Notable Events

2011

  • “Inception” – Late one night over some beers, Lermitage and the Omega Men decide to start a multi-sport league consisting of (in order) baseball, football, and basketball (note: I’m not actually sure what time of day it was and/or if alcohol was involved, but one can assume).  Depending on who/when you ask, this was either a stroke of genius or, as they say, a huge mistake.

2012

  • “Draft of Drafts”  The Bad News Bear Jews somehow decided that we needed to have a draft of the draft picks for the various sports, somehow convinced everyone this was a good idea, and then somehow decided this should be done immediately following a beerfest.  The first “draft of drafts” pick went to Harbaugh’s Ninjas, who selected the #1 pick in basketball which eventually turned into LeBron James.
  • “The Dougie”  Long story short, Members Only put a hex on Dome Sweet Dome, who suddenly went on a three week losing streak in football.  As any rational fantasy owner would do, Dome Sweet Dome chose to break the hex by making a rap diss song about Members Only named after one of his favorite players at the time, Doug Martin.  “The Dougie” remix is online here.  The hex was broken and a tradition of rapping was born – to date, the Omega Men and Tuxedo T-Shirts have also released songs.
  • “The SATs”  When we started the Parliament, it was decided the punishment for the last place team each year would be having to take the SATs.  One team was particularly excited about this idea.  On March 21, 2012 someone posted an article titled “What happens when a 35 year old man retakes the SAT?“, to which Afternoon Delight replied “I can’t wait for someone to lose and for said individual to have to do this.”  Needless to say, the inaugural SAT victim was Afternoon Delight.  To his credit, he took the punishment like a champ, entering the testing facility hungover with a full grown mustache and a blood stain on his shirt from wrestling with another league member the previous night.

2013

  • “Expansion”  The Parliament added The Rook and the Moonshining Eskimos for season two bringing our total to 12 teams.  Upon joining the league, The Rook vowed to give up arguing with TJ:
    • Zack: “New rule – TJ and Brad are allowed one banter a week”
    • Brad: “I can tell you that will not be happening.  And by will not be happening, I mean there will be zero. It took me 26 years, but yesterday it hit me that debates with TJ are a complete waste of time.
    • Since then, Brad and TJ have spent countless hours bickering about complete nonsense on weekly basis.
  • “Draft Day”  The Bad News Bear Jews drop the “Draft Day” remix to GEICO’s popular “Hump Day” commercial to pump up the league for the season 2 football draft.  The details are blurry but at some point in 2013 a “Harliament Shake” video was also created.
  • “Fantasy Life”  The Parliament was selected by Matthew Berry as one of the winners of the Riverhead Books “Fantasy Life” sweepstakes following the release of his book (which you should check out if you haven’t already).  Here’s a picture of our league repping “Fantasy Life” koozies after our season 2 basketball draft.

2014

  • “Reunion”  The Tuxedo T-Shirts get called out during the San Mateo High School (which the majority of our league attended) Class of 2004 10 year reunion.  Here’s a picture of a slide dedicated to the Tuxedo T-Shirts featured in the slideshow which was playing on loop throughout the night.
  • “The GOAT comment”  In a moment of infinite wisdom, The Rook dropped the greatest Facebook post of all time: “I don’t think any players come from underground to smoke of players on defense run out of the way when a team is trying to score.  I have literally never watched a pro bowl game though so I could be wrong.”  Scholars far and wide are still attempting to decipher the true meaning.
  • “Parliament Podcasts”  Chubby Rain recorded the first ever Parliament Podcasts – episode 1 was solo and episode 2 featured the first ever guest, the Tuxedo T-Shirts.  To date, the artist formerly known as Chubby Rain has hosted dozens of podcasts and the majority of the owners in the league have joined as guests.
  • “Bowen”  Rob met his celebrity crush Jess Bowen after a Summer Set concert the year his team was named “Growin For Bowen” and took a picture with her flipping off the rest of the league.  The non-middle-finger picture is online here.

2015

  • “Cake”  At the Omega Men’s wedding, multiple wedding cakes featured owls (the official mascot of The Parliament) and other Parliament paraphernalia.  I would expand on things that happened that night but the details are unclear.
  • “The Woods”  The night after the season 4 baseball draft at the Palazzo Hotel in Las Vegas, a group of (mostly) Parliament members created one of the greatest drinking games of all time: Woods.  Woods is named after the great (or terrible, depending on whether you bet Butler or Notre Dame on the night of March 21, 2015) Kameron Woods of Butler who made a meaningless, uncontested dunk with 2 seconds to go to mess up the 4 point spread.  We wrote a blog post about the history and rules of Woods and the tweet was favorited by Kameron Woods, himself.
  • “Rival Olympics”  Reverse 69 and Grosse Points Blank hosted the first ever Parliament Rival Olympics at the season 4 football draft: “for 363 days out of the year, you are required to hate your Parliament rival… but this weekend you will join forces to compete in the following events: beer pong, ladderball, ahoy, beer dice, woods, survivor flip cup, and a quiz on Parliament knowledge”.  Shout out to Afternoon Delight and The Tuxedo T-Shirts, who were the inaugural winners and whatever the opposite of a shout out is to the Bad News Bear Jews and Moonshining Eskimos, who didn’t know they were rivals and were forced to flabongo for their ignorance.
  • “After Dark”  Those who know know.  The Florida Atlantic University school newspaper once dipped their toe in the water but fled hastily upon realization.

2016

  • “The Year Of Content”  In 2016 AKA the year of content, select Parliament members embarked on a (possibly futile) mission to release more content to the world.  The first milestone of #YearOfContent was the launching of the Parliament YouTube channel and the Parliament podcast making its way to iTunes (subscribe now for the latest episodes and for a complete list of episodes, just scroll down in the main page of this blog). On a related note – on Super Bowl Sunday, Bay Area legend Too $hort favorited a Parliament tweet suggesting Coldplay should get food poisoning and allow Too $hort to take over the halftime show.  This was undoubtedly our league’s greatest achievement to date.
  • “The Contract” TJ became the first person to add a partner via formal contract when he signed Sam to a 2 year deal the evening of his annual whiskey night gathering. Word of this move spread immediately to Parliament members near and far who saw the genius of the strategy despite the grammatical missteps.
  • “Holiday Hoops” The majority of the league gathered the day after Christmas to play pickup basketball in what is hopefully the start of an annual tradition.  Miraculously, no one was (seriously) injured.

2017

  • “The Year Of Blood”  Went about as well as you’d think.
  • “Slack”  Forest tries to get the league to adopt Slack but fails miserably and ruins league communication for a couple months in the process.
  • “Mayweather vs McGregor” Parliament football draft is held in Vegas the weekend of the Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor fight but the trip is doomed from the get go after Forest jinxes it, claiming “this will be the best Parliament draft ever”.

 

“Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded” – Virginia Woolf