FAMOUS FRIDAYS THROUGHOUT HISTORY

After the recent success of my incredible post on the history of pizza, I've realized that I may have another calling. This whole acting/comedy/improv thing may be but a brief stop on the choo-choo-choose a career train. Next stop: HISTORY BUFF TOWN!

Hey! Did you ever noticed that you "train" for a new career, and that I used a different meaning of the word "train" to discuss career selection? What a world we live in! Anyway! I'm pretty sure I'm meant to be one of those highly-paid History Channel experts, one of those highly-paid historical reenactors, or one of those highly-paid history museum docents. Really anything highly-paid (which is ANYTHING history-related, I assume). I imagine there are hundreds of cigar-chewing history textbook publishing executives reading this blog as we speak, so if one of you guys could hook me up with a lucrative history contract, that would be great.

THE FRIDAY BEFORE THE TROJAN HORSE THING

Everybody knows about the famous time when a bunch of Greek or Greek-like guys stuffed themselves into a wooden horse like they were olive-and-feta stuffing and it was a turkey. But do you know about the Friday BEFORE the sneak attack? Odysseus was having a huge rager at his house. He liked to invite his soldiers over to play the Ancient Greek drinking game Edward Hekatonhands, in which players had to bind hundred-ounce jars  of Ouzo ("Hekatonies") to their hands. Players were not permitted to remove either Hekatony until they had consumed the contents of both. 

The practice is described here in a passage from Virgil's Aeneid:


After many years have slipped by, the leaders of the Greeks,
opposed by the Fates, and damaged by the war,
build a horse of mountainous size, through Pallas’s divine art,
and weave planks of fir over its ribs:
but before they could take the horse to Trojan's gate,
Sinon got super wasted and tried to make an offering to the porcelain god.
He did not make it and just threw up on his own tunic. 
It was classic.