts to design & build an interstate in Kuala Lumpur & three highway interchanges in Uruguay.  Plus, the LFUCG approached us about redesigning the dance stage for PWP.  If I’m lying, I’m dying.”

OK, get this...........  On a night in which PBP was poking fun at the incompetence of Lexington city planners & engineers for designing & building the stupidest interchange in the history of stupid interchanges, they built a dance stage for PWP with room for about 75 dancers.  However (by their own admission over the public address system) it was only engineered to safely hold about 10 people.  With about 50 people getting down with their bad selves they had to stop the  dancing & ask everyone to leave the stage, for fear of collapse.  To correct the problem, who’d they approach about rebuilding the stage before Saturday’s PWP?  Oh yeah, you nailed it, PBP’s very own Double Diamond Construction Company.  I’m pretty sure they actually thought we were a real construction crew.  Scary isn’t it?

And people always ask where we come up with our ideas for PWP.

You don’t have to look far, this stuff pretty much writes itself, just read the news today, oh boy!

I F   I T ’ S   P R E S S B O X ,   I T ’ S   U N B E F R E A K I N L I E V A B L E ! ! ! !