(I was not, I quickly learned, the first reporter to invite himself for a visit into Marty’s life only to find that there was no exit door.) Something about Marty reminded me of Johnny Cash, and not just his monochromatic sartorial taste. “I’ve gone back and replayed every point in every match I ever played,” Marty told me more than once during conversations we had over several months.
#BEER PONG OLD SCHOOL FULL#
After decades of slow decline, table tennis has staged a miraculous rally.ĭespite American ping-pong’s long hibernation, Marty was never one of those athletes who reach retirement age, crank the La-Z-Boy to full recline, and announce that upon further review, they wouldn’t change a thing about their lives. Even Marty admits that the game to which he’s given his life tends to be seen as “the lowest athletic endeavor on the world totem pole, next to marbles maybe.”Īnd yet here he is, talking faster than I can scribble, jabbering on about how he’s still working the kinks out of his stroke, how he’s sniffing around for a serious winner-take-all “money game,” how in the past couple of years he has almost single-handedly sparked a renaissance in his beloved sport. Ping-pong is played in the basement next to the clothes dryer. He once described his illustrious career in table tennis as “a funny way to spend a life.” Most sports that the average American male imagines he could, with a little practice, compete in professionally – golf, bowling, stock-car racing – are at least contested in manly, back-slapping environments. Nobody understands this absurdity better than Marty. On the other hand, his weapon of choice is a paddle that, stapled to a rubber ball and string, might be handed out at a child’s birthday party. On the one hand, he styles himself as an athletic assassin, a killer ever alert for his next duel. Such is the paradox of life as Marty “The Needle” Reisman, ping-pong hustler. You want one?” If Marty didn’t carry himself with the swagger of a champion, even a champion six decades removed from his greatest triumph, he’d be ridiculous. They also don’t introduce themselves by saying “I’m going to step around the corner to get one of those big bottles of beer. Even in Manhattan, octogenarians don’t typically leave the house dressed like Huggy Bear’s Caucasian twin.
Men in dashikis and turbans walk past the open windows, but it’s Marty who turns heads – dressed head to toe in custom-tailored black, wearing both aviator sunglasses and a Panama hat indoors. Just look at the guy, seated across the table at a noisy Chinese restaurant near the United Nations Building in New York City. But Marty Reisman, as he’d be the first to tell you, is not a normal man.
In the meantime, Muggles looking for a good time can still perfect their Golden Snitch aim the old-school way.It’s not often that one meets a man who, at age 82, is trying to recapture something that he lost at 19. Unfortunately, the Unofficial Quidditch Pong sets are currently sold out. For even more Harry Potter fun, the game masters have created an extensive spellbook of additional boozy hexes. Slytherins, for instance, can declare crucio, forcing opponents to make trick shots for a round, and Hufflepuffs' room of requirement power allows them to re-throw missed shots. A Snitch Cup hole-in-one also wins the game.Īnd unlike non-wizarding beer pong, Unofficial Quidditch Pong requires tossing the ball through one of the three Quidditch hoops while dodging the shot-blocking Beater as well as "spells" cast by the opposing Hogwarts house. Or for a shortcut to victory, the Seeker can shoot for the Snitch Cup, a crucial Quidditch addition to standard beer pong that's situated a challenging distance away from the other cups.
Tipsy wizards then battle it out to see who can sink the Golden Snitch in opponents' cups. Rather than generic teams, the competing groups of three are sorted into Hogwarts houses, and members of each team designate a Seeker and a Beater.
#BEER PONG OLD SCHOOL UPGRADE#
Preferably, butter beer.Īn Unofficial Quidditch Pong set includes three Quidditch hoops, two beater bats, and a Golden Snitch ball, which is a classy upgrade from the standard ping-pong ball. Thanks to the inventors of Unofficial Quidditch Pong, all you need are some frat-party essentials: Solo cups and beer. Harry Potter fans wishing they could play Quidditch at home no longer have to wistfully dream of flying broomsticks.
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