The Big Throwdown

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Immediately following his victory, McGill is already acting the part of reluctant hero. There's something a little vacant in this, the pinnacle moment of RPS history. When he's asked what it feels like to represent the sport, he scoffs, referring to himself as a natural, a savant, the best, anything but a role model. The film crew is having a hard time securing a postvictory sound bite that doesn't include the word fuck. During this acknowledged apex of his existence, McGill is already bitter, barking about his distrust of the media and how God liked him better than the other guy. Maybe he's joking around. Or maybe it's because he has been drinking for five hours straight. But he has just won a rather significant amount of money for playing rock paper scissors, and he should be happier.

The rise of RPS as a big-time sport and the glare of the television cameras have already created an unwelcome by-product: the gifted athlete who doesn't appreciate the game that made him a star. I guess that's the chance a league takes when it plucks tournament participants from among the masses to create a luminary. RPS lost its innocence on this day, joining the ranks of other once-proud pastimes: It now had its own mirthless Barry Bonds, its own ungrateful and belligerent superstar. Like most sports heroes, Dave McGill was already acting like an asshole.

FOOTNOTES:

1 Dynamite, a mythic throw sometimes seen in street contests but banned from all respectable competitions, consists of a closed fist with the thumb pointed upward (symbolizing the wick). When it's allowed, dynamite usually explodes rock (beating rock), and its wick is cut by scissors (losing to scissors), but confusion reigns regarding its relationship with paper (Paper snuffs out wick? Wick burns through paper?). Therefore, in addition to disrupting the neutral, nontransitive checks and balances that are the essence of the game (three possible throws in perfect harmony), the unknown relationship with paper renders dynamite patently ridiculous. Despite this fact, it was reported that, in Las Vegas in 2006, thousands of dynamite sympathizers protested the league's strict policy on the throw.
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2 Vertical paper, or 'the handshake,' is exactly what it sounds like: a throw of paper that is perpendicular to the ground as opposed to parallel with it. This throw is either a sign of sloppy play--perhaps fatigue--or a crafty attempt to mask paper as scissors or vice versa.
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3 The World RPS Society refers to a series of stalemates as 'mirror play' and claims the longest run of stalemates in competitive play is five, although there may have been longer runs in preliminary matches over the years. The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide references a grueling semifinal match during the 2003 world championships when the referee felt it necessary to call an official time-out due to extended mirror play.
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