Steely Dan – "Midnite Cruiser" (1972)

For one more time

Let your madness run with mine . . .

No time is better than now

[NOTE:  The following is a heavily edited version of my October 19, 2010 post about Steely Dan's "Midnite Cruiser," which I am inducting into the 2 OR 3 LINES "GOLDEN DECADE" ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME today.]

This post will discuss streaking.  If that disturbs you, you should probably hit the "back" button on your browser toot sweet.  (As Sheriff Seth Bullock once said to the ruthless mine owner George Hearst in an episode of Deadwood, "I am putting you on notice.")

I am reminded of a story.  Back in the good ol' days when Jon Miller was the radio announcer for the Baltimore Orioles, he told wonderful stories during rain delays.  My favorite was one about major-leaguer Dick Stuart – a slugging first baseman from the 1960's who was nicknamed "Dr. Strangeglove."

Stuart's best years were spent with the Pirates, but he played a couple of seasons for the Red Sox late in his career.  After he retired from baseball, he hosted a sports-themed interview show on a Boston radio station.  Miller told a story that the late Curt Gowdy (a well-known baseball and football broadcaster) had told him about Gowdy's appearance on Stuart's show.  It went something like this – just imagine Miller doing all the voices:  

Announcer:  And now, it's time for THE DICK STUART SHOW, starring DICK STUART!  Dick Stuart's guest today on THE DICK STUART SHOW will be Curt Gowdy.  We'll be back with THE DICK STUART SHOW right after these messages from the fine sponsors of THE DICK STUART SHOW!

Announcer (after the commercials had played):  Welcome back to THE DICK STUART SHOW!  And now, here's the host of THE DICK STUART SHOW, DICK STUART!

Dick Stuart:  Thank you and welcome to The Dick Stuart Show.  I'm Dick Stuart, the host of The Dick Stuart Show, and I'm very please to have Mr. Curt Gowdy as our guest on The Dick Stuart Show today.  [Applause, applause.]  Curt, welcome to The Dick Stuart Show!

Curt Gowdy:  Thanks, uh . . . it's Dick, right?

(Moving right along . . .)

*     *     *     *     *

Steely Dan's first album, Can't Buy A Thrill, was released late in 1972, and became hugely popular on college campuses.  The first song on the album, "Do It Again," made it to #6 on the Billboard singles chart, and "Reelin' In the Years" made it to #11.  "Dirty Work" is another staple on "classic rock" radio stations.

Steely Dan was called "cerebral, wry, and eccentric" by one critic and.  The band's founders, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, who met at Bard College in upstate New York, were "east coast beatniks with nothing but contempt for west coast hippies."  They were also obsessive perfectionists in the recording studio who stopped performing in front of live audiences after a couple of years of touring.  In Bizarro World, they would be the Grateful Dead.

The singer on "Midnight Cruiser" is Jim Hodder, the band's drummer.  It was the only time he was the lead vocalist on a Steely Dan song.

Now that the music stuff is out of the way, let's discuss the Rice University "Beer-Bike Race" and certain shenanigans that resulted from my participation in that race my senior year at Rice.

*     *     *     *     *

In the spring of my freshman year, a friend told me I should join him when he tried out for the Weiss College "Beer-Bike Race" team.  

The Rice "Beer-Bike Race" is a combination bicycle and beer-drinking relay race dating back to 1957.  Believe it or not, the Rice University library has a Beer-Bike Race document collection that is three linear feet long and fills six boxes.  Here's a link to an online documentary about Beer-Bike created by a group of students – for class credit, believe it or not!

Each of Rice's residential colleges fields a team of ten riders and ten beer chuggers for the Beer-Bike Race.  [NOTE: When I was a student at Rice University, students were assigned to one of seven residential colleges.  Rice's residential colleges were modeled after those found at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale.  (We fancy, huh?)  Each different college had its own dining hall, theatre group, intramural sports teams, etc.  You were assigned to a college randomly as a freshman, and stayed affiliated with that same college for as long as you were at Rice.  In a nutshell, the colleges were much chummier and tight-knit than traditional dormitories, but much more democratic than fraternities.] 

Riders and drinkers alternate, starting with a drinker.  When the starting gun is fired, the chugger starts to guzzle a 24-ounce can of warm, flat beer.  (It goes down a lot quicker than regular beer – or even water, for that matter.  I think it has something to do with specific gravity.)  When the beer drinker is done, he flips his can upside-down and holds it high over his head to show that it is empty.  

The first biker then rides three laps around an oval course laid out in the football stadium parking lot – helped on his way by a few burly football players, who give his bike a good push to help him get up to speed quickly.  (The effect is not unlike that of Olympic bobsledders pushing their sled, except the football players don't jump on the bike at the end of the run like the sledders jump into the bobsled.) 

A Beer-Bike Race biker begins his lap

When the rider completes his ride, those same footballers are standing by to bring him to a sudden stop when he crosses the finish line and help the next rider get started as the second beer drinker does his thing.  

Our Beer-Bike Race team usually practiced several times on the Saturday afternoons before the event itself, which usually took place around the first day of spring.  The college would purchase a keg, and we would fill pitchers with air-temperature beer a couple of hours before practice, occasionally pouring it back and forth from one pitcher to another to hasten the release of its carbonation.  Beer that was warm and flat went down much faster than cold, fizzy beer.

*     *     *     *     *

I knew none of this when I accompanied my friend to that first Saturday afternoon tryout.  But it was lucky for good ol' Weiss College that I did.  It turned out that I was a beer-drinking prodigy, sort of like Robert Redford in The Natural.  

I made the team as a freshman on the strength of my being one of the 10 fastest drinkers in our 250-man residential college – and I qualified for the team each subsequent year.  Yes, I was that rara avis, a four-year Beer-Bike Race letterman.  (Since I didn't turn 21 until the end of my junior year, I must have participated in three races before it was legal for me to drink.) 

My preferred Beer-Bike Race drinking vessel
was a 24-ounce Schlitz can like this one

Our team held weekly practices on the Saturdays preceding the race.  At each practice, you might do three or four practice runs – each one timed with a stopwatch – in no more than one hour's time.  In other words, you would consume six or eight cans of beer in an hour.  You might also sip on a cold beer or two or three between your practice runs.  

I usually went back to my room after practices and promptly "fell asleep."  Sometimes I would wake up in time for dinner and sometimes I wouldn't.  (Girlfriends were usually not big fans of practice days.)

*     *     *     *     *

My times were solid, although not spectacular.  I was a consistent five-second drinker, good enough for the #6 or #7 spot on the team. 

Our #1 drinker usually downed his 24 ounces of Milwaukee's finest in two to three seconds.  

Not even the pre-meds in the crowd could explain it, but this guy seemed to be able to open his throat and just pour the beer down it without really swallowing.  

I still remember how he would tilt the can and suddenly – long before you could imagine the beer was gone – remove the can from his lips, holding it high to demonstrate that he had drained every drop.  C'est impossible, I would murmur under my breath – or words to that effect.

By contrast, another would-be team member was a tad too slow to crack the starting lineup, usually requiring about six seconds to down his 24-ounce drink.  But what made it virtually impossible for him to secure a spot on the team was his propensity to throw up the beer almost immediately after consuming it – resulting in his being given the nickname "Six Seconds Down, Seven Seconds Up."  (The rule was that a drinker had to be able to hold his beer down until he climbed off the table on which the drinkers stood while performing, and this poor soul usually couldn't manage to do that.)

*     *     *     *     *

The Houston Astros did a promotion back then where kids got tickets to a special "AstroBuddies" game of the month, a T-shirt, and a baseball card of their favorite Astro, all for a nominal fee.  (My favorite Astro was CF Cesar Cedeno, who had Willie Mays-like talents, but never fulfilled his promise.  He also accidentally shot and killed his girlfriend in a hotel room in the Dominican Republic one off-season.)

One friend and I discovered that 18-year-olds qualified to be Astro Buddies, so we signed up just before we turned 18.  I remember the first AstroBuddies game we went to, which happened to be against the Montreal Expos.  We were seated in a special AstroBuddies section surrounded by hordes of 10- to 12-year-olds whose falsetto boos rang down every time former Astro Rusty Staub, who had bright red hair and was known in Montreal as Le Grand Orange, came to bat.

Once I wore my "AstroBuddies" T-shirt to Beer-Bike practice, and feel asleep in it after practice was over.  When I woke up to shower later the night, I threw the beer-soaked T-shirt into the corner of my closet where I kept my dirty laundry and forgot about it for a week or so.  By that time it was severely mildewed, and had to be thrown away. 

One year, the Beer-Bike Race took place immediately after St. Patrick's Day.  Kay's, which was a popular neighborhood bar that was known far and wide for having a big-ass table in the shape of the state of Texas, had graciously donated a keg of leftover green beer for our use.  (You haven't truly lived until you've guzzled down a few 24-ounce helpings of warm, flat, green beer before noon.)

The famous Texas-shaped table at Kay's

*     *     *     *     *

My Beer-Bike team didn't distinguish itself in the races I participated in.  (Weiss College did win the year after I graduated.  Guess they finally got some decent bike riders.)  But I do remember one very memorable Beer-Bike practice.  

The Weiss College courtyard where we practiced was only a short distance from the Rice baseball field, where the Owls were taking on the powerhouse Texas Longhorns (who had six players drafted by the major leagues in 1972 -- including one taken in the first round -- and seven drafted in 1973).  

It was during the height of the streaking craze, and after a couple of practice chugs, it seemed as if all us lads had exactly the same idea at exactly the same time.  In the blink of an eye, a dozen or so of Weiss College's finest had stripped naked (except for our shoes, of course) and started running toward the baseball field.  As I recall, we carried our shorts and T-shirts with us as we ran --  no one wanted to get back to the starting point of our little excursion and find that his clothes had been hidden by some merry prankster. 

We made a beeline for the baseball field, hopped the low fence that circled it, headed for 3rd base and ran from  3rd base to 2nd to 1st while the game was in progress -- and then made our escape by hopping the fence on the other side of the field and running back to Weiss.  We made it without incident, although it was a close call for me.  

You see, I got a late start and was not the most fleet-footed team member.  I was bringing up the streak's rear (so to speak), running as hard as I could in hopes of catching up with the pack ahead of me before some Texas player or umpire decided to teach us all a lesson by tripping or tackling me.  Fortunately, nothing like that happened.  (It was also fortunate that they hadn't yet invented cell phones with built-in cameras.)  

I may have streaked at night as part of large groups once or twice after that.  But this was by far the best streak I ever heard about at Rice.  It was broad daylight, and there were fair number of fans watching the game.  

One of the brave souls who streaked
the Rice-Texas baseball game

The spectators included my college girlfriend and a high-school friend who was visiting her for the weekend.  I have no doubt that she pointed me out proudly to her friend, who probably looked upon my girlfriend with increased respect from that day forward.  

(A law school friend of mine used to say, "I've got it, I was born with it, and I wash it twice a day."  I don't know exactly what he meant by that, but it seems appropriate.)

*     *     *     *     *

Click here to listen to "Midnite Cruiser."

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.