I was reminded, while reading over previous articles, about great drinking games. I was somewhat mortified to realise that I had omitted the most interesting and action packed drinking game ever invented. Well, that may be a slight exaggeration, but when I was playing it I was fairly lagered and it was very, very funny. The game is called ‘The Beer Hunter"’
This drinking game is based on the Academy Award© winning movie of the same name which starred Robert DeNiro, Jon Voight Merryl Streep and John Savage. A cracker of a film and one which I would recommend to all Blokes and Blokettes. It centres on a group of friends from a small American steel town who are sent to Vietnam. The story focuses on their return to the States and the difficulties they face in re-entering the real world after what they experienced as prisoners of the Viet Cong. The ‘key’ scene involves the men being forced to participate in tournaments of Russian roulette for the amusement and gambling fun of their captors. It’s a pretty dark and moody piece of cinema and I don’t want to spoil the plot or bring down the mood too much here so we’ll move on.
The Beer Hunter is loosely based on the Russian roulette theme. You will need about six players, a table, some hand towels and beer in cans. They must be cans. And there must be as many cans as there are players multiplied by the number of rounds you want to play. The game play is simple. Half a dozen cans are lined up in a neat line on the table. One player is selected, voted or volunteers to stay behind in the room while the other players, or Beer Hunters, leave the room.
While the Beer Hunters are away, the remaining player, the ‘Viet Cong’ officer, selects ONE of the cans and vigorously shakes the bejesus* out of it until it is fit to pop. He then returns the can to the line and calls the Beer Hunters back into the room. If you have the movie soundtrack it would help the mood enormously if you hit the play button now. Some discipline and military timing is required at this point as well. The Beer Hunters must approach the table without stalling and choose a can each. Without any hesitation they put their chosen can to their ear and ‘pull the trigger’ – open the can.
All but one Beer Hunter will then sip sweet, sweet amber nectar from their cans while one Hunter will reach for the hand towel and realise that one side of his head looks like the hairdressers model for a 1980’s electronic poofter band. The other players may find it difficult to enjoy their beers as they will possibly be pissing themselves at their mate’s plight. And the fact that he looks like the keyboard player from Kaga Goo Goo.
It would also assist in creating a veil of realism to the game if the person playing the Viet Cong officer could yell at the Beer Hunters excitedly in an exaggerated high pitched Vietnamese accent. "You play, you play" and "Diddi Mao!! DiddiMao!! should work well. If he is OK with it, get him to wave a revolver menacingly as he shouts, though if you are in a public place, say a picnic ground or well attended international sporting event, this may need to be revised. And stick to aggressive movie Vietnamese expressions like those I have suggested. The mood will crumble if you channel the wrong movie and come out with "Me lub you long time soldierboy!" or "You likey me, Mister?"
It may seem odd for me to be promoting a game in which beer is wantonly sacrificed for the amusement of others but I don’t do it very often and, as I said, it really is pretty funny. You could always overcome this dilemma by using a can of cheap and nasty beer as the ‘shaker’ (no, neither Carlton Cold nor Corona come in cans) as long as you mask all the cans in the same fashion. If you don’t disguise the cans and you choose to use crap beer, then you will all have to drink it. And that would be irresponsible of me.
If you know of any other beer games you know where I hang out.
Cheers,
Prof. Pilsner
* You won’t believe it but when I first drafted this piece I used the word ‘shite’ and the spell check had a fit, yet when I changed it to ‘bejesus’ it let it through. How the fricken’# heck does that work?
# It didn’t like fricken neither. I have added this and shite to my computers dictionary and I suggest you make a stand for real language and do the same.
