Read an Excerpt
Introduction
Warning/Last Chance to Call and Apologize to Your Girlfriend in Advance
BOOZE, BOOZE, BOOZE… the social glue that brings together people from all walks of life for the common purpose of making a complete ass of themselves. But rest assured, we’re having a really, really good time doing it. Yes, our friends may have claimed they didn’t know us as we bared our ass to the line of moviegoers from the sunroof of the limousine and, yes, we may have charges pressed against us for public urination and getting the monkeys drunk, but no one—not even our parole officers—can take away the surprisingly forgettable memories we created.
So what exactly do you do when you wake up in an unfamiliar neighborhood, handcuffed to a fire hydrant, clothed in nothing but socks and pink nail polish, your hand clutching a stained legal document… written in French? Celebrate! You just had a great night! And to think: it all started with The Imbible: Drinking Games for Times You’ll Never Remember with Friends You’ll Never Forget.
With this book, you’ll acquire a vast body of blurry memories full of drunken adventures, hangover remedies, sloshed sexual encounters, and several new cell phones, which you will want to get anyway after your old one tested positive for syphilis. Do not worry, this happens.
From my own hazy recollections of nights long past I have realized twenty key lessons I wish to pass along so you don’t wake up at fifty wishing you’d heard a drunken duck quack. It’s what midlife crises are made of.
1. Boobs are your friend.
2. You should never attempt to drunkenly surf ontop of a car while juggling flaming dildos unless there are at least four cameras rolling or else you’ll get peer-pressured into doing it again. Luckily, you won’t have that pesky limb to deal with this time.
3. Yes, trees drink the liquid that’s in the ground around them; no, you cannot get them drunk; yes, it would be fucking hilarious.
4. No one cares about how much you’ve drunk except the doctor pumping your stomach.
5. Unless it’s a road sign that says Speed Hump, it’s not worth stealing.
6. If you ask your friend if he thinks that girl in pink looks like a man but he doesn’t hear you and then asks if you think that guy in pink looks like a girl—run.
7. Guys: if you’re worried about whiskey dick and don’t mind the ensuing spam, you can order Viagra from Canada. Not 100 percent to do with drinking, but worth mentioning.
8. Girls: No one cares about your ex-boyfriend except the psychologist you need to call.
9. You cannot put plastic in the oven. You cannot put plastic in the oven. You cannot put plastic in the oven. You cannot put plastic in the oven.
10. Girls who "forgot" their ID are sixteen. Guys who "forgot" their ID got it suspended after their third DUI.
11. You will never catch a squirrel. Yes, I know it sounds fun, but stick to ducks.
12. Note from my doctor: "Unfortunately, Mr. Bash, drinking from five different cases of beer is not diversifying your diet; you are still missing vodka, rum, whiskey, wine, gin, and a large pizza."
13. Gentlemen: you cannot drink yourself sterile. Now go make those phone calls.
14. If you wake up in a G-string with a bunch of one-dollar bills surrounding your crotch and have no recollection of how it happened, you are awesome. Don’t let anybody ever tell you otherwise. Not even the judge.
15. Alcohol is not self-cleaning. I know. I am sorry. I cried, too.
16. If you piss yourself, do not take off your pants and try to dry them helicopter style. Your newly exposed balls will be in serious jeopardy.
17. Drinking faster than your brain can develop a sense of rationality: the best thing since beer-bonging.
18. Contrary to popular belief, you still feel pain while drunk. Oh, and taking an overly ripened orange to the balls from a water-balloon launcher… not a good idea.
19. While playing Beer Pong, the amount guys let girls lean over the table is directly proportional to how much cleavage they’re showing.
20. Lastly, every awesome memory I have (or have been reminded of) began with a solid night of drinking games.
Drinking games have a long and illustrious history, beginning in the thirteenth century BC, when King Tut realized the people of his nation needed something to break up the monotony of their miserable lives, which had so far been spent growing out their goatees and starving to death. Tut attacked this plague of boredom by imbibing massive quantities of beer and falling out of a window. This fun (but primitive) pastime caught on and soon became popular with the masses.
Shortly thereafter, the practice of drunken debauchery was improved upon by the creation of less painful drinking games, such as Thumper!, Beer Pong, and Flip Cup, often looked upon as defining moments in the history of Western civilization. During the Middle Ages, the perfection of such games served as indisputable evidence for the existence of God.
Drinking games have been right there with us ever since:
• William Shakespeare played so much Beer Die that all he could write were made-up words in his own nonsense language.
• Although the evidence was suppressed by the Warren Commission, highly placed sources within the Central Intelligence Agency will one day reveal that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was the direct result of a game of Asshole gone terribly, terribly wrong.
• Scholars now believe the fall of the Soviet Union was not due to the collapse of the Russian economy but to the infamous game of Quarters that took place at the 1986 Reykjavik Summit between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan.
Not only have drinking games shaped the past, but I also have evidence that they can help us stay healthy, rich, and happy. Several scientific studies that I unfortunately forgot to cite have also bolstered the need to play more drinking games:
• In a number of controlled studies, scientists wearing long white coats and thick glasses determined that if we drink one liter of water a day for a year, we will ingest one kilo of Escherichia coli, known to the scientific community as "poop." Lesson: It’s better to drink turd-free beer and act stupid than to drink water and be full of shit.
• Numerous studies done by old white men with acronyms after their names concluded that people who drink alcohol earn 10 to 14 percent more annually because they’re out networking, occasionally sleeping with their boss, and robbing banks when blacked out. Cheers to an early retirement! (No but, seriously, they do earn more.)
• Another study conducted by my friend’s wealthy stepdad showed that playing drinking games with your wife and seeing who can sign his or her name faster on the prenuptial agreement unimportant random piece of paper can make you a lot richer happier.
• One final study conducted by myself observed how much fun people had when they played drinking games versus when they poked themselves in the eye repeatedly with a crude gardening implement. My results don’t lie: drinking games are exceptionally fun—hell, even my newly blind friends enjoy them!
Despite those excellent bullet points, some people despise alcohol because they feel trapped by alcoholism. I, on the other hand, am trapped by realityism. Answer me this: does being drunk suck? No. Does reality suck? Sometimes. So now we have this: drunk=not sucking, reality=kind of sucking. This is the same difference between a million dollars and a leech: a million dollars does not suck, a leech does. So what’s it gonna be, riches or leeches? I’ve made my point.
Then there are people who think drinking alcohol is bad for you. This could not be further from the truth. They say it hurts your liver. Well, let me ask them this: How do you get stronger muscles? By working them out, then letting them rest. This is why we work our liver six days a week, then let it recover on Wednesday. Our livers could kick their liver’s ass!
These health freaks also must not have heard how good red wine is for the heart because I still see them running on treadmills—suckers! As soon as this book falls into the hands of the surgeon general, expect the cardio side of the gym to be lined with wine tastings and, instead of water fountains, there’ll be barrels of wine! Just place your cup under the tap, and bam! heart-saving French Burgundy spills out. Scared that you’ll drop a dumbbell on yourself after too much heart-juice? Just stop using weights, too! See, the heart pumps blood through your entire body, including your muscles, so the healthier your heart gets, the more blood it will pump through your muscles, which is the whole point of using free weights in the first place, right? Instead of spending thirty minutes a day pounding out reps, spend that time pounding back red.
If you’re not out there strengthening your heart and liver just yet, then I have one last bit of advice to share, which I received from a certified personal trainer (seriously): "To really tone your muscles, you need to work those little ‘stabilizer’ muscles that large movements and classic lifts don’t work."
This used to be an experts-only piece of information, but new studies show that the body works the stabilizer muscles best when done naturally, so they suggest that at least three times a week you walk to a bar, drink yourself into a state of intoxication rivaling a coma, and then stumble your way home. He continued… "The amount of balance you’ll need to make it home will be more than enough to work even the tiniest of stabilizer muscles, and the hour you spend trying to call your ex-girlfriend will keep your fingers nice and nimble."
At least that’s how I heard it.
Reading this book and heeding its advice can also take the place of meditation and spirituality. When you drink, your mind relaxes itself and many subconscious thoughts you don’t even realize are there come to the front of your mind. These sublevel feelings may be the sudden desire to get naked and act out "I’m a Little Teapot," declare your love for an inanimate object, fight your neighbor’s prized roses, or even cry from your repressed anger over the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy. Sometimes you even speak your own language that no one else can understand— try doing that in some Tibetan temple! Ha!
Not only do you get in touch with yourself while drunk, but you get in touch with the world around you. Usually you don’t even notice how hard the earth is working to stay in orbit, but after a three-hour Chumbawumba marathon, you can really feel the force of the world spinning at 66,600 miles an hour as you continually fall over (who could stay balanced at that speed!?). Ever kissed the grass while sober? How about hugged a bush? I can honestly say the only time my lips have purposely come in contact with Father Earth was while intoxicated; we’ve been closer ever since.
If you start to use this book more often than you think you should, relax—you’re not an alcoholic; you just enjoy imbibing large amounts of alcohol on a frequent basis to further your enjoyment of daily activities. Also, you don’t go to meetings to talk about booze, unless you choose "beer brands" for the "categories" card drawn in Kings.
Please, for the sake of increasing the world’s good times per capita, take a gander at my favorite drinking games and turn your night of crying and masturbation into an alcohol-soaked receipt from the San Diego Zoo, Beer Pong with the mayor’s daughter, and an expensive bar tab covered in phone numbers you will never call.
So locate your pants, polish off that twelve-pack, and prepare to embark on a journey you will most likely never tell your spouse.
Oh, and before we begin, I have a few things to say…
1. Although explaining jokes and clever comments relieves them of their humor, I get asked so often that I really must: imbibe means "to drink." Thus, this book is the bible (set of rules) for imbibing (drinking). It’s clever. Shut up.
2. When a game refers to a "drink," as in "drink three for being a moron," it does not mean you must drink three beers. A drink is basically a gulp, but be sure to adjust this for what you’re drinking. For example, if you’re drinking Bud Light and you have to drink fifteen, drink all of them; it’ll be, like, one beer. But if you’re shooting straight rum like a champ bound for cirrhosis, then I wouldn’t recommend it. However, if someone chooses to waive my expert advice, get the Sharpies ready and practice drawing genitalia on an uneven surface.
3. When explaining games, I will almost always use he, his, and him. I’m not sexist, but typing he or she or his or her all the time is really fucking annoying. That, and I really don’t care.
4. I am not responsible for any pain or trouble you get yourself into. If you get an MIP, DUI, arrested, injured, herpes, married to your favorite sofa cushion, or do anything involving an illegally imported Komodo dragon, I am not sorry, but you should e-mail me to party if you’re ever in Seattle. (Seriously: alexbash1@gmail.com.)
5. Lastly, if you are not of legal drinking age, you should try to not get caught drinking alcohol, be an incredibly fast runner, or have a really kick-ass fake ID.
Excerpted from The Imbible by Alex Bash.
Copyright © 2006, 2008 by Alex Bash.
Published in 2008 by St. Martin’s Press
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.
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