As ever, this post was written a few months
ago, but it seems strange that fate should determine I consider posting it so
soon after Alfonso Ribeiro should reprise the awesome Carlton dance on
America’s Dancing With the Stars to the delight of the entire internet.So while
I wasn’t sure I was even going to bother posting this at all, in honour of that
excellent dance, this week I’ll throw off my pretence of being a civilised
drinker and encourage you to chug it down as we play… The Fresh Prince Drinking
Game.
I was waiting for
Mrs Cake to finish making her brew so that we could watch some Breaking Bad,
and decided to just flick the telly on for a couple of minutes. What I saw was
an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, in which Will and Carlton compete in
a gameshow against DJ Jazzy Jeff and another guy. It was pretty funny, and that
reminded me of a Fresh Prince drinking game that I invented with my friend Pits
when we were flatmates.
The Fresh Prince
used to be on TV early on Friday evenings – right about the time we’d be
warming up for a night out. So one evening we decided we needed a party starter
of some kind – something that would encourage us to drink more quickly and get
our buzz on.
Despite enjoying The
Fresh Prince throughout our youth, we had both come to the conclusion that the
show was a bit lame by now, but these were the early days of Freeview, and
there wasn’t anything else on, so we found ourselves watching it anyway. If you
aren’t British and/or don’t remember the era I’m referring to, just think about
now and The Big Bang Theory… it would be the same if I could bring myself to
watch that for more than two minutes without developing into a seething mass of
rage and murderous intent.
We still got a few
laughs out of the Fresh Prince from time to time, and that led us to the theme
of this game – you had to drink three fingers of your beer or a shot (dependant
upon what you were drinking) every time you laughed at a joke.
It turns out you can
get pretty smashed in half an hour in this way. The alcohol you imbibe as a
result of that first laugh inevitably leads to more laughs and more drinks as
you start to find things amusing that would normally make you tut or go, “meh”.
For me the laughs were coming so fast that I’d incur another three finger
penalty (sounds er… interesting) before I’d even refilled my glass or drank my last penalty.
I suppose that’s
where The Big Bang Theory game would fall down; there wouldn’t be a first laugh
to get you started. Instead though, you could have to drink every time the
“studio audience” laughed, but that would be less subjective and fun.
Anyway, by 6.30 we would
be tanked and ready to hit the streets of Didsbury.
Most tv themed
drinking games rely on everyone drinking at the same time, or in concert with
something that happens in relation to a designated character as it’s a case of
‘drink every time this happens, drink every time that happens’. Ours was purely
dependant on whether you could control your rapidly widening sense of mirth. We
didn’t have time to think up drink triggers, but if you wanted to, you could go
with something like ‘everytime Carlton does that funny dance’, ‘every time
Carlton mentions Tom Jones’, ‘every time Will makes a fat joke at Uncle Phil’s
expense’, ‘every time Hilary says something stupid’, ‘every time Geoffrey says
something sarcastic’…
Now it’s your turn.
Do you have any tv shows that you like to drink to? What are they, and what are
the drink triggers? Answer in the comments. I’m thinking How I Met Your Mother (every
time there is a play) and Arrested Development (every time there is immediate
irony) would make good drinking game source material, though I’ve heard there
is also a drinking game based around Grand
Designs that sounds particularly brilliant.
And I'll leave you there for this week. Next week... I might be discussing the practice of collecting whisky. See you then.
No comments:
Post a Comment