Jive Turkey Dictionary: High Tide Edition!

In the original Jive Turkey Dictionary, I defined High Tide as "a debauched Spring Break trip and “BEST WEEK OF THE YEAR” where the Jive Turkeys rent a house, play Ultimate, party wildly, and try not to get evicted. In 2010 and 2014 the team had to try extra hard to not get evicted." 

As much as I stand by that definition, the dawn of High Tide 2015 (and my joining the Five Year Club) had me thinking that one cannot explain High Tide in merely 45 words. Instead, it takes greater examination of the nuances of the entire trip, from the drive down to the tournament, and from the healthy food to the healthy party habits. 

That being said, no two High Tides are alike, each one with their own idiosyncratic tendencies that make them as much fun as they are. It would be impossible to try and include so many specifics, so I've chosen terms that are either mainstays of the High Tide experience, or were so notable that they have become a part of High Tide lore. Since I obviously missed something (I always miss something), leave a friendly note in the comments telling me how awful I am at this. 

So put on your best Hawaiian shirt (the one you'll wear all week), and check out the previous installments here and here if you need to. Although you probably don't, it's not like you are missing valuable plot information or anything. 

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Barbosa Rum (n.) – Knock-off Calico Jack for people south of the Mason-Dixon line. Not that Calico Jack needed a knock-off version of itself...

Beat On (phrase) – How you’ll feel at the end of the week. We are off to a good start.

Carbomb Night (n.) – An age old tradition that began with Dan Zahn's appreciation of Irish Car Bombs, and has been carried out by donations from gracious Godfeathers. Although St. Patrick's Day does not always occur during High Tide, the Jive Turkeys celebrate Thursday night by doing car bombs and getting every flavor of wasted. This is typically the drunkest night of High Tide. Don't do 11 car bombs. You'll hate yourself for it. 

Detonator (n.) – Back for another entry of the Dictionary. Detonator’s current popularity can be directly attributed to March 18, 2011, when I celebrated my birthday with Nips and Simon by learning how to smash beer cans against our heads until either the cans split or our spirit did. Five years later, only the cans have.

Drunk v. High (n.) – a High Tide tradition that pits the drunkest of drunks against the highest of er… high people in a game of ultimate. Starting Sunday morning, each person will choose their vice and give a big wave goodbye to that day’s sobriety. No one really ever knows who wins or loses, except in 2011 when everyone lost because the game wasn’t played. Fuck Marion.

Burying people in the sand is widely considered an acceptable alternative to playing

Flagger (n.) – Perpetually invited-to-High-Tide Gettysburg Dickinson alum, whose interests range from partying with people half his age (kidding) to squatting mad weight (less kidding). He is the bro who even lifts.

Fricket (n.) – The noble game of frisbee-cricket played on the beach amongst well inebriated chaps.

Fun Bucket (n.) – Who are we? Fun Bucket! What are we? Fun!

Genny Light (n.) – Genesse makes the great beer known as Genny Cream. This beer is most certainly not that, and you will most certainly drink more Genny Light than you previously thought possible during High Tide. I’d say pre-treat your liver by buying some ahead of time, but that would be an unpleasant experience for all involved.

Grilled Cheese (food) – You’re favorite drunk food (and who knows, maybe sober food) for the next week of your life. Nothing says good eating habits like Winn Dixie white bread, kraft singles and butter. Thank God we run around during the week to counteract all that drinking and gross eating.

Grits' My Life Be Like (Ooh Aah) (n.) – Legend has it that many spring breaks ago, one ultimate team dared to listen to this single by Grits for 14 consecutive hours. Predictably, spirits were broken by the 14^th hour and the song was turned off. Some say that on a windy night you can still faintly hear “Ooh Aah” drifting through St. Simon’s Island. But those are just legends. Aren’t they?! AREN’T THEY?!

Harry (Ivanovich) Driggers (n.) – Patron saint (and namesake) of the fields at St. Simon’s Island. Intrepid discoverer of the Northwest and Founder of Schmidt Brewery, the beer that shaped the great Northwest.

Hat Tournament (n.) – As the first official event of High Tide, the hat tournament functions just like any other hat tournament, taking players from random teams to make new teams that don’t really like playing with one another and just want to drink on the sideline. It behooves you to play poorly during the hat tournament, or else you’ll be there all day. You can also get waitlisted from the tournament and not have to even bother.

Jive Turkeys Went Down South (n.) – Jive's self-created anthem for Spring Break. It was written years ago, long before anyone on the current team was even college, and despite someone being asked to write a new song each year, no one has, indicating the staying power of Jive Turkeys Went Down South.  

Missions (n.) – On Sunday night, each person will receive a “mission,” which is a specific task they are encouraged to complete at some point during the week. The missions are thought up by a Missions Committee, a small team of individuals who specialize in the ridiculous. You don't have to complete your mission for the week, but if you don't you'll be victim of unending derision and mockery.  

Party Bitch (n.) – Award bestowed upon the person who passes out early and makes no effort to be any fun at all that night. Awardee’s “prize” has varied from OG Four Loko to Alcoholic Daiquiri mix over the years, and is every flavor of unwanted.

Party Champ (n.) – Award bestowed upon the person who exhibits the most exceptional party habits during the previous night of debauchery. You will be given a 40oz, and you will enjoy every sip of your malt liquor-based champion beverage.

Poolception (n.) – A pool in a pool. Requires the upfront invest of an inflatable pool, and it is highly recommended that you also have an electronic air pump, lest you want to turn the color of a ripe tomato. 

Somewhere, Hedonism Bot is shedding a single tear of joy

Right of Return (n.) – In which an abroad Jive Turkey comes back, unbeknownst to the masses, to lead the charges of raucousness and make everyone miss them all the much more when the return to their country of study. Unless you are Posey, who had to stay in the U.S. because of volcanic eruptions. Thanks Mother Nature!

Savannah (n.) – original name of Jive’s spring break because the tournament was held close enough to the city to visit. Now, when people refer to High Tide as Savannah, they either do so out of nostalgia, or because they are young, impressionable, and simply don’t know what they are talking about.

Shotgun Wedding (n.) – By admission of former Jive historian Eddie Small, one of the greatest parties he’d ever been to. Thrown by the class of 2012 at High Tide 2010, almost led to Jive getting evicted from the house and the main reason for establishing a no non-Jive policy at the High Tide house for the remainder of the tournament’s time in Georgia, and indeed in most states.  

“Song of High Tide” (phrase) – Every year it seems that without fail, there will be one party song to rule them all throughout the week. It will probably be pretty obvious by the middle of the week what the Song of High Tide is, but sometimes it takes the same song being looped for 14 hours straight to mark a clear winner.

Southern Soul (food) – Delectable BBQ joint that was commonly considered the best place to eat whilst at High Tide, not that drunk grilled cheese gives it much competition, but still. Unfortunately, due to the tournament moving north, Southern Soul will no longer be a part of the High Tide experience, meaning veteran High Tiders will wax poetic about it and probably confuse anyone who has never been.

Overrated! *Gets stabbed*

Sunrise Blunt (n.) – the reward for staying up all night at High Tide. Your faithful author has never done a sunrise blunt, and therefore cannot speculate as to what exactly goes on during one without going to deep, dark places of the human psyche that will make everyone uncomfortable.

Pictured: A sunrise, to put it bluntly

Tybee Island Iced Tea (n.) – Long Island Iced Tea with spiced rum. Terrible.

Waffle House (food) – Where dreams of eating decent food during spring break go to die. Drink the coffee, eat the shitty eggs, and shotgun the mayonnaise packets. You'll come out of it a stronger person. 

Wagon Wheel (n.) – The all-time champion of High Tide songs (and not that Darius Rucker version), soundtracking Jive’s heading down south to the land of the pine since time immemorial. Can be played at any time, but begins to feel most appropriate when you are thumbing your way through North Carolina.

Zaxby’s (food) – the best restaurant you haven’t eaten at on your way down to High Tide. It’s basically the KFC that we deserve in the north, but not the KFC we need right now.

Books!

So it took a while, but here is the sequel to last year's post about what I've been reading over the past 12+ months. I didn't read as much excellently-written fiction as I did in 2013 (ie The Secret History, The Round House) but I did find a number of very interesting books full of addictive dramas and mysteries and fantastic characters. I strayed a bit from last year's goals to read primarily Pulitzer and award-winning books and I ended up discovering some new favorites that I'll reread for years to come.

Being able to get lost in a book is an underrated privilege and in case you're looking to do some literary exploring yourself, here are several of the best things I've read in the past year. Please share any ideas for new books I could check out and please keep the criticism of my pretentiousness to yourself.


Black Moon
Kenneth Calhoun (2014)
We live in a time where apocalyptic fiction (and non-fiction) is churned out almost weekly and Kenneth Calhoun's debut novel presents a unique and fascinating take on the concept: insomnia. Black Moon follows the journeys of several protagonists in a world where fewer and fewer people can sleep. Driven by deteriorating brain function and a primal, jealous hatred of those who can still doze, the people of Earth are slowly becoming zombies. Calhoun's structure wanders a bit at times, but his excellent and surprisingly moving prose mostly covers for it. The daily gory or shocking horrors become almost pedestrian compared to the tormented memories of loss and failure. It is these regrets and the occasional cause for hope that drive the story and the characters within. It's not all misery and there are points where the book touches on the science of sleep and even several comical tangents, one prominently featuring Viagra. I can definitely say that Black Moon was one of the oddest things I read this year, and unexpectedly affecting.

The Magicians Trilogy
Lev Grossman (2009-2014)
I'd come across this trilogy numerous times when looking up the best new fantasy/sci-fi, and the best-selling series more than lived up to its reputation. Any great work of fantasy will suck the reader into a world with too many interesting possibilities to explore, and Lev Grossman's magical realms of Brakebills and Fillory do just that. This is not teen fiction, it is definitely for a more mature audience and when Quentin is introduced to magic he is also introduced to sex, booze, and tragic loss. If you read Harry Potter and thought where are the jaded smart-asses? why aren't these college-aged kids all trying to drink and sleep with each other? why aren't wizards using their powers to get rich and influence politics? why isn't anyone busting their ass to become an amazing wizard? All these very practical, real-world issues populate The Magicians, and the story is far better for it. Grossman's fiction is not fanciful, it's fantastical: a distinction I would say makes all the difference in creating these excellent, unique books. No one should be turned off by the fact that these novels deal with magic or are branded "fantasy," the trilogy stands up just fine as incredibly inventive fiction. Seriously, you should go out and find The Magicians and start it today.

Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn (2014)
I won't say much about Gone Girl other than that you should read it. At this point, I assume most everyone has seen the movie trailer and/or the movie, or heard friends talk about it in some form. This means that you can probably guess the spoilers but even if you think you know what's going to happen it doesn't take away from the quality of the book. Flynn's writing is scathing and insightful and her assessment of male-female relationships manages to be sad, funny, and wickedly delightful. You should see the movie, because it's great and so is David Fincher, but the book is full of bold twists and turns, and if nothing else it will certainly make you think (hopefully not about killing your spouse).


Hild
Nicola Griffith (2013)
An immensely immersive work of historical fiction, Hild is the imagined story of the very real St. Hilda of Whitby, a noblewoman and abbess in AD 600's Britain. I say imagined because very little is known about Hilda's life before she became an abbess other than that from an early age she attended the court of the local king Edwin and wielded considerable influence for one so young (and so female). Nicola Griffith has done an extraordinary amount of research and pieced together a story of what Hild's growth to adulthood could have been like. While there are battles and trysts, the majority of the story is simply devoted to Hild's daily life and her growing understanding of the natural world and the social power dynamics around her. In a time ruled by violence, competing religions, and men, her mother's simple mantra, "quiet mouth, bright mind," teaches Hild to listen, observe, and wield her most powerful weapon: her brain. This often puts her in conflict or distances her from her peers, yet she eventually embraces this otherness and becomes an intimidating icon in the nearby kingdoms. Griffith has a gift for language and while the material may be a bit dry at times, the prose is always gorgeous and keeps a simple story vivid and absorbing.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman (2013)
I gushed last year about Neil Gaiman's grim and wonderfully unique American Gods, and his slender new book The Ocean at the End of the Lane excels in a similar vein. As the narrator says in a revelatory moment near the end of the novel "the reality I knew was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.” Oof. Our story begins when the protagonist revisits his childhood home and with proximity comes a rush of memories. He recalls a battle with dark, ancient evil and the unusual but well-meaning Hempstock family at the end of the lane. We're never quite sure how much of the harrowing recollection is real or embellished but fairytales are real to children, and the emotions and terrors are never uncertain to the child experiencing them. Simultaneously managing to be well-balanced and alarmingly unsettling, Gaiman has created another gripping tale that will stay in your thoughts for weeks. I fully recommend everyone pick it up for a quick read that you won't want to put down.

p.s. pretty sure it gave Allie nightmares
 
A Drink Before the War/Darkness, Take My Hand/Gone, Baby, Gone
Dennis Lehane (1994-1998)
This summer I finally picked up a copy of Gone, Baby, Gone I'd gotten as a gift years ago and I blew through it before immediately scrambling to get my hands on the rest of the series. This outstanding six-novel set featuring detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro delves deep into the dark, scarred underbelly of Boston(/humanity?). Taking place primarily in the rougher, older neighborhoods of Boston, Lehane's hometown, the city is as much a character as any of the policeman, bartenders, or thugs that fill the pages. The series teems with shocking violence and rye, razor-sharp dialogue and Patrick and Angela's characters are developed so extraordinarily well that I quickly found myself embarrassingly devoted. Along with the twists and sleuthing, Lehane's stories present moral quandaries and bleak social commentary in a bitter, poignant fashion much more memorable than what you'd find in the average detective book. I picked these three books (#1, #2, #4) as my favorites in the set but really they are all great.

The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt (2013)
It takes guts to embark on an 780-page novel but The Goldfinch never got boring and in no way did it disappoint. Once I started I couldn't put it down and it wasn't until I finished the last page that it suddenly felt long, like you'd just lived a life. That life belongs to Theodore Decker, a child who loses his mother in a tragic terror attack in an art museum before growing into a troubled, neurotic man. That tragedy and the bewitching Fabritius painting he recovers from the rubble, The Goldfinch, stay with Theo for years, always hovering in the back of his mind like an addiction. When doing a little digging to see what critics thought of Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning third book, I was surprised to find that some high art critics labeled it simplistic and the prose juvenile. I would wholeheartedly disagree and while it might not be rife with transcendent individual sentences, as a whole the meticulous detail and free-flowing internal monologue suck you into Theo's consciousness. It's a captivating story and the breadth and depth amazed me. I'm sure I'll find time to read all 780 pages again someday.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Richard Flanagan (2014)
This novel by Richard Flanagan is without a doubt the best thing I've read in the last year and one of the most moving pieces of literature I've ever encountered. I haven't cried during a book since Where the Red Fern Grows (RIP Old Dan & Little Ann) but I was almost moved to tears multiple times during this one. The story is that of a fictional character, Dorrigo Evans: a doctor, a soldier, and ultimately an Australian WWII POW pressed into slave labor by the Japanese. He leads men on the construction of the Death Railway between Bangkok and Rangoon, a real-life horror and one often forgotten when discussing the monstrosities of WWII. Flanagan initially pieced his story together from his father's accounts of his own time spent on the railway, and the conditions described within are truly devastating. In between pages of mud, starvation, and cholera in the jungle, we follow Dorrigo's singular romance with a woman named Amy. While some of the labor camp passages are brutal and shocking to read, Dorrigo's life away from the war is just as fascinating and heart-wrenching. I can't say enough about what a beautiful, amazing book this is and the writing is unflinching. Australian reviewer Geordie Williamson described the novel as "poetry without any pity at all," and Flanagan's visceral and immensely detailed prose glues you to the page, even at times when you wish you could pull away. If you read one piece of fiction this year, make it this masterpiece.

I Remember You
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, trans. Philip Roughton (2010)
I haven't read many horror books since Goosebumps in elementary school, and then The Exorcist at some age that was way to young for me not have the lights on to finish it. Maybe I'm missing out. This is a gripping, scary, creepy book and after it's wild success in Sigurðardóttir's native Iceland, it's come to America, where someone has already snapped up the film rights. A group of friends head to a remote island to fix up an old cottage and it's not long before they encounter a bone-chilling haunting. That might sound like your archetypal horror plot but it's much more complex than that and perhaps I Remember You is better described as a mix of a crime narrative and a ghost story. A number of different threads concerning missing children, suicides, and spectral apparitions are woven together expertly, resulting in a supernatural, macabre mystery. Sigurðardóttir creates and expertly manipulates a sense of menace that builds to a genuine edge-of-your-seat thriller as more and more secrets unravel. It's a really fun book and a well-written, scary read if you're in the mood for that kind of thing.


I realized after I made my initial list that no non-fiction made the cut but there are a couple I'd like to recognize:


Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story
John Berendt (1995)
Many who have made a trip to Savannah, whether as part of the Jive Turkey Great Migration or otherwise, can confirm there is something magical about the city. John Berendt's classic work recounts his experiences there during the trial of a wealthy socialite accused of killing his fiery, potentially bisexual assistant/lover. Twenty pages in you'll want to visit the Spanish moss-draped boulevards of Savannah and by the conclusion you'll be just as curious and enamored as when you started. One could loosely describe the plot as a murder mystery but the heart and soul of the book are the city itself and the unusual and incredible characters that populate it.
  


 Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East
Scott Anderson (2013)
A fascinating read about one of the great enigmas of the 20th century. As a kid I was amazed by Peter O'Toole in the 1962 Lawrence of Arabia and this biography focusing on T.E. Lawrence's time in the Middle East is the first I've ever read about the real man. Anderson does an excellent job providing context for Lawrence's trials by mixing in the stories of several other power players in the region and the result is a very readable but detailed microhistory. Anyone interested in Lawrence or the creation of the "modern" Middle East should check this out.

 


 In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
Nathaniel Philbrick (1999)
Did you know that Moby Dick is loosely based on a true story? This is that true story and if you thought Moby Dick was tough to sit through: beware, but for a very different reason. Nathaniel Philbrick's narrative of the wreck and subsequent fight for survival by the crew of the Essex is one the most incredible true stories I've ever come across. It's pretty harrowing and even gruesome at times, but definitely worth the read. In retrospect this was actually one of the most fascinating things I read in 2014 and deserved more thought, but I'm tired of writing.
p.s. Chris Hemsworth is making a movie of this book, do you think they'll make it realistic and have him lose 40 pounds and eat his crew? (spoilers)


Other notes:
- Red Dragon is the best in Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter series, by far
- Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (Mary Roach, 2008) is a really interesting book, and it covers pretty much everything you'd ever want to know about sex and plenty you don't. Bonus points if you read it in public
- re-read two of my all-time favorite Star Wars series this summer, and they're still awesome: The Han Solo Trilogy and the Thrawn Trilogy