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| 8/1/2005 |
| Matt, Matt, Matt.... You're glib. |
A Movie Review
by Wes Bennett
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LAND OF THE VICIOUS: THE EMPIRE OF THE BETAS
I-The Beating of Josh Herbert.
On the morning of his meeting with Dr. Roberts, Travis Carter woke up half an hour late, bolted out of bed and frantically ran to catch the 9:23 inbound University bus.
After arriving a few seconds too late, Travis was forced to cut through several neighborhoods and pass by the infamous Beta House.
Although it was only nine in the morning, Robert Knauss was already drinking a beer. He was looking on as two Betas methodically beat another whom they held in a full nelson. They all were wearing their patented green jerseys which simply read, “The Betas.”
“We’ve gotta toughen him up. He’s not a Beta yet!” Knauss yelled repeatedly.
Although overseeing some disciplinary action was one of his favorite activities, Knauss always made sure he was fair about its administration. A Beta was to be treated with the utmost respect until he violated the rules.
A John Mayer CD, a comment about writing poetry, getting caught drinking a wine cooler, crying or any sort of soft behavior was deserving of treatment. Any sign of weakness among any of the Betas would reflect poorly on the fraternity. And in the end, all they really had was their reputation.
Josh Herbert, was being pummeled because he had stopped to pet a puppy and made some baby noises as well as some highly feminine facial contortions. This unacceptable action was spotted by one of the Betas on his way to the Gym.
Knauss, the current Beta President and Director of Operations knew what had to be done. This weakness could only be eliminated through specific physical punishment. If Josh started to cry or beg for mercy at any time during the beating, he was out of the Fraternity, no exceptions. If he made it through to Knauss’s satisfaction, they would share a large beer in a huge manly glass later that day in the front yard.
Knauss signaled for the beating to stop so he could turn and face Travis Carter.
When Knauss barked something about some leftover nuggets that he wanted to share with Adam, Travis could sense a deep hostility in his voice.
As Travis hurried off down the street, feeling grateful not to have gotten pummeled, he wondered why anyone would want to be part of an organization so incredibly thoughtless and cruel.
As Knauss cursed under his breath and signaled for the beatings to continue, he was absolutely certain that a man of Travis Carter’s character would never be able to understand what they were doing.
II-A Code To Live By.
The other Fraternities at Georgia might have been content to recruit large numbers of overweight, unkempt, undisciplined slackers, dressed in baseball hats, boat shoes and goofy red pants, but the Betas were committed to finding quality individuals who could stand up under intense and unrelenting pressure.
There were certain core values that a Beta was required to believe in:
I-The Consumption of Women and Beer on a Massive Scale.
II-The Domination of Sporting Events.
III-The Necessity of Discipline, Order and Respect.
IV-The Evils of Individuality.
When properly applied, these beliefs and values could prove very valuable. As a Beta, women wanted you because you were part of the physical elite and men wanted to join you, unless they were weak or confused.
You could count on having someone to watch your back. You didn’t take any crap from anyone and could walk with your head held high. You were a part of a exclusive network of brothers, that would provide invaluable connections in the business world.
But similar to the Marines, the Betas had a reputation to protect, and their members had to go through a rigorous training program.
Even most of the freshman who made it through the brutal hazing process would drop out at some point during the next year, when their toughness and grit would be tested on a daily basis by the Upper Classmen.
Knauss had developed a good eye at spotting men who would fit into the system. He could tell immediately how a man would take a punch to the jaw, how long they could be strangled before passing out or how much their eyes would water after their nose was broke.
He could easily tell that someone like Travis Carter was a weak specimen. Knauss doubted Travis could bench press 135, let alone the required weight of 250 it took to join the Betas. He doubted he had ever lost his virginity, let alone pleasured a woman to a point bordering of pain because of the massive girth and size of his Johnson. He probably couldn’t even take a punch to the stomach, let alone a chair to the face.
He lacked toughness, grit or any kind of athletic prowess. Furthermore, Carter was a dreamer, an artistic weakling who would never amass any sort of legitimate financial earnings.
His friends were also extremely poor specimens. He didn’t know who was more laughable: Steve, Adam, Fletch, John or his delinquent brother Walker.
There was always bad blood between the firmly independent and irreverent Walker and the ill-tempered Betas, who were constantly prepared to combat any sort of disrespect. They had specifically put out a bounty on Walker’s knee during the championship frisbee game.
Because of that attack, Walker would strike back by defecating on their front porch later that evening, which would force the Betas to retaliate by defacing the front of Walker’s house with toilet paper, while taunting them with their championship trophies.
Walker and the rest of Travis’ friends would not have been able to comprehend even the most basic of the beliefs which the Betas had perfected over the past thirty-five years.
III- The Rise of The House of Connor.
The Fraternity was founded during the turbulent years of the Vietnam war by Jimmy, Billy and Newman O’Connell, three brothers, who were attending school on the GI bill after several tours of duty.
The brothers were ultrapatriotic, flag-waving veterans who walked tall, with their heads held high. They had developed short tempers and judgmental demeanors, while speaking loudly and acting swiftly. But most of all, they had no tolerance for those who didn’t agree with their views. Even in the relatively conservative state of Georgia, they were disgusted at what they saw.
Most of the students were unfocused “Long hairs,” worthless and lazy. It seemed they only cared about their mustaches and rock n roll, while their only goal in life was to take full advantage of the four years of college when they would have little to no real responsibility. This was not the America that their fellow soldiers had died for.
A man needed a platoon. He needed order in its most basic form. But most of all, he needed someone to watch his back. So together they decided to stand up and fight back against the detached hipsters, the liberals, the pinkos, the homosexuals, the freeloaders, the druggies, the intellectuals, the theater majors, the goths, the punks and the artists. War had officially been declared and they weren’t taking any prisoner.
They applied for and easily won a charter with their good manors and short hair cuts, which appealed to the older and more influential members of the faculty. President Ed “Lyndon” Johnson, himself a veteran of World War II, went as far as to present them with the prominent Connor House, which had been seized from the Vietnamese exchange students several years earlier.
They quickly formed a core of ultraconservative, no no-nonsense men who indulged in women, drinking and sports. The group would emphasize discipline, punishment and order for the purposes of creating a cohesive unit where the individuality of the members were sacrificed for the the good of the whole.
In the spirit of their military background, the men developed a strict regimen to maximize the productivity of each day, which they stuck to religiously.
At almost any time, you could expect to find at least half the Betas drilling relentlessly in preparation for a sporting event by running in mass around the streets of fraternity row, refusing to move for anyone and not hesitating to initiate a brawl.
There were mandatory hours of study, long hours in the weight room, meticulous cleaning of the Frat house, broken up by occasional trips to conservative bars in downtown Athens to hit on girls and intimidate anyone who stood in their path. Despite the demanding schedule, they always made time to discipline members who had violated the rules.
In the early years, this type of lifestyle attracted a solid base of ROTC students, weight lifters, social outcasts and ex-football players. As the years went on, the fraternity went through many different phases and incarnations, but their numbers continued to grow steadily.
In the mid 70s, at the height of unkempt facial hair, poor hygiene and disco dancing, the Betas epitomized Nixon’s “silent majority,” and held fast to their short haircuts and disciplined lifestyle, creating an atmosphere that always felt like 1965.
They excelled in the 80s, during the decade of greed, tight shirts, Heavy Metal, Reagan and American Gladiators.
The Betas maintained their numbers through the 1990s, beating down the weak, whiny Eddie Vedder-esque coffeehouse poets and alternative rockers.
But it was the years after 9-11, in the era of acceptable racism, blind patriotism and fear, when the Betas would reach their all time peak in power.
IV: The Masters of Hell.
It was during these glory years, that the organization would be ultimately sabotaged by the values they held most sacred.
Every year since its formation, the men were expected to live up to increasingly impossible standards of intensity, toughness and brutality, that were taught to new members during pledging.
Days spent handcuffed in the forest slathered in honey, eating hair, running through downtown wearing nothing but paint, beatings with belts, pipes, sticks, ingesting human bile...
The stories of pain were legendary, the injuries crippling, the trauma everlasting, yet no information was ever leaked to the outside. Sometimes late at night after extreme drinking sessions inside the house, the few Betas who weren’t punishing women with painful onslaughts of violent sex, would show scars and trade stories of past horrors while lying on the floor surrounded by empty bottles.
“We were branded...”
“We were taken to a deserted park and blindfolded. We sat on our knees for an hour. Then they began slapping us on the back of our necks with pipes...”
“They started pouring hot wax down our throat...”
“We were locked in a car trunk with two wild boars and told to drink a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, wine and a six-pack of beer on a wintry night...”
“We were made to do excessive calisthenics...”
“We were forced to eat unpleasant substances...”
“My testicles were hammered...”
But no matter how horrible the abuse, the freshman class could hardly wait the three and half years, until it would be their time to lay wrath down on the freshman pledge class, inflicting even more pain. It was a vicious, vicious cycle, one that was ultimately a ticking time bomb.
The organization in all of its power and stature, was ruined as a result of one horrible night. A night so awful that no one would ever talk about it.
Randy “Homicide” Jagger, the president in 2002, was by far the most brutal and sadistic leader the Betas had ever had. Monstrous in size and demeanor, Randy had deep, bottomless pits for eyes that seemed to express nothing. He was best known for the prominent scars he carried across both arms.
Only three and a half years earlier, he was by far the most weak and pathetic pledge they had ever had.
Sniffling, thin, asthmatic and weak, the only virtues he had was a superhuman will, an ability to endure massive amounts of physical punishment and an obsession with joining the Betas.
It was unanimously agreed on that he had no business attempting to pledge their Fraternity. As with other feeble specimens, similar in size and stature, the Pledge Masters would force him to quit by subjecting him to long sessions of exercise, physical abuse and pain.
But an all out battle soon emerged between the Pledge Masters, who kept increasing the levels abuse and Randy who was simply the toughest man they had ever seen. Neither party would back down.
During the three weeks, Randy took abuse that should have killed him. Several Betas would later claim that the Hell Masters actually tried on several occasions to end his life.
Psychiatrists would later speculate that the only reason he was able to survive the two weeks, was that he had gone insane. The abuse was so terrible, the pain so severe, that he was forced to journey deep into his mind, into a dark place that no man should ever have to go.
On the last day, the Hell Masters would make one final effort to make him quit, that would put him in a coma for two and a half days with burns on most of his back and arms.
Afterwards, it was agreed upon, in light of what had happened, that there was no way they could not accept Randy into the fraternity.
Once the bandages came off, Randy was able to thrive under The Betas’ highly regimented system. Before long, he was living in the weight room, gorging himself on weight gainer, taking HGH and steroids and downing as much food as he could get his hands on. With each and every month he gradually transformed himself into a bruising, foaming monster.
He gained even more respect and gradually the same Betas who had beaten him so severely began to fear him. He seemed like a man who was capable of doing anything.
Senior year, he stood at a rock solid 255 pounds. Because of the beatings he had taken throughout his life, he was absolutely without any compassion or mercy.
Although most of the members were scared of him, his record was clean, he had no violations and had patiently waited to take over the Hell Master position. On paper, if anyone deserved to be in charge, it was him. After all, the stories of his grit and perseverance three and a half years earlier, were the stuff of legend.
The Randy Jagger situation was in retrospect, a disaster waiting to happen. A man who had taken so much abuse and had so much physical pain inflicted on him throughout his life, was finally in in a position of power, a position that enabled him to do virtually anything he wanted. The demons that had festered deep in the dark quarters of his mind for so many years, that were so desperate to get out, would be released in all of their fury.
In the end, Jagger would inflict so much damage that a life would be lost, the Betas would be kicked off campus and Knauss would be handpicked to rebuild the organization from scratch.
V: The Night of Vengeance.
Things had progressed normally enough for the first thirteen days of pledging with the usual assortment of broken limbs, burns and bruises, so no one was worried. But everything was leading up to November 15th, a night he had been plotting for the last four years.
Inside the dark, dirty basement of the cabin deep in the woods of Macon County, the Beta pledges sat side by side in a circle, gagged, blindfolded and handcuffed, on the hard dirt, which was littered with blood, teeth, loose skin and muddy water.
Randy had managed to barricade himself in with a variety of boards and plywood. The rest of the Betas pounded on the door, yelling, screaming, begging him to stop. They couldn’t call the cops. They could only hope that Randy would keep it together, but they were pretty sure he was armed with a chainsaw. The 17 pledges had been left alone with a man who would later be diagnosed as an acute psychopath.
Randy paced back and forth, barking orders and spewing out a variety of profanity and racial slurs even though everyone he was with was white. He was armed with a set of tools, a baseball bat, handcuffs, a crowbar, scalpel, syringe, a pair of pliers and a blow torch, as Pantera, “Cowboys from Hell,” blasted in the background from a dirty, dented boom box.
Randy had tied the pledges up and was testing them one by one, methodically seeing which ones would break. Only he planned to break them all...
Knauss shook his head and managed to slip part of his blindfold off. He saw bodies strewn across the floor and some bloody teeth. Most of the guys were whimpering, some had urinated on themselves. Randy was actually threatening to sodomize one of them. “I will punish you with my cock. I will punish you!” He screamed repeatedly.
An insecure freshman, Mike Benner, was lying in the corner, seizuring. Three days later he would die of acute Hydroupulism.
Only by extreme grit and camaraderie had Knauss and several others been able to maintain their consciousness and survive the vicious gauntlet of torture over the last five hours.
There was the horrific water drinking binge, the sessions of burning, clubbing, branding, beatings and electrocutions. He had seen Randy stomp a testicle, crush a finger, but now he had picked up a chainsaw and for the first time, Knauss feared for his life. He knew that someone had to do something soon.
There was only a small group of men whom Knauss could depend on. On his right side was former All-State quarterback and U.S. Marine, Greg Trautman, who face was repeatedly slashed, forcing him to favor a cap and sunglasses to conceal his wounds for the next several years, which would earn him the name “Man in Black Cap.”
On his left was Nathan Switzer, a Former All American boxer, who worked Summers hauling gravel for his verbally abusive father John Thomas Switzer, the Construction tycoon of Northern Kentucky. One of the largest men in terms of sheer size, who would later become known as “The Heckler,” because of his proclivity at making fun and demoralizing nearly everyone is his presence.
Behind him, Scott Camerson, a man with an extraordinary mental presence who took a sick pleasure in watching others suffer, had managed to slice through the ropes which bound his wrists.
Jagger continued to scream, threw a crowbar across the room and went over to harass Bruce “Stone Cold Steve” Austin. Jagger, at this point was nearing the end of his rope. He started the chainsaw, which instantly resulted in frantic screaming and pounding on the door from the Betas.
Knauss knew he only had one chance to make it out of there alive...
At Knauss’ signal, Scott crawled to the middle of the room and began faking a seizure. Nathan immediately diverted Jagger’s attention by screaming. Randy, enraged, turned and began running, fully intending to severe Switzer’s arm. Troutman got up and acted like he was going to make a run at Jagger. As Jagger turned to face him, Knauss was able to approach from his blind side.
Knauss head butted Randy repeatedly, breaking his nose in three places. Jagger went down and all four of them began to savagely kick him, breaking several of his ribs, before he could get back up. Scott, Nathan and Greg continued with the assault until Knauss pried open the door and let the other Pledge Masters in.
The Betas were forced to call the cops and Benner was rushed to the hospital.
In the end, there was a full investigation of the hazing abuses, which garnering national attention and sparked outrage and debate across the nation. The College formally revoked the charter of the Betas and in an attempt to make an example of them, they were all suspended, forced off campus and banned from having any sort of organized meeting with each other.
All paraphernalia with “Betas” on it was banned. In order to take advantage of a bizarre loophole, they would only wear shirts that read “The Betas” from then on.
Jagger was expelled and prosecuted on several charges including second degree murder, battery, endangerment and armed assault with intent to kill.
As a testament to the Beta’s code, largely because of what had been done to Jagger so many years before, not a single pledge would testify about what had happened, which is all that saved Jagger from life in prison.
It was then that the powerful Beta alumni took over. By virtue of character and leadership, they choose Knauss to rebuild the group. With the fraternity infrastructure turned upside down, Knauss was effectively able to take the best men from his class and reshape the organization in his image.
Although the group was smaller, they were molded into a tighter and more cohesive unit and quietly moved into a lower profile house off campus. Gradually, they would beef their numbers back up year week by week, semester by semester, year by year.
Three and a half years later, through a regimented public service program, the Betas’ numbers were back to a robust number. They were building a good repoire with the conservative board members and were within a few years of regaining their charter.
VI: The Challenge.
Knauss knew he had virtually no chance to win the contest because of his lactose intolerance, but the code of the Betas was one that would not allow him to back down from any sort of challenge.
In the weeks leading up to the GC, Knauss had dominated nearly all of the eating contests, going as far as to bring in groupies from The University of Tennessee to feed him during the egg competition. He struggling a little because of the small amounts of lactose contained in the ice cream sandwiches, but had achieved greatness during the nugget eating contest, the same day as Adam’s darkest hour.
The crowd had grown with each and every contest. It seemed that Christy and Adam’s contests had achieved a sort of cult status on campus with a loyal and devoted fan base. Even without the tireless promotional machine of Travis Carter, Knauss knew there would be a guaranteed audience for the big night.
Therefore, the Challenge would be a high profile opportunity which could either prove to be a triumph or an absolute humiliation. It would be the final competition of his Collegiate career, other than the Bocee Ball quarter finals.
The same men who stood by the Knausser during that dark night years ago, would be the same who would have his back, on the cold evening of the Gallon Challenge.
Knauss had devised a brilliant game plan for the night that would virtually guarantee a Beta victory. Scott Camerson would serve to throw everyone off their game by setting a ludicrous pace. Ideally it would make others speed up their consumption or at least make others think the Betas were weak, crazy or unpredictable. They would use this three prong attack to fluster the competition.
Because of his raw power, strength and size, The Heckler was chosen to immobilize Adam and the rest of the competition by vomiting repeatedly. He would thoroughly disgust everyone, and like Scott, throw everyone off their game just before the critical point in the competition when the chosen one, the man with the golden gut, Man in Black Cap would make his final move.
On several occasion at the frat house, Mike had easily finished a gallon of milk -even after consuming beer, raw eggs and corn oil. If there was ever a sure thing, it was Mike’s ability to drink milk.
With these diversionary strategies, Knauss figured, barring an absolute disaster, that Adam would be defeated like he had in the previous 273 contests since his freshman year. It was a brilliant game plan, one that Vince Lobardi himself would have been proud of.
After they won, it would be obvious, that more than anyone else, they had unrivaled heart, discipline and purpose. It would be an example that would not soon be forgotten and they would ride their momentum into the boccee ball championships and be one step closer to regaining their coveted charter...
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concussionme says: |
funny |
9/20/2005 11:10:52 PM |
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| "We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it." |
- Jack Nicholson
A Few Good Men
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Distributed Beers
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| 5 |
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot |
| 4 |
Guinness Draught |
| 3 |
Newcastle Brown Ale |
| 2 |
Bass Pale Ale |
| 1 |
Samuel Adams Boston Lager |
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