The Perfect Movie Drinking Game

I have a deep love of drinking games. Really, what’s not to love? Drinking is great, games are fun, and combining those things results in hilarity. My family shares my appreciation, and as such many family events (including weddings) have been known to spontaneously erupt into Kings or 9-or-Not-9 parties. Even better though are movie drinking games. Those are my favorite by far.

In fact, I think movie drinking games are highly underappreciated. Disagree? Well, here are just a few reasons for why they’re the best kind of drinking game:

• They’re simple. You normally have a few rules and someone reminding the room when to drink. Games with far more complicated rule sets (like Kings) can be intimidating to drinking game newbies.
• They make up for crappy movies. Not everyone has the same movie taste. You may love The Departed but I hate cop movies and am overly fond of funny horror such as Cursed. It’s much easier to sit through a movie that you find otherwise uninteresting if there are drinking consequences on the table.
• They don’t require a lot of people. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve played The Lord of the Rings drinking game with a bunch of friends and that was a blast, but at the end of the day you can get away with only two people playing. Hell, if you’re comfortable with drinking solo, you can play drinking game movies by yourself (although I still say if you’re live-tweeting Sharknado with your friend and brilliant writer Erin at the time, it doesn’t count as being by yourself)

A good drinking game can make a movie. A bad movie drinking game doesn’t ruin it exactly, but they’re annoying nonetheless. While movie drinking games seem simple, I have come to the opinion that there is an art to crafting the perfect movie drinking game (MDG as we will call it from here on out). Since I’m generally a nice person I thought I would share my revelations with you, dear readers, so you can better suss out the best MDGs on your own.

It really all boils down to four principles. The ideal MDG is simple, virgin, consistent, and understood. That seems pretty easy, right? You’d be surprised. To further illustrate each principle, I will describe a MDG that failed at it. Bonus, I’ll even include links to the specific movie drinking game I played!

Simple – Speed Racer

I actually really, really liked this drinking game. We played it on a Thanksgiving morning and everyone had a blast. Of course, that’s because we modified it. The game actually has 13, yes, ***13*** rules. That’s far too many to keep track of! Especially once you’ve been drinking!

And actually, I think if you played with all 13 rules you might die. There is a ridiculous amount of drinking. The reason we enjoyed it so much was because we split the rules. So each person only had 3 individual rules they had to follow, and we all drank for the 13^th. A game doesn’t need to be limited to 3 rules, but I think anything with more than 7 is too much. 13 is excessive beyond all reason.

Virgin – The Room

Again, I had fun playing this one, but that’s because with The Room I didn’t really care about spoilers. Oh FYI, there’s about to be spoilers.

An ideal MDG should be okay for a virgin audience - not actual virgins, but people who haven’t watched the movie before. I had two large problems with this game. A lot of the rules state specific character names, such as “whenever Lisa and Claudette have a heart-to-heart.” Claudette is Lisa’s mother, but I don’t think she’s ever actually introduced with her name. At least not at first. To be fair, they might have said it later and I was too drunk to notice. The only reason I knew to drink was because my boyfriend had watched it already.

The other problem is that one of the rules is to take two shots when Johnny dies. Oh okay, we all now know that Johnny dies. Oops.

Consistent & Understood – American Pie 2

Occasionally you have rules that are tied to a certain scene, and that’s fine when they call it out. What doesn’t work is to have a rule that only shows up maybe 3 times in the entire movie, and you’re left trying to figure out if you missed instances, were playing it wrong, or if it was a stupid rule.

With the American Pie 2 game they either made a stupid rule, or didn’t explain it well. The rule is to take a drink when someone “mentions Tantra.” They literally only say Tantra 3 times in the entire movie. There are scenes that show things related to Finch’s Tantra obsession, but they don’t actually say it. Were you supposed to drink when anything related to Tantra happens? Because the rule says mention. Either they done messed up or it’s the worst rule ever. 3 drinks throughout an entire movie? Please, what is this a drinking game for your mom or something (note I said your mom, because my mom can crush any kind of drinking game)?

For the record, I fully support creating your own MDGs as well. I do it frequently. If you find yourself in a place where you need to make up your own rules, keep the simple, virgin, consistent, and understood requirements in mind and you are sure to succeed*! Success being measured by having fun and getting drunk, obviously. And while it goes without saying, you may want to make responsible decisions both on your drink of choice, and the number of movie drinking games you play in a row. Take it from someone who tried to do Jurassic Park right after The Room. Poor life decision right there. 

Have the perfect movie drinking game that meets all this criteria? Share it in the comments!

Be Afraid

Almost everyone has a horror story around bringing a significant other home for the holidays. And while we can all agree that every family is their own brand of crazy, I think it’s safe to say that my dad’s side of the family may be a little worst than the norm.

I grew up enjoying tales of the hijinks my aunts and uncles put any potential newcomers through. Some were amusing but harmless – like when they declared it was “weird hat day” or when they went through the house and turned all the photos upside down in their frames. They played a few pranks on girl/boyfriends that were foolish enough to meet the family, but by far the worst shenanigans were whenever someone was engaged. My uncle Dave is still a little bitter about the family vote on whether or not he was allowed to marry my aunt Deb. Of course, it wasn’t a vote in the normal sense. That would be far too easy.

What actually happened was that for Easter dinner, one of my other aunts put eggs full of m&ms at each plate. After the dinner was over, they announced that it was the official vote on whether Dave was accepted into the family, and anyone that ate their m&ms was voting against Dave. Both Deb and Dave are chocolate lovers, so they were dismayed to discover they had inadvertently voted against Dave by eating their candy. In the end the vote to accept Dave passed, but it was a very near thing.

There hasn’t been too much crazy in my generation yet. We like to pick on any significant others with small things, like encouraging them to drink a lot or targeting them when we play games. One Christmas when my brother brought his girlfriend of the time, somebody wrapped a fake diamond ring and stuck it in with the gifts, but thankfully somebody else overruled them and took it out of the pile before madness could ensue.

Of course, until this year no one has been engaged out of my group of cousins. This year though, my cousin Kristen was the first Cameron of our generation to bring a fiancée back for Christmas.

There was a lot of texting, and emailing, and eventually it was decided my father was in charge of coming up with the plan to torture Kristen and Matthew, her fiancée. While we were on vacation in November my dad and I plotted all sorts of potential scenarios about what we could do. My mother didn’t contribute much, possibly because she’s too much of a goody two shoe, or maybe because she didn’t have to go through too much to get into the family.

Once we had a really good idea I floated it past my brother, some of his friends, and some of my friends to see general reactions. When my brother thought it was brilliant and friends thought it was insane, I decided we had an official plan. Given that I was (and still am for next year, seriously why doesn’t anyone else want this job) the Game Commissioner for the day (if you’re unfamiliar with how my family does Christmas, click here to catch up on the awesome), I ended up facilitating things.

My cousin Kristen is a lawyer, so what we decided to do was hold a trial to determine whether or not Matthew was accepted into the Cameron clan.

Impartial Judge Jason

I pretended we were running another game at the end of the night, and then directed Kristen and Matthew to their chairs of honor, Matthew as the defendant and Kristen as his lawyer. I left an empty chair across from them, and then wheeled out my brother’s friend Jason who was acting as our honorable judge for the evening, announcing that as he is not actually part of the family he would be the most impartial and could make a verdict.

Then, I revealed that I had tried to gather character witnesses on Matthew’s behalf, but that none were willing to speak, so instead we had secretly put Matthew through a series of tests over the weekend. One by one I called up other family members to the empty chair to announce the results of these tests.

Shooting Expert Witness Dad

First up was my father, who had taken the adorable couple shooting the day before. He sadly discussed how Kristen clearly outshot Matthew, and that he found this to be very shameful and a point against him.

Drinking Expert Witness Aunt Deb

Next was my aunt Deb, who performed wonderfully considering I had roped her in last minute when one of my brother’s other friends decided against speaking (you may wonder why there are so many random people at our family Christmas. Just more proof of the awesome. If you would ever like to come or want a full detailed description of our games this year let me know!). Deb pointed out that Matthew was drinking red wine, something no one else really does, and how he was barely halfway through the bottle. Moderate drinkers do not keep up with Camerons. Clearly another strike against him.

Walleyball Expert Witness CJ

Finally I called up my brother CJ with the results of the walleyball competition from earlier that day. CJ described how he was really pulling for Matthew to do well, but he was a failure on the court and of course our cousin Kristen really deserves better.

Every so often Kristen tried to make a point or respond to some of the statements, but Judge Jason cut her off. She started to question his (and our) impartialness, but finally I announced that Kristen could now make her case as to why we would allow Matthew to join our illustrious family.

Kristen of course did a stellar job, so good in fact that when we asked Judge Jason for his decision, he agreed with both sides and could not make a final judgment. Instead, he proclaimed that the final game of the evening would determine Matthew’s fate. The planned final game? A poker match, with the victory going to whichever team had the winning player. Matthew was on my team, the reindeers. Unfortunately for him, and as I clarified to the family, the elf team had Jason on it, and Jason is an actual poker champ (like he’s made money doing it).

Kristen & Defendant Matthew questioning the proceedings

For those of you concerned about Matthew’s fate, don’t worry. As Game Commissioner I overruled to remove the poker tournament and allow Matthew into the family. After all he had done a pretty good job all day on the reindeer team, was pretty much solely responsible for winning the corn hole competition, and he took the trial in stride.

Some of my family had questioned why we were carrying on the tradition of torturing potential new members, but I believe in the system. I don’t even care that I could one day go through some similar nonsense. Because the thing is, my family is special. If you stick around long enough you are guaranteed to experience some craziness. I think it’s better to make sure you have someone that can accept that straight off the bat, rather than it being a big surprise later on. Also, my uncle Dave was pretty adamant Matthew should have to go through something. Like I said, he may still be a little bitter. This probably means Kristen and Matthew will take a special interest in whoever is engaged next. So take this as fair warning if you ever consider marrying a Cameron. I don’t know what you’ll go through exactly, but it’s pretty safe to say it’s not going to be your average meet the family.

This is madness. THIS IS CHRISTMAS!

My favorite of our pose series (none of which were normal)

My family is a bit different. It should thus be no surprise that we do the holidays our own special way.

Typically we spend the designated day (never actual Christmas. It used to always be Christmas Eve but now is normally the Sunday before Christmas) together - eating, drinking, and at the end of the night doing Steal-a-Gift. Gifts are wrapped up, people are given numbers, and on your turn you can either steal a gift from someone else or open one from the middle.

Last year, things got a little more exciting. My brother suggested that in order to determine who got best choice of the Steal-a-Gift numbers, we turn the day into a competition between two teams. I think most of my relatives were hesitant at first, but we gave it a shot. My brother, my cousins, and I made up the game committee responsible for selecting the games and rules for the day. My brother led the games for the day and everything went remarkably well until he broke his ankle playing walleyball. We stuck him in a chair and I took over.

Somehow this translated into me being in charge of the games this year as well. Actually this was probably more the result of my obsessive need to plan and organize. Every time my brother asked what he needed to do I told him “don’t worry about it.”

While our games last year were fun enough, they were randomly selected and poorly organized. I was determined that this would not happen again.

To start, about midyear I sent my family a survey. I had them review what they liked and disliked about the games, provide suggestions, and rate their favorites from last year. I used this information to update the games for the day and change the points the games were worth based on a combination of skill and interest. I tracked this information on a spreadsheet which also listed the games and points from the previous year.

Then I assigned tasks to various family members. Who had to bring what, who needed to select the teams… I also made a change to how teams were recognized. The previous year we had the team assignments before arriving and you had to wear your team’s color, either red or green. This year I determined we would have Team Elf and Team Reindeer, and provided festive hats for both teams. My grandfather got a Santa hat as he is the default impartial judge. This way we didn’t need an exact number of attendees ahead of time. While my father and I set up lunch, my brother randomly selected the teams and handed out the hats. There were some quick switches. The elf hat didn’t fit my dad’s big head so we traded him for my uncle. Then after lunch, I announced the games and schedule.

Hard at work puzzling

Some games were open for people to work on all day. Those were games like the Sudoku puzzles, and the gingerbread village decorating. There was also a puzzle for each team to put together. While they could technically work on it all day, only the team that completed it first received the points.

 

 Now as I mentioned some games were worth more points than others. However, I neglected to tell everyone else the point values. It became necessary at points to choose what to focus on. Who would finish the puzzle? Who was going to play walleyball? How many people would be left to work on the gingerbread village? I thought it would be interesting to see how they prioritized the games without knowing the points. While I was on Team Elf, I let others decide who was doing what without any input (besides saying I wouldn’t be playing walleyball. I loathe volleyball like you wouldn’t believe). The rest of my team went to play walleyball. When they got back and realized Team Reindeer had created the most amazing gingerbread village ever, the rest of the team decided to abandon any attempt at points. My poor cousin Ian was the only one that set ours up.

CHUG!

After walleyball we had a few games that were at set intervals. Teams choose their representatives for these games. There was a corn hole toss and a chugging contest. While my team ended up winning the chug as both team members had to finish in order to win, my uncle Jim surprised us all with his chugging abilities. My mother did poorly. The best part of this game? I didn’t tell anyone what they were chugging when they had to volunteer, just that it wasn’t alcoholic. It ended up being a combination of mountain dew and red Gatorade (red & green!) While I was totally amused, and the onlookers enjoyed it, I’m pretty sure all of the participants are going to vote against the chug on the next survey.

The last game for the night was a team Name That Tune. Keeping with the holiday theme we did Christmas music, and they only had to guess the artist. This was a new game for the year and I think the most popular. Also the scariest. I’m glad the teams were sitting separately. It may have turned violent.

Team Reindeer sits defeated.

In the end, Team Elf won for the day and got the better gift numbers. I was reelected as Game Commissioner, something that I want included on my epitaph. The family was entertained and still had a chance to reconnect with those of us spread across the world. It might not be the normal holiday celebration, but it’s some of the most fun I have all year!

What Happens When You Assume

I may have mentioned before that I’m a Steeler fan. This is causing me a lot of angst this season as they’re refusing to win games and making lots of really silly mistakes. Today’s game is no exception. Dropped balls, interceptions, turnovers that lead to touchdowns... At least James Harrison is still kicking butt and taking names. I love James Harrison.

I'm not this bad. I mean seriously...

Now I feel like I should clarify a bit on my fanship. I absolutely label myself as a Steeler fan. I watch every game with the only exceptions being when I’m busy for work purposes.  I own many different Steeler items (earrings, blankets, shirts, and of course a James Harrison jersey just to name a few). I recognize the names of the majority of the starters.

However, I don’t have every single player on the team memorized. I don’t know the nitty gritty details of the rules of football. Does this stop me from enjoying the game? Well of course not! What I find interesting though is that the common perception is that this is because I’m a girl. Apparently girls are not expected to know these things. Heck, we’re barely expected to be football fans beyond tailgating in college.

In my case, I don’t have all the intricacies of the football rules down because I decided it wasn’t necessary to know, and the refs are just going to interpret things however they want anyway (which inevitably stresses me out when they’re clearly being idiots). 

This leads me into an always interesting discussion – male and female stereotyping. Clearly, I am not going to explore every aspect of it today as the Steelers are still playing (I was going to say poorly but WOOT!! Woodley just made me eat my words) and I want to go to sleep at some point as well.   

Stereotypes will always exist. I’m sorry, they will. I think it’s just a progression of thinking. We naturally try to make assumptions about how the world functions. We use these assumptions to explain phenomena of nature as well as social situations. This can apply to a specific individual. I notice a friend has ordered cider beer multiple times in a night and I assume that’s their preference and start always ordering cider beer for them. I notice that a bunch of Texas hotels put information on church services near the front of their guest directory and I assume that Texans are more religious.

Maybe these assumptions are right, maybe they’re wrong. Now sometimes stereotypes are accurate. That’s why they exist, because there were at least a few situations and individuals that fit the bill. But they can be damaging.

I’m currently reading How Children Succeed. One of the sections I found very interesting in the book was about how identifying with a group can be both positive and negative. A positive is because it gives you a shared identity, which can help you connect with the other group members. A negative is that you then feel constrained by the group stereotypes.

The book described studies comparing the test score results for girls on math exams. When the girls first received positive messaging that intelligence is flexible and didn’t feel constrained by that good ol’ belief that men are naturally better at math, they scored better than the control group of girls. So stereotypes can be self-perpetuating. Because girls are supposed to be worse at math, they expect to do poorly and don’t try to their full potential, thus giving them worse scores.

Apparently this is what it looks like when flat.

My friend Jenn was just telling me the other week how excited she was when she took her car into the shop and they talked to her like a real person. She had issues in the past where they talked down to her assuming she didn’t know anything about cars. Now I’ve encountered this as well, but it’s never bugged me because I legitimately don’t know anything about cars. I have plenty of girl friends that LOVE cars. They can talk mechanics all day long. Me? Well, let’s just say that I’m the girl that didn’t realize her tire was flat back in high school. I called my parents saying it looked funny, and when they asked if it was flat I said “no, it’s just the bottom part.”

In one of my friend Erin’s posts we got on a side discussion about movies based off video games and how she doesn’t like that all the female characters stroll around with very little clothing. This is a valid point. If I was fighting zombies I’d be wearing tons of layers to help protect myself from getting infected. I think the issue is that when they make these games they assume mostly males will be playing them. Despite the evidence to the contrary, the stereotype is that gamers are male.

Just the other day I was talking to someone who I found out works for Blizzard. I immediately told them how mad their company makes me. They responded that this better not be another case of an angry girlfriend that lost their bf to WoW.

While this kind of made me giggle, it’s still the stereotype at work. If I had been a guy, they never would have made this assumption. Since I’m a girl, they assumed I wasn’t involved with Blizzard directly but just knew it through a guy. I actually played WoW for a while, and in fact I was referring to Blizzard doing ridiculous things to my account like deleting game subscriptions.

Where does this leave us? Well basically the same place we started. I can’t fix all the wrongs of the world with this little post. When I encounter new people I’m still going to be going against the same stereotypes.

But I can make more of an effort to not make my own assumptions about people. As my father always told me over and over growing up, what happens when you assume? You make an ass out of u and me (still true).

And if nothing else, we can all remember that these stereotypes DO NOT DEFINE US.

For Love of the Game

Ever since I said the magic words “Oregon Trail” I have been absolutely dying to play the game. Then, while driving I passed a sign that said “Settlers,” and as that was a game I played around the same time I’ve since been craving the chance to play it. This threw me into full out game nostalgia mode. Thus I have decided to do the neek thing and dedicate a post to some of my favorite games over the years.

Some you may recognize, some are obscure, and some are rather mock-worthy.

Let’s start with the classic! The Oregon Trail is quite frankly a fabulous game. It’s based on some for realz history, which means it’s totally acceptable to play in school, without being a stupid math game. Score! People also tend to die, which makes it far more fun. My favorite part was naming my fellow passengers after a mix of people I loved and hated, and seeing which ones survived. And while I normally cannot deal with any kind of animal violence (even in video games) it was actually really fun to shoot all the animals when you were running low on supplies. It taught you not to be greedy too! If you shot too many you’d end up still only carrying half the meat home.

Now thinking about the Oregon Trail inevitably makes me think of Settlers. I played both games around the same time. Settlers was on one of those discs we got monthly (ish) with free previews of games. This meant you could play only to a certain point. Settlers is a bit similar to Civilization. You start by settling on this new land, and you have to spread out your settlement, creating things like pig farms, mints, and mines. The little people were adorable. You could see the supplies traveling between points on the road to make it to where the supplies were needed, so that was pretty fun too. Sadly I was just reminiscing about this game with my brother, and he said he tried to find it recently and it would require something-something-terms-I-don’t-understand-but-the-word-“bit”-might-have-been-involved to run on computers nowadays. Jerkfaces haven’t made a new version. Someday I may write them a letter.

Another computer game I started playing around that age was Catz. My parents thought this would help keep me from constantly bugging them for more animals. It kinda worked. The virtual pets were fun. Of course the part I most enjoyed was breeding them to get new adorable kittens. That way I could mix the breeds up to get interesting new types. Plus it would chart the family history, which for some reason amused me. Granted, in retrospect that’s kind of a weird aspect of a game designed for kids. When you wanted kittens you’d get a male and female cat out at the same time, and then you had to make sure they liked each other. You could help set the mood with some heart-shaped pillows, perfume, and candy. Weird, right?

Moving away from computer games momentarily, let’s look at some multiplayer games. There were few games that my brother and I could actually play together without devolving into outright war. One was called Herc’s Adventures, and it was AMAZING. I loved Greek mythology, and this game was a weird mix of ancient Greek gods & heroes, and aliens. Yes, aliens. Initially we didn’t even own it. We rented it for our Playstation and played endlessly. Of course eventually we’d hit the same point where I’d die a lot and give up. My brother was actually the only one to finish the game. It had many aspects that appealed to me though. For one thing, there was actually a FEMALE character I could play. I don’t know about other girls, but it drives me batty when I have to play a guy. I find this intriguing. Did you know that when taking tests, statistically girls respond the same whether the test uses girl or guy names in the examples, but guys respond better to same gender names? On the other hand, in my personal experience guys seem more than happy to run around as girls in video games. At least they seem to do it a lot in WoW. Someday I must poll the larger world to see how other girls feel about playing games as male characters.

 Since we’re discussing both Playstation games and games I could play with my brother (without wanting to kill him in the real world), let’s also talk about Twisted Metal. We actually initially started playing Twisted Metal II, which was my favorite. I believe at some point we did end up with the original Twisted Metal, but I still prefer II. We could play against each other, or as a team. It’s one of the few games that I don’t horrible suck at. Outlaw was my preferred character (which also might explain my preference for II over I; in I Outlaw is a guy named Carl, in II it’s his sister, Jamie). Sometimes I’d switch it up though and play Minion, because it was easier to squish the other contestants. I’ve recently been trying to find TM II again because I really loved the game (Mom made us go through some game purges over the years, and at some point it got sacrificed) but I can’t find it. I did get Twisted Metal: Heads On, but it’s kinda meh. Of course when I say I’m trying to “find” the game, I mean I look for it when I’m in a store. I have this really weird thing where I’ll only buy stuff I really want if I happen to run across it, I won’t search online or anything (which is why I also don’t own things like the Drive Me Crazy movie I’ve been wanting to re-watch for forever).

We’ll finish with my absolute favorite game ever. That would be Mario Party. I LOVE Mario Party. How can you not? I mean it’s a combination of every possible good thing from video and board games. You move around an interesting, themed (cuz I love me some fun themes) board. There is some strategy required. There is also some dumb luck. Then there is some skill necessary when you do the mini-games. You can do everything right and lose. You can do everything wrong and win. Normally, you do a mix and get really angry. Mario Party is the reason in high school we frequently said “medieval.” As in, “You dummy, why the heck did you just go medieval on me!?!” after the dummy in question shoots you during a mini-game. This also became the game in college where we most frequently used the phrase “cheating whore.” It actually originated for us playing Skip-Bo, but quickly became a Mario Party catch phrase when we’d play 50 game rounds and near the end everyone started screaming “YOU CHEATING WHORE YOU STOLE MY STAR.” True story – sophomore year of college our worst housemate fights were 100% started by Mario Party games.

Sadly I do not own any of the Mario Party games. My brother briefly owned them, but due to some shenanigans with an evil ex-girlfriend they are lost forever. My college roomie had them, but she felt it necessary to grow up and get married and all that good stuff, so I lost access. I’ve been debating for a while whether I want to go out and buy a GameCube. All my favorite versions were on the GameCube. I don’t particularly want a Wii, because while the new ones are on Wii I’m not in love with the stupid controllers.

Mario Party actually caused me one of my saddest moments this year. The sequence went like this:

I was over at a friend’s house

saw a Mario Party game box

knew this friend would be cool with me basically taking over their house to play

got super excited

opened the box

discovered the game was missing

turned to the friend

found out THEY LOST IT YEARS AGO.

Way to crush my fragile moment of pure happiness. I have secretly knocked points off their mental brownie score because of this instance.