The vicious team-point battle between rivals Blackout Motherf*ckers and B-Pac Presents RPS Speedwagon dominated the stage during the PBRPRPSCLCS week 6 opener on Monday night, but in the end, the El Bar’s 60-watt spotlight bulb was
flickering solely on Silly Putty, who took down Hugh Jassole in five rounds to win her first season tournament of 2012. Ms. Putty’s road to the final was anything but smooth. She was consistently rattled by opponents (Dr. Dre excluded) with sloppy primes, early throws and bad form, often falling behind early in matches.

Skilled RPS players like Silly Putty always come to a tournament with a plan B, and when plan B doesn’t work, skilled RPS teams will often come through with a plan C. That’s exactly what happened when 2011 PBRPRPSCLCS champion and teammate Paper Tiger came to his fiancé’s rescue with several shots of Jim Beam and there was nothing stopping Silly Putty after she became just as sloppy as her foes.

Much like kung fu’s “Drunken Fist,” RPS’s “Drunken Paper Clip” technique was designed to imitate, intimidate, frustrate and limit opponents’ options. Putty’s utilization of the approach in last night’s final was masterful. Hugh Jassole’s paper was thoroughly defeated and Silly Putty crushed a couple toolboxes worth of scissors to ink out the win.

Going back to the teams for a bit – Despite being outnumbered, the Blackouts had a somewhat successful night against B-Pac Presents RPS Speedwagon. They sent both Dr. Dre and Betty Berkowitz to the semifinals for a net value of 8 points. And they would’ve had an even more successful night if Frankie 13 hadn’t accepted Dick Nasty’s challenge to play for the night’s street RPS prize. Nasty would end up winning that match, stealing 138 street bucks and an extra 2 season points. I say “stealing” because Frankie 13 actually had more street dollars than the sneaky Mr. Nasty at the time the challenge was issued. It reminds me of those heartbreaking moments on The Price is Right, where the sweet old lady in the showcase showdown thinks the total retail value of a new Lexus and a seven-day vacation in Fiji is somewhere around
$400…

You have to give Frankie 13 some credit for thinking of his team before thinking of his own season street total. The strategic play in this situation, however, is to decline the street RPS face off, especially when the challenger is a member of the team you’re trying to catch up to. A loss here represents a four-point swing, which could end up the difference between these two teams at the end of the season.

REMINDER – There will be NO RPS at the El Bar next Monday, May 28th, due to the Memorial Day Holiday. We will resume our regular Monday night schedule on Monday, June 4th – the last week of the season, which is also “double points week.” (No decision has been made or discussed by PBRPRPSCLCS leadership concerning scoring modifications for any point during the 2012 season, so this statement is pure speculation by Referee Hill – Urbanus). We’re going to be doing something special for that last Monday night at the El Bar. Stay tuned for more details!

It will remain the happy hour of RPS tournaments (even thought it’s not during happy hour) with registration starting at 7 and competition somewhere around 7:30-7:45.

Also, don’t forget there’s no RPS on Memorial Day.  After tonight there’s only one more tournament left at The El Bar.

But back to the RPS – out of the Final 4 players, only Heart Cutter Sweetji was a RPS professional before the 2012 season began and only she and Tower Temple player Vlad were RPS professionals before the night began.  But neither veteran Sweetji nor veteran rookie Vlad would make it out of the final 4, so that gave us a first night rookie vs first night rookie matchup in the finals between Lloyd Christmas and Thrashmaster Trashee.

Lloyd Christmas pretty much dominated the final match, and then pretty much dominated the breakdance contest afterwards, although there was no judge for that.  He was also pretty impressive on the karaoke microphone, making him a true Connie’s Ric Rac triple threat.  But regardless of versatility, winning a tournament is a nice way to kick off a RPS career for Mr. Christmas.

And it seems there’s something about Connie’s Ric Rac this season that makes dOGulas (at left in retro Lone Wolves era attire) really want to win the Street RPS tournaments, because he’s won it 3 out of 5 times now and came close the other 2.  That’s an extra 6 points so far this season, which has really helped him stay in the top 5 for the year at this point in the season.

Well, the reigning Champ can cross that one off his RPS bucket list.  He arrived just in time to play and proceeded to make quick work of several highly regarded players (including Bront Jronsdstin, Loomer and Frankie 13) on his way to the finals.  Once there he took down Dre from 10th Street, a former member of the now disbanded Sallycats.  It was Dre from 10th Street’s first championship match and she may have been a little nervous.  It wasn’t a terribly close match, but it wasn’t blowout either.  Dre held her own against the Champ and many who witnessed her performance until the finals fully expect to see her back in the finals soon.

Just before that, Paper Tiger learned that he had won the Street RPS tourney as well.  So it was a pretty dominating night of RPS for Paper Tiger, the likes of which we hadn’t seen since the first tournament of the season.  The money was pretty evenly distributed and the Champ beat everyone with $93.  Jayne Doe came closest with $73.

So the Champ got 10 points on the night, which he doesn’t really need since he’s going to be the #1 seed this year anyway.  It does get him a bit closer to the points leader on the season (that’s Dick Nasty).

It was the first appearance in a final match for 127 Hours, who is currently in the lead for Rookie of the Year honors.  But this was not the first finals this season for Rock Hard, who won at Frank’s in week 1 and lost in the finals just the night before at El Bar vs Speedwagoner One Armed Scissor.

The final match did not disappoint.  Rock Hard jumped out to a quick 2 match to 0 lead, but 127 Hours stopped the bleeding long enough to require Rock Hard go on to a 5th and final set.  That one started with a quick point for Rock Hard and just when everyone thought 127 Hours was going to tie it up…she didn’t.  Rock Hard won a hard fought match and got his 2nd win at Dirty Frank’s this year.  Rock Hard has played 5 times this year and has made the finals in 3 of them.  Not only that, but the Blackout Motherf*ckers have won 3 out of 5 at Dirty Franks and it would have been 4 out of 5 if Frankie 13 could have finished off Paper Chase a few weeks ago.

Sir Faust (at left, wearing hat) was the best dressed guy in the house and his sharp dressed man-ness must have really distracted all the people who played him at Street RPS (dOGulas included) because he won by a lot.

This is how it seems to be going: Blackouts win tournament, Speedwagon wins Street.  Speedwagon wins tournament, Blackouts win street.  It’s keeping the team points race interesting towards the end of the season, which isn’t really something that has been said since team points became a thing back in 2008.

Here’s the Monday night recap from long-time listener, 1st time referee Richard Classy:

It was a packed house last night at the El Bar as competitors came from all around the world (Greater Philadelphia and New Jersey) to get a look at Special Guest referee Richard Classy in action. All 32 tournament spots filled up quickly and some players even had to be denied entry. Sorry Hand Banana. With a lot of new players in attendance there were of course many penalties throughout the night. “I was really happy to see very strict officiating” said Frankie 13.

The final match would come down to two veteran players, each representing the two teams who are currently sitting very closely at the top of the rankings. Rock Hard of the Blackout Mother F*ckers squared off against One Armed Scissor of B-Pac Presents RPS Speedwagon.  It looked like it would be a long and grueling match as they traded some well sharpened scissors against a couple of very flat, but extra dull papers. That is as far as the exchange of blows would go though as One Armed Scissor took the first match and refused to give up a single point the rest of the game. It was a very convincing 3 matches to 0 victory.

This would prove to be an especially sweet win for One Armed Scissor. It was only one week ago that he had found himself in the finals against teammate Dick Nasty (oddly not in attendance last night) and couldn’t find his way to becoming the night’s champion. This week though he repeatedly mentioned how hungry he was for it. Or maybe he was simply just hungry?

On the Street side of things there was a lot of money (possibly all of it) in play. It would be Betty Berkowitz though who handed in the largest stack, defeating Somebody Needs a Hugulas by a score of 129 to 82. Betty refused to play for it and that might have been a wise decision as it was none other than Hugulas who knocked her out of the tournament in round 1. She received an extra 2 points towards her season total in what is shaping up to be a tight race for Rookie of the Year.

There promises to be a large turnout for this special event, so arrive early!  And this question will be asked so I’ll answer it now: ref’s can’t play, but they can get credit for attendance towards a perfect attendance award.

Swede faced off against Say Hey, J. Martin Hill in the Championship match and it was not looking good for Swede at all.  Say Hey, J. Martin Hill took the first two matches really quickly (like 4 throws quick) and then the first throw in what could have been a 3 match to 0 Championship sweep.  He only needed one winning throw.  But Swede-Heart not only came back with the next two throws to stave off elimination for another round, but she didn’t lose a throw the rest of the match!

It was a fantastic comeback for sure and Swede-Heart deserves a ton of credit.  Say Hey, J. Martin Hill was the latest to pull “The Zombie Llama”.  There have been a few times this has happened over the past 7 seasons, but it happened to Zombie Llama at the very first City League tournament and it took him over two years to recover and win a tournament.

There were a lot of Street dollars in circulation as the went out of print towards the end of the night.  It was rookie player Jimmy Jangles who came through with almost half the money out there.  The 2nd closest was Panty Bandit.  Not a bad first night for Jimmy Jangles.  He got to the 3rd round and picked up the street win.  There’s still half a season left so Rookie of the Year title/prize is still wide open.