The 1UP Yours Drinking Game

Yes, it's time for another drinking game. You may remember the Guided By Voices drinking game I came up with. Maybe you even tried it?? Whatever. Be that way. Today I'm going to list the rules for the 1UP Yours podcast, which along with being a really entertaining videogame podcast also features some of the drinking-est hosts around.
Seriously.
Before I get to the rules, note that the traditional, accepted way to play this drinking game is with the whiskey or scotch of your choice, as well as whatever beer you have lying around. When I say "take a shot" you, well, take a shot of liquor or take a healthy swallow of scotch (assuming you drink it straight or on the rocks, that is...you could do shots if you want to). When I say "take a drink", that means you take a healthy swallow of beer. When I say "finish your drink" that means that you finish off the beer you currently have open. With that out of the way...

--As soon as the music ends and Garnett says his first line, take a drink.
--If at any point someone says "weekend confirmed" or there is talk about a possible confirmation of said weekend, take a shot.
--If there's a British person on the show, take a drink when they're either introduced or you hear their first line, whichever comes first.
--Whenever Shane mentions seeing a game or getting to play a game but he can't talk about it yet, finish your drink.
--If there's an ex-1UP staff member or on-their-way-out 1UP staff member on the show, take a drink at the beginning of the show.
--If Garnett mispronounces a word, uses the wrong word, or slurs his speech, take a shot.
--If the show is over two hours in length, go get a glass of water at the one hour mark. You'll thank me later.
--If they are doing a '4 Minute Warning' segment, finish your drink.
--Whenever Garnett has to explain how people have misrepresented his comments, and that he actually doesn't hate a game or isn't down on it, take a shot.
--At the break between segments, take two drinks.
--If Shane says anything along the lines of the follow phrases, take a shot: "I'm a huuuge fan of..."; if he says anything is the "secret best..." anything ever; any talk of something being over or underrated.
--If Andrew 'Skip' Pfister gets on the mic, you hear him talking in the background, or someone refers to him (particularly with the words "on the wheels of steel"), take a drink.
--If, in the process of fondly remembering something, Garnett refers to it as "the shit", take a drink.
--If a British or other foreign personage is on the show, every time you can't understand a word they said, take a drink.
--If Shane or Garnett aren't on the show, take a shot. If they're BOTH missing, take a shot and finish your drink.
--During the news segment, if they're doing NPD numbers, finish your drink.
--At the end of the show, when someone (usually Garnett) says "we are ghost" take a shot. If they forget to say it, take two shots.

Garnett and Shane and alcohol and microphones

The Guided By Voices Drinking Games

Look, we all know that Guided By Voices are pretty awesome. Were pretty awesome. Anyway, we know that they're pretty awesome, but they sound that much better when you're drunk. Main Voice Robert Pollard, a retired school teacher, seemed to feel the same, because GBV shows were notorious for being 2 to 3 hour spectacles of intoxication and ass kicking rock music. In the spirit of the band, I now present two versions of the Guided By Voices drinking game.

Version 1
Get yourself a copy of The Electrifying Conclusion DVD and try to keep up with Robert Pollard's drinking. Keep in mind that he takes the stage with a beer or two under his belt already. If you're going to do this semi-authentically, you'll have to buy some beer, champagne, and (I'm assuming he's doing shots of whiskey) whiskey to match him as closely as possible.

Version 2
Dig out any GBV album, single, EP, compilation. Listen to it with some beer and a bottle of the hard liquor of your choice for shots.
--Take a drink whenever the song is about a relationship, or at least seems like it could be.
--Do a shot whenever someone other than Robert Pollard sings.
--Take a drink whenever you listen to a song with a patented bizarre GBV title. Note that for certain albums, like Bee Thousand, you will be getting drunk pretty fast.
--Do two shots whenever a song mentions anything to do with alcohol. Note that if you're listening to Isolation Drills you might pass out.
--Take a drink when a song is longer than 3 minutes.
--Do a shot when a song is less than a minute.
--If you find yourself singing--slurring??--along, finish your drink.
--If you realize you're accidentally listening to a Robert Pollard side project or solo album and didn't notice any difference, do a shot.
--Assuming you're listening to Do The Collapse, if you catch yourself thinking "you know, it's not that bad of an album after all" do two shots. Note that this doesn't apply to the song 'Teenage FBI' which is secretly one of the best things they ever recorded.

Bukowski On Film: Barfly Vs. Factotum

There are certain authors who make for great film adaptations, and almost all the others make for miserable ones. The difference, as near as I can tell, is that authors who focus on plot as the primary strength of their writing adapt well to film, while authors who's main strength is their words and style make for bad films. This, then, is my main problem with Barfly and subsequently my love for Factotum.

Bukowski novels and short stories are never good for what happens. By this I mean, they're mostly about the same things--drunks, bums, sex, smoking, fighting, depression, filth, etc. It's a thousand times the same story, but the genius comes in how he tells them each time. Bukowski definitely falls into the less-is-more, use-plain-language school of writing--meaning that the brilliant lines he manages are all the more meaningful because they cut to the quick.

Barfly fails and Factotum succeeds on the basis of two things: what they focus on and what the characters are like. Barfly chooses to focus on a plot, following the main character Henry Chinaski, an alcoholic who fights to win money and occasionally writes. We see him come full circle, from having almost nothing to having slightly more by movie's end. His romance with Faye Dunaway's character feels artificial and conceited, and her fight with Alice Krige's character at the end is embarrassing. All the while, the movie completely fails to make us believe in or care about Chinaski because we so seldom get to hear Bukowski's words through him. We're told he's a great writer because Alice Krige tracks him down in order to give him money for publishing some of his work, but we're never shown that he's a great writer.

By contrast, Factotum has a plot that just kind of happens and feels natural. Events occur to move the action along, but there is no real journey or change for our hero, Chinaski. Instead, it's mainly about him trying to make money by working various odd jobs, gambling on horse races, and so forth. All the while, we glimpse him writing and drinking, and we're always hearing Bukowski's words, often spoken in voiceover by Matt Dillon, who wouldn't be my first choice for the role but actually does an admirable job of it.

Speaking of which, Mickey Rourke absolutely misses the mark in Barfly. His Bukowski is somewhere between a hunched over Russel Crowe and a less manic Rodney Dangerfield, a freak of nature more than an odd human being. Meanwhile, Faye Dunaway doesn't belong in this movie at all. She always sounds like she's just reading lines rather than inhabiting her character, and simply put, she's too pretty to seem believable. I never once for a second saw her character and not her. The other problem with Barfly is that it doesn't portray violence and alcoholism in a realistic way. The fights in the movie are bloody and meaningless because within minutes, the characters look fine. As for the drinking, it feels completely sanitized, and the characters drink like fishes while never once getting sick or looking worse for the wear.

Factotum, somehow, gets the two main characters right. Dillon's Bukowski is more patient and reserved, dignified even in his lowest moments. We see him in every aspect of his life, including a particularly funny and revealing scene where he must have his balls bandaged up so he can go to work. This time out, his main love interest is played by Lili Taylor, who you might know from Six Feet Under or High Fidelity. While she and Chinaski meet and re-meet during the course of the movie, you never get that sanitized 80s romance film feel that Barfly has because she seems real and, spoiler alert, Chinaski loses her in the end. I always saw her character and not "hey it's the crazy medicated ex-girlfriend from High Fidelity!!" Furthermore, the realism of the violence and drinking is far better in this movie. Though there are only one or two true moments of violence in it, they feel more "real" because of their awkwardness. As for the drinking, well, people who drink feel like shit and get sick, and Factotum has both.

In the end, there isn't much contest here. Barfly could be just about any movie by the time it's done, while Factotum is a much more fully realized adaptation. The fact that it ends with one of my favorite scenes from the novel, in which Chinaski and a bum are thrown out of a day labor agency for drinking, and follows it with a brilliant monologue while he drinks in a strip club, is all the sweeter.

You totally shouldn't drink Steel Reserve

One of the warning signs that your drinking is out of control is that you stop drinking things because they taste good, or at least don't taste awful, and start drinking them because they're cheap and have a good ratio of alcohol per volume. So, Steel Reserve. It's a beer that somehow tastes warm even when it's freezing cold. And with that warmth comes a flavor that I would describe as what it tastes like when you pour half a shot of cheap whiskey into a bottle of Miller Light. In short, not very good.

The problem, or the promise, comes in the fact that it has 8.1% alcohol content. And a 12 pack is only like 6 bucks--it's a win/win situation for serious drinkers. However, that comes at the price of your health and stomach. I've never had a hangover from beer, but I did when I drank some Steel Reserve.

Yet...it calls to me.

I got drunk on it the other night and watched Commando while flexing my muscles with my shirt off. Then I fought an entire armored division with a toothpick as my only ally and weapon.

Steel Reserve makes me feel like a god and you should totally fucking drink some.

How To Survive a Whiskey Hangover With The Field and Meteos

There is nothing on Earth like a whiskey hangover. It is similar to other hangovers, but somehow worse, more vile and life altering. You wake up in the late morning, and you think you might have gone blind, so you peek one eye open, which somehow hurts. Then you open both eyes and look around the room, a process that hurts even more--sunlight streams in the window, sending a hot light knife into the area behind your eyes which throbs appropriately. The hardest part (well, one of them, anyway) is getting up and out of bed.

Once you do, go to the bathroom and splash some numbingly cold water on your face. Drink a glass or two of water. If it stays down, proceed to try to eat some food. Try to keep the food down. Drink some really strong tea or coffee. Wait a few minutes. Take some aspirin or Tylenol and some nasal decongestant (for some reason when I drink my nose gets really clogged up). Still keeping it all down?? Starting to feel a bit better?? It's time to take your mind off the pain and sickness. No, don't drink more!!

I used to try to medicate hangovers with noise. I thought that it would blow all the bad shit out of my brain through sheer agony. But now I'm more about soothing my brain with repetitive, mellow music. I have discovered that From Here We Go Sublime by The Field is perfect for this. Attach a drool cup to your face and put this on with the iTunes visualizer running. Much better.

For further relief, dig out Meteos for the Nintendo DS. No, not the fucking Disney version. The original. Haven't played it in awhile, have you?? Feels good, doesn't it?? Yes. It might not be as hypnotic as its more popular, readily available brother Lumines, but I find it easier on a hangover.

Assuming you did puke at some point, drink some water, nibble on some dry cereal, and lay on the couch all day watching whatever is on the History Channel or Discovery. Documentaries are the best TV show for getting over a hangover.

Of course, the ultimate hangover cure, as stated in Knocked Up, is to get stoned. But assuming you're like me and don't have access to said substance, I think the above will do you just fine.