It’s something that everyone goes through. The brutal comedown. Whether your drug of choice is alcohol, LSD, or chocolate… It always sounds great when someone offers it to you at a party, and you get cruising on the high… But they you’re just lying in the fetal position in someone else’s bodily fluids in a public restroom. A tale as old as time.
Poor Virgil. Working part-time as the beer vendor at the local concert venue, he had saved up about 85% of what he figured would be enough money to get through his junior year at Purdue University. Until that fateful night when that dude tripping on weird beer went crazy and spooked him. Virgil never returned to work, falling just short of financial freedom. He’d return to Purdue, but eventually would have to drop out, unable to afford living near campus. Eventually, Virgil would find a decent enough gig bartending down at the West Lafayette Dave & Busters. He’d keep in touch with many of his Engineering friends from the program, but he’d always deeply regret not being able to finish his program and pursue his dream of working with NASA and the space program. Unbeknownst to him, Lester lived the rest of his life, comfortably never realizing that he had drastically altered the life of a bright young man with a brilliant future.
CUPS started as a cute little comic about a few people playing ping pong. Then it turned into a semi-serious, semi-silly strip about the lives of thirtysomethings. But now it’s turning into a drug romp, apparently? Eventually it will become a very intentional satirical statement on American politics, and eventually it’ll be a handbook on manners and etiquette. By the time the strip wraps up in the late 2040’s it’ll be a fully customizable topographic hologram map of downtown Minneapolis.
I had this experience a couple of years ago when I went to visit my sister in Richmond and saw the Arctic Monkeys. Truth be told, I was on a college campus, so it’s understandable that I (30 at the time) was a major age outlier in the crowd, but it was really jarring. I remember realizing fairly quickly that I was a solid 10+ years older than everyone, and so from then on it was just a blitz towards drunkenness to forget that fact. I don’t mean to brag, but… Mission accomplished.
