Drunk Jeopardy

While watching Beerfest this morning I was reminded of something.

This all happened by chance one night with a few friends, some beer, and a Playstation. I doubt we invented this game but if we did history will never remember us. When I think about it it’s amazing that I remember it. There were four of us and an infant. The little guy must have gone to bed by that time because it is difficult to do much serious drinking when diapers need to be changed. Thinking about those Playstation graphics of the late ‘90s and early 2000s is all the more humorous if you can recall thinking back then that Nintendo graphics of the mid ‘80s were so much fun to laugh at. These days it is all about Wii and Playstation 3, but some things are more important than evolving technology that I could never afford.

Here is the fundamental reality of Drunk Jeopardy: You are going to suffer the following day. Losing requires a rematch, mainly for men because we are highly competitive by nature and cannot handle defeat nor admit to losing. Hangovers are a way of the good life but this gets ridiculous. Like a shot to the nuts after stepping on a rake or sticking your tongue to a metal object during winter, it isn’t pretty. Or as you might say at the end of the bonus round of Drunk Jeopardy: Ist intint petty.

I don’t recall any rules other than drinking the entire time you were playing. The highest score is the obvious winner but Drunk Jeopardy itself does not have rules like Beer Pong or Speed Quarters. Bud Light and Budweiser were my poisons at that time and I supported my home town well. I was 23 or 24 years old and did not know any better but I do know this: alcohol increased my knowledge of Leonard Bernstein, among other subjects I had no frigin’ clue about previously. The drunker I got the better I did, but doesn’t that apply to many things in life? My sister and I once did some skeet shooting at a family Thanksgiving gathering. With two glasses of wine and two Heinekens in me I hit two out of three targets. Completely sober I could not hit the side of a barn with a soccer ball from five feet away. That is an exaggeration that begs for no explanation. My sister, who is too thin to ever claim to be a drinker, did not hit any. Not only that, she fired with the butt of the shotgun at her waist, making it nearly impossible to aim the weapon. She is a licensed gun owner. If anyone ever breaks into her house I fear for everyone but the burglar.

One instance of Drunk Jeopardy found my friend/teammate and I with a paltry $625 at the end of the game. A few beers later and one more game and we finished with over $10,000. If I had taken the Law School Admission Test completely drunk I might be making a hundred grand a year right now. Probably not, but one aspect of being drunk is regretting things about the past.

Drunk Jeopardy eventually gave way to playing other games drunk. The college football series for Playstation 2 was a long time favorite of mine until my PS2 stopped working. I miss that. Notre Dame won many national titles and when that grew old I moved on to Madden. In my late twenties I could stay up drinking beer and playing video game football until six in the morning. These days I could not make it anywhere near three without digging down deep for the will to survive. The days of my wife waking up for work and finding me and my buddy drunk and playing football and smelling of stale cigarette smoke are over. Maybe those days were not as much fun as I like to thought they were, but everything was hilarious when my wife was yelling at me right about the time the newspaper guy had finished his route for the day.

Today I drank some Schlafly’s and played the video game version of “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?”. I am not smarter than a fifth grader and I wonder how smart I actually was when I was in fifth grade. At that time Super Mario was the king of the make-believe world where mushrooms and coins were like beer and pizza and that theme song got stuck in your head for an eternity. After two shots at being smarter than a fifth grader I gave up in favor of SMACKDOWN vs. RAW 2010. Pretending to be steroid freakish monsters with attitude is more my speed. My goal at this point is to smash a metal folding chair or even a table over my opponent’s head. Wish me luck, this could take awhile.

I am in the process of creating rules for Drunk Jeopardy and hopefully resuming play after a decade’s absence. When thinking about how to train for this I imagine myself holding a college textbook of some sort to my face with one hand and a beer bottle to my mouth with the other.