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Beers, The Draft and One Big Order of Wang

  • April 28, 2010 3:10 am

Tyson Alualu

Ed Wang

This past weekend in culmination of months of heightened, whispered anticipation, a group of well-into-thirtysomething men, temporarily gave the slip to their families and professions; and relinquished general responsibilities in order to secretly converge and engage in a private, annual male bonding ritual held sacrosanct since high school.

The guys are me and some friends.

No, we’re not Freemasons, militiamen nor are we on the down low.

We met, as we’ve done for the previous 18 years, to watch envelope ourselves in the NFL Draft. We are draftniks — people with a hyper-geekified interest in an annual, sensationalized, non-event event where collegiate football players are selected, round-by-round, by the professional football teams that will employ and pay them large amounts of cash to play a game they played as children.

Game, Set, Chant: Wardancing With The Stars

  • November 3, 2009 5:41 am

Consider the sport of rugby — imagine football but, sans padding and helmet — a game I discovered, fell in love with and played throughout college and well into my young professional life before various joints started to take longer to heal.  It’s been described as a barbarian’s sport played by gentlemen, owing to its origins as a violent game contested primarily by the establishment. As if the sport itself was not brutal enough,

Witness the Haka.

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More specifically, the Haka Timatanga, performed solely by the NZ Maori, an all-star team comprised of professional ruggers, all ethnically Maori. And now, the Ka Mate Haka of the NZ All Blacks, the national team.