Last night was softtip dart league night. We were playing Danny’s Bar in Hannam-dong. Although we were playing at Jay Bar because Danny’s no longer has an electronic dart board (having replaced it with a baby grand piano). Talk about extreme makeovers.

Anyhoo, Hannam is the next village over from Itaewon, but it is world’s away in terms of atmosphere. Not nearly as many foreigners for example. Savvy readers will remember that I technically live in Hannam, although I am several blocks away from the business district. I actually only rarely go there which is a shame because it is a nice change of pace.

So, the softip league differs from the steeltip version in that about half the teams are made up exclusively of Koreans. And they are good, eight of the top ten players are Koreans. Danny’s/Jay Bar are Korean venues. In fact, the bar staff didn’t speak English at all. So, I got to use my limited vocabulary a couple of times (although teammates Lonnie and Grant are comparatively fluent).

We won 13-0. That is two weeks in a row we have swept the match. Of course it would be dishonest if I failed to mention that both victories came as a result of forfeits. Not sure what is going on, but rumor has it the Korean teams are boycotting because of some controversy that occurred in a big softtip tournament with an American member of the league. Don’t know that that is the case, but it was strange that NONE of the Korean teams showed up last week.

Well, we were there at Jay Bar and had the board to ourselves so we played a couple of rounds and enjoyed some cold beers. Then we crossed the street to check out Danny’s and had another round of beer. Afterwards we cabbed back to Dolce and played some “real” darts (steeltips) and drank more beer.

Mr. Kim, a fine darts player and a good guy showed up. Rare for him these days as he is juggling three businesses and is always working. He immediately challenged me to a game, but I protested I was too drunk to throw and besides I had already put my darts away. He wasn’t hearing it, reminding me that I had put him out of the tournament on Saturday and he wanted some revenge. What are you going to do in that situation but play. Well, the results were pretty predictable as he won 4 of the 5 legs we played. Although given my condition, they were relatively close. I think sober I *might* be able to beat Mr. Kim 40% of the time. Or not.

And then I had a nice surprise when Brian, a friend from the fantasy football league, came in with a Canadian friend of his. We all got to talking and the next thing I know its 2 a.m. It was good to see him again though. BTW, my team lost in the second round of the playoffs last weekend. I had debated which running back to bench, Willie Parker or Clinton Portis. I went with Parker who wound up getting injured in the first quarter and scored me zero points. I would up losing by 10 points, and the difference was sitting on my bench in the person of Mr. Portis. Ah well.

Oh yeah, on the evening of Christmas day we had the bright idea of inventing some dart bar drinks. I don’t know enough about booze to be of any benefit to the creative process, but in a small way I was the inspiration. I was throwing pretty poorly and Jim had ordered a round of drinks. When the barkeep asked what I wanted I blurted out that “I needed a dart lesson”. A light bulb went off in Jim’s head I guess, because the next thing I know he had pen and paper in hand and was working on a recipe. And the shot now called the “dart lesson” was born. Its an ungodly mix of grenadine, jagermeister, Bailey’s and Midori. Given the various consistencies of the ingredients it makes for a layer of dart board colors in the shot glass. Looks good but the taste is pretty gross. So, we decided it would be a punishment drink, i.e., someone throws a bad round of darts and the call goes out to “give that guy a dart lesson”. That should provide some motivation to shoot well. Jim actually worked up a couple of more drinks, including a Ton-80. That consists of two parts Wild Turkey and one part Southern Comfort (to take the edge off). Now, I personally can barely drink whiskey as it triggers a gag reflex. But, Lonnie had thrown a Ton-80 at Jay Bar, so of course we had to give the new drink a try. Yikes, it is powerful concoction! Luckily (for me) Ton-80s are relatively rare.

So, today is the first day of my mini-vacation. I took today and Monday off, so I’m sitting on a 5 day New Year’s weekend. Not doing anything out of the ordinary though. Dart tourneys tonight and Sunday, and a New Year’s eve party at Dolce Vita are about all I have on my agenda.

Been trying to sell my deceased boss’ car for the past couple of months, and finally got a call this morning. So hopefully we will complete the sale on Monday. That will be a worry off my mind.

And that just about brings y’all up to the minute in the exciting world of LTG.