On Why the Downtrodden Economy Inspires More Game Playing

Not the Jewel kind. Well, maybe; I wouldn't know at this particular stage of my life. If you wanted to really mess me up, you should have gotten to me sooner! (John Cusack in the rain.)

Why we like to play games. Playing games is fun.
Obviously, it's cheap. Your friends all come over. You drink a bunch--or not. Sometimes you sip tea and the little brother is invited. (Not the sexy little brother that you used to text...or pretend we're playing madlibs here..damn that was a little while ago...it's an interesting concept, to have "archives"). No, the little brother who doesn't drink or smoke and is damn straight precocious, like before it could ever be confused with "promiscuous."

(aside)Sometimes the plug falls out of the wall...when you're on your macbook in the dark...and you can't see shit. How come that's not an idiom?

Each way has its perks. The problem with drinking while game playing is that you end up playing drinking games instead of game games...you know, just while we're at it, why not a round of Kings, I mean we got the cards, we got the beer. Which is fine, but totally sends the night hurtling in the wrong direction.

My friend once said "games are for college kids with poor social skills." I always agreed with that. It's either alcohol, or games. The drinks take care of the awkwardness. Or the games take care of the awkwardness. You don't really need to combine the two.

Other misuses of game night:
Those nights when the boys wanna play poker so they can smoke like a hundred cigarettes 'til the stubs pile up higher in the ash-tray than the stacks on the table are ever gonna get, affecting dialects to bust balls in between those silent sharp shifty-eyed points-of-no-return, but there's no "No, I thought you said you all right, spida'" to shoot in the foot thereby solidifying the power structure, just a bunch of attention-starved girls scooting up around the table all like, lemme see your hand, let's play teams, before twirling away at the next distraction.

My favorite games: Charades, Apples to Apples, Taboo, Pictionary

Charades is a ball. Challenging, intellectually stimulating, as each player comes up with difficult, multi-interpretable clues. Vary depending on the crowd. When I played with liberal-arts kids my senior year of college, one of the clues was "Justice," and the kid who got it acted out the French electronica group.

Apples to Apples--very cute because you have to get inside the heads of each of the players, thinking, what would he associate with "ridiculous?" "First love," "Bozo the clown," "George W. Bush," or "gorgonzola cheese?"

Taboo--Like charades, with words...and restrictions on which words you can use to describe the word you're trying to get your partner to guess. Say the word is "Stretch Marks;" in describing these, you cannot say "pregnant," "stomach," "baby," "birth," or "scar."

Pictionary--charades with drawing! It's interesting to find out what different minds will configure out of your hasty sketches. A rorsharch test, in a sense.

Have fun, never again struggle to make conversation, and if you like, save more dollars by cutting out alcohol!