Remembering St. Remedius’s Pre-Spring Break Decompression Celebration
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)
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Every educational institution has its particular rituals to welcome back the sun after a long winter, often starting shortly after the winter solstice. Whether Great Midwestern Trivia at Lawrence University or Ditch Day at Caltech, every institution of higher learning has a similar ritual, and Texas colleges followed suit. Whether Aggiecon at Texas A&M, the “How Do You Spell ‘UT’?” competition at the University of Texas at Austin, the Goatman Bridge Music Festival at the University of North Texas, or the MBA Motivational Movie outdoor screening at Southern Methodist University, Texas colleges and universities had a long tradition of steam-venting on the path to Finals, and St. Remedius Medical College’s traditions continued even after its disappearance. To this day, the Thursday before the start of Spring Break, innumerable Dallas students, former students, and faculty of any regional school gather at Klyde Warren Park for the annual St. Remedius Gatorade Pie Shootout in remembrance of a long-lost institution and only incidentally an excuse to smack the hell out of classmates and rivals with cream pies.
The St. Remedius Gatorade Pie Shootout started originally as a pre-break battle royale against the Advanced Technologies and Metaphysics departments, with each department head leading the waves of gooey ammunition to destroy their opponents. (Much has been made of the marriage between Bennett and Calliope Pendergast and their incredible devotion to each other, but when it came to campus competitions, their overriding theme was Mutually Assured Destruction.) As other departments started participating over the years, many were wiped off the map by departments with better logistics, larger total numbers, or advantages in tech or magic, so departments were broken into teams of ten, acting like Mardi Gras subcrewes. After that, the teams took to distinctive attire either to signal department affiliation or their own independence, and team membership consisted then of any students or faculty that would take the mantle. Some teams became famous/notorious for their techniques or lack thereof, and continued for years with new students filling in for ones that graduated or transferred, and others were rebuilt with new names and uniforms every year. The Tacticians, the Grimms, the Droogs, the Lekvars…each year, new teams came to the fore, and old teams reminded participants why they were still legends.
Finally, the whole Shootout became a charity benefit to pay for equipment for the St. Remedius Women’s Football Team as an act of appreciation: the Hodags were the first to introduce the distinctive Gatorade Pie as their weapon of choice, mostly by devastating the rest of the school in an us-against-the-world showdown described by survivors as “full-contact chess,” and the team offered to buy their gear in the future only after another team beat them in a final showdown. By the time of St. Remedius’s disappearance, the Hodags were still unbeaten, but did such a good job at finding sponsors for each Shootout that everyone involved agreed that they deserved the money made from sales of pies. Considering the sheer number of pies sold at each Shootout, carbon-fiber and titanium helmets and ablative-armor pads were standard every year.
The rules are simple. Only pies from accepted recipes are allowed: Gatorade pies are the standard, but any without toxic or allergenic fillings are acceptable. Pies are standard 9-inch (22.86 cm) only, with aluminum pans to support them. (Participants were still salty about the 50-foot (15.24 m) crunchy apple pie dropped from a dirigible in 1993, injuring 17.) Pies may only be thrown, launched, propelled, levitated, or otherwise manipulated a maximum of 30 feet (9.14m). Pies may not be dropped on participants, whether from trees, buildings, drones, hot air balloons, vultures, or from orbit. While teams may ally with each other, they become adversaries as soon as all opposition leaves the field. Only ten members per team. No support crews: members may go back to preselected locales to pick up more pies, but when members run out without a reload, they either surrender or suffer. Teams could select particular locales and stock those with pies, and could give pies to others, but could not get reloads that were off campus at the start of the Shootout. Those surrendering under the onslaught had to leave for the edge of campus and wait as a spectator. Anyone surrendering and then coming back into the Shootout may become targets for every team in the vicinity. Finally, the Shootout ended either two hours after the starting horn or when only one team was still standing.
Each year, a duly appointed representative was chosen to blast the starting and ending horns, usually a distinguished campus guest but sometimes someone specifically invited to start the rampage. In 1990, the assembled stars of WGON in Philadelphia held a very special reunion event at that year’s Shootout, where they signed autographs and heckled teams from the sidelines to the delight of longtime fans after jointly setting off the horn. Other years, local celebrities won the privilege: Siouzi Wooten famously hit the horn and then took out four members of the team Harkun Diplomatic Corps before scuttling off the edge of the grounds. When the final horn sounded and participants exhausted from two hours of laughter dropped their weapons, it was hard to tell who had more fun: the warriors or the spectators.
Since then, other organizations started their own pie or shaving cream wars to coincide with Pi Day, but what distinguished St. Remedius Gatorade Pie Shootout from the upstarts was the cleanup. Each year, a special award went to the team that did the best job of cleaning up the resultant mess, and any reasonably harmless process was acceptable so long as it got the job done. Many upstanding Advanced Technologies, Thaumaturgy, and Engineering students later became famous and/or rich because of their work at leaving St. Remedius grounds cleaner than they were when the Shootout started: the members of the Found Souls ultimately perfected a time mirror spell that flipped the grounds and only the grounds to a second after the sounding horn started, while Mesquite After Midnight debuted the nanobot golem later sold as “Johnny Crimescene,” which absorbed pie fillings and pans and extruded them as carbon and aluminum tubing with occasional ingots of other elements. (Contrary to popular legend, Johnny Crimescene was a flop on the open market at first, but a similar product that cost-effectively extracted platinum from road dust made them millionaires six weeks after it debuted.) At the end, the campus was back to its pre-Shootout glory, the students galumphed off to their rooms to pack for Spring Break, and everyone made plans for the next year. While not as weirdly exciting as when St. Remedius was still in Dallas, the current Shootouts still keep up the excitement and silliness of the original, two things that Dallas always needs.
(To give full credit, Gatorade Pie was inspired by a discussion with Elizabeth, with the Tang Pie recipe being modified to fit the situation.)
Gatorade Pie Ingredients
Premade graham cracker crust (1 or 2: see below)
1 cup Gatorade lemon-lime mix
1 cup Greek yogurt
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 box cream cheese, warmed to room temperature
Whipping cream, 8 or 16 ounces (236 to 473 cc): see below
1/2 cup lime juice (Optional)
In a mixer, blend the Gatorade mix, condensed milk, Greek yogurt, and cream cheese until smooth. Taste for flavor and add additional Gatorade as needed. If making a single eating pie, add 8 ounces of whipping cream: add 16 ounces of whipping cream to make two throwing pies. Blend until smooth.
If desired, add an additional 1/2 cup of lime juice and blend again.
Pour the blended ingredients into the graham cracker crusts. Garnish with sprinkled Gatorade powder.
Refrigerate the pie for at least four hours and preferably overnight.
Either cut into wedges and serve, or use to pummel your opponents into submission. Serves 8 diners or devastates one to three opponents.
Optional: both eating and throwing pies make excellent frozen pies. Freeze overnight, let sit out for 5 minutes after removing pie from the freezer, cut into wedges, and serve immediately. Serves 8.
Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.
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