Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Way of the Tosser

- Gary Brewer. - Holly Brewer. No relation - yet.

- Trevor More house. - No relation - yet.

Three certainties in life:

Best friends, true love,

and rock, paper, scissors.

Morning, guys. Rise and shine.

'Scuse me.

This is my acceptance letter

to the Rock, Paper, Scissors World Championships.

There's gonna be media from all over the world.

- Um, Russia, and Norway... - And Canada. Eh?

I even heard Timbuktu News is gonna be there.

Can you believe that? Timbuktu.

Holly, Timbuktu isn't real.

Yeah, it is - I read it somewhere.

- Really? - Mm-hmm. - Africa.

Whoa.

We have, uh, 4 Canadian provinces represented,

26 U.S. states represented;

We have a national champion coming from Norway,

a national champion from Australia, a national champion

from New Zealand;

Uh, we have a team coming from the Cayman Islands...

Picture this: People are everywhere,

camera bulbs are flashing, everybody's cheering,

the media swarms me, they hand me the check for 10 Gs,

and the media's all sticking microphones in my face,

and they're like, "So Gary, tell us, how does it feel"

"to be the greatest rock, paper, scissors champion in the history

of the entire world ever?"

Awesome, Timbuktu.

Awesome.

To say it simply, I'd say know your opponent.

Uh, it's about being able

to profile another player very, very quickly.

Um, and that means you need play

against a lot of different people.

Uh, nobody can practice by playing against the same group

of people over and over and over again.

You're just not gonna get anywhere, because you don't know

who you're gonna be pitted up against - it's a randomized positioning at most tournaments.

Uh, so, you know, you might be put up against the Norwegian champion,

or you might be put against somebody just off the street.

Your ability to spot that

and spot what that person's tells are right away,

uh, is really the hallmark of a good player.

So, as you may or may not be aware,

Doug and Graham Walker, the founders of the RPS Tournament,

wrote a book called...

The Official Rock, Paper, Scissors Strategy Guide.

And don't get us wrong, the book is amazing.

- Superb, really. - Yes.

But when Holly and I were going through it,

we noticed that there was some stuff that was missing.

So...

- Tada! - We wrote our very own book.

"The Way of the Tosser,

"by Gary and Holly Brewer,

- "no relation." - Yet. - Exactly.

Well, we put in some really neat strategies and stuff.

And yeah, a lot of stuff like, for example,

nobody ever talks about the importance of wrist work.

But when you think about it, the wrist is what attaches your hand

to your arm, or "jambre."

So we dedicated a whole section to the wrist workouts.

Yeah, we did a lot of stuff, and we were actually thinking about putting a section in it

that had some sort of, like, spring contraption, and it could open up to a wrist workout,

so you'd actually be getting a wrist workout

as you were opening up the wrist workout.

It's a double entendre.

Yeah. And there'd be lots of pop-outs - like this, for example.

- Scissors. Holly made that. - That's scissors.

We're gonna have pop-outs all through it, too.

- And, um, read the quote at the first... - Oh yeah.

This is... I tried to dictate it, but Holly wrote it

'cause she's much better at that than I am.

"The way of the tosser:

"The conviction and continuous compulsion

to toss against everything and anything at any given time."

That's me. I'm a tosser.

I use alliterations.

- I don't even know what to say. - I'm constantly tossing.

I toss in the shower,

I toss when I wake up, I toss when I'm reading the paper, I'd toss if I was walking a dog,

or if I was in a cemetery or a cell block or something

I would toss all the time.

I mean, I toss against friends or foe.

I mean, it doesn't even matter if Holly's around.

It's true. I catch Gary tossing all the time - even behind my back.

Sometimes we'll be having a serious discussion,

and I look over at him - there he is, just tossing away.

I think I might have a problem.

We wrote that a year after our first-year anniversary.

- Yep. - Remember the night we met?

- Yeah. Yeah, yeah. - He was wearing this black Maiden shirt.

Yep. And you were wearing a really nice red thing.

- I think you mean my shirt. - Yeah, yeah, your shirt.

Oh, that was blue.

- It was blue. - That's what I meant.

That's what I meant.

Gary found me sitting in a ditch singing Silent Night, E

like in the First World War.

The official theory of the World RPS Society is that

it dates to around the 18th century, in Japan,

where it's know as jankenor janken-pon, uh, depending on where you're from.

It's been documented through cave drawings

and pottery-making that the early homo sapiens

used a form of rock, paper, scissors

except they used club

stone, and fire.

So I used to sell hubcaps on the side of the road.

And this one morning, I show up to work and there's this guy

slumped and slouched against all my 1976 Pinto caps.

The little puny guy was Trevor.

Yeah, and he was dressed up in this weird, like, military outfit,

all, like, ripped up, and he had a giant helmet with these

weird tinfoil antenna things on it, and he was, like, totally spaced out.

And I was like, "Hey, man. How are you?"

And he was like, "Ah..." Like, he was singing and stuff.

Oh Trevor, I can just imagine you squished up there

like, "Trevor phone home," eating Reese's Pieces and stuff.

Ooh! Priceless.

So anyway, it turns out he was totally anemic.

It turns out he was totally amnesiac.

He had "amne-zee-ah."

Remember?

No.

I do.

We presume they were thrown

like this.

I eventually remembered my name and stuff,

but I still can't remember where I'm from or who my parents are.

Or to put the toilet seat down.

Yeah.

That too.

Club could bat stone,

and stone could put out the fire,

and, of course,

a fire can burn the club - whoosh!

Yes.

The game has deep roots.

So, Holly's parents were out of town,

and Trevor and me were like,

"Hey Hol, can we borrow your VW camper van?"

'Cause her parents had a really nice one, and we really wanted to borrow it.

And Holly was like, "Yeah, sure. No problem."

- You were gonna cup-a-fart me. - No, I wasn't.

What's a cup-a-fart?

It's when you cup your hand, and then you fart in it,

and then you can throw it in someone's face.

Gary was gonna fart in my face.

Anyways, the point is,

we got the VW camper van, and we headed down to the sand pits.

And, uh,

yeah, the tire fire was huge.

And there was tons of people there drinking

and throwing tons of tires and stuff on the fire.

And we didn't have any tires,

so what we brought was hubcaps - 'cause I had lots of hubcaps,

and we were flinging those on there, and we were, like,

playing with the hubcaps and stuff.

- Playing Frisbee. - Yeah.

Um, but then, long story short, um, I was going for a long bomb

over the fire.

And Trevor was throwing it to me,

and he tried to put too much power on it with his hand,

and he overcompensated, and he flung it right to his side.

- And he hit a chick in the face with the hubcap. - Knocked out all of her teeth.

One of her teeth hit me in the chin bone.

So of course, the guys she's with immediately start trying to jump Trevor,

and then they start trying to jack all the tires off the VW camper van.

So, you know, I had to get in there, and I had to start trying to kick some ass, you know?

- Which was so stupid. - Yeah, but

how was I supposed to know the entire team was there?

They punched his nuts a lot.

They had my legs open in this giant flying V,

and they kept doing this, like, rat-a-tat-tat thing,

and it was, like, flapping a lot.

Luckily, the first guy kicked them right up and in,

so basically they were just kicking empty sacks.

Yeah, that's really, really good, because then it was just

like sack punishment - it was more like a...

But, um, the point is,

after they were done with all the... puh!

After they were done with all the sack punishment,

they picked me up and they threw me in the bushes,

and I landed on top of, um, this drunken bum,

who turned out to be none other than the rock, paper, scissors legend...

Finnegan O'Reilly.

And, just like that, my life had changed forever.

But it did take 2 weeks for the second one to drop.

So I got really worried, and I got Gary to jump up and down

on one leg, and I would pat them a lot.

- Yeah. - It was a pretty scary time.

And now it's, um, it's sort of squarish, on the bottom.

It's so gross.

Yeah.

I took Gary on as a goddamn pupil.

Stupid punk landed right on top of me.

Blathering like a goddamn baby, he was.