Tonight's Best SOTU Drinking Games
In preparation for tonight’s State of the Union address, here's your guide to the night's best drinking games.
In preparation for tonight’s State of the Union, I decided to do a bit of reading… Not to catch up on any of the salient issues, but to get a good overview of some of the drinking games that are on popular political websites.
From the first 20 that I found, I’ve ranked 4 of the more popular ones below:
1) Esquire – The state of the Union Drinking Game, 2011 Edition
What makes it good: It unites the three key ingredients of a good SOTU drinking game: funny, reasonable, and easy-to-follow. The number of sayings or words that you have to follow isn’t overwhelming; the phrases are nicely categorized into five different groups (“one gulp of beer, one shot of liquor, two shots of liquor, three shots of anything, and the whole damn thing”); and there is a good balance between presumably frequent occurrences (e.g. “Dems stand, GOP sits”) and the unlikely, but amusing (“Off-hand references to Keith Olbermann’s employment.”)
Bonus points: for mentioning David Frum’s draft speech for President Obama, but this site would have won without it.
2) Will Durst, The Huffington Post – The Official 2011 State of the Union Drinking Game
Not quite sure how this earned the title of “official,” but it does seem to be the most circulated. In addition to The Huffington Post, Mr. Durst’s game is on SF Gate, AOL News, and Hot News.
What makes it good: If you want to get more involved, this is your game. It suggests a four character role play. There are relatively few rules to the drinking element of the game, making it easy to follow, and Mr. Durst does a good job of choosing events that could possibly happen, but won’t happen every 30 seconds.
Weaknesses: Sometimes the role play gets a bit too involved, e.g. the poor character is supposed to kick everybody else in the room if the President mentions somebody who was denied a decent education. Also, at one point you’re supposed to throw hot dogs at your TV; at another point, you’re supposed to sword fight with hot dogs. No chance of either of those… even if they’re kosher dogs.
Funny Parts: “If the president mentions the Chinese president by name, the last person to ask ‘Hu Dat?’ has to drink shots of beer.” “Every time Barack H. Obama says ‘Democratic leadership,’ the first person to stop laughing is exempt from drinking 2 shots of beer.
3) Drinkinggame.us – The State of the Union Address Drinking Game 2011
The guys over at drinkinggame.us have been putting together drinking games for a number of years now. They usually come up with pretty good stuff, but I probably wouldn’t rate this their best year.
What makes it good: Easy, clean layout. Two columns, “event” and “# of Drinks.”
Weaknesses: Too many things to follow. I don’t think I’d be able to enjoy my shot if I had to follow over 35 things. Also, some of the things listed are bound to be mentioned so often (such as the word “debt” or “Afghanistan”), that people are going to stop adhering to the rules pretty quickly.
Funny stuff: “Event: Every time the camera shows your congressman/woman.” “Action: Take 1 drink and pat yourself on the back for being able to identify your congressman/woman.”
“Event: Every time the camera shows the First Lady’s Arms.” “Action: Take 1 drink, delivered by bicep curl.”
4) Daniel Kurtzman, About.com – State of the Union Drinking Game
What makes it good: Simple enough set up and quite a number of funny proposed scenarios.
What makes it the bottom of this list: The author is more interested in making a bunch of political jokes than a drinking game that actually works – it is littered with highly, highly improbable words and phrases like: “refudiate,” “Hey Sarah, how’s that cross-hairsy, targety thing working out for ya now?” “I’ve put the Space Shuttle on eBay,” “Yourmamacare.”
So choose one and have a happy SOTU.
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