Playing With Myself for the Holidays

In a nutshell

I love my family. I frequently want to punch them all square in the face, but I love them.
Going home for the holidays is great because it's a very rare occasion that all five of us (parentals + brothers + me) are in the same place at the same time, but in our household, the Three Day Rule stands: We love hanging out, laughing, retelling stories for the thousandth time, eating disgusting amounts of food, and sharing an understanding that the dog is the best thing that ever happened to the entire world; but after 72 hours, it's definitely time to go.

I'm sure your family is the same way. How does one survive family time without completely losing their shit? You make a game out of it, of course! See also: alcohol.

Keep Away: If every single member of your extended family gets along swimmingly, you practice witchcraft. We're all blood and should love each other unconditionally, blah blah blah, NEWS FLASH: Here in the real world, Uncle Ned and Cousin Bradley hate each other's guts. It's fantastic. What's not fantastic is their differing religious beliefs ruining the enjoyment of perfectly good stuffing, so it's fun to get creative with how far away from each other you can actually keep them.
"Hey Uncle Ned! Have you ever seen my dance recital video from 1998? They're watching it now in the basement! All the way downstairs! Yep keep going."
"Cousin Bradley remember when you backpacked through Europe? See if you still have your hiking skills and go upstairs."

Mad Libs: My grandma has gotten to the point where she can't remember anything. Conversations are carousel rides that touch on relationship status, how you like your job, if where you live is safe, and when you're coming to visit her. And round and round we go. If you truthfully answered these questions each time she asked (roughly 15 times each over the course of an hour), you would go crazy. Answering them differently each time may earn you dirty looks from the others, but Grandma is very accepting of whatever answer you give her (unless you say you're single), so you might as well keep it interesting.

Wait What?: My mom has an interesting habit of listening to you until she doesn't feel like it anymore, i.e. you're in the middle of your story and you can see her mentally removing herself from the moment. It's incredibly frustrating if you're not ready for it. If you are, you seize the opportunity and start talking about absolute bullshit. The goal is to see how absurd of a point you can get your story to until she tunes back in.
"Oh so I went to this networking event a few weeks ago in the Lower East Side. It was cool, lots of freelance writers and..." *there she goes* "...heroin. Heroin everywhere. I shot it up with a midget who looked like the mini love child of Steve Buscemi and Giada de Laurentiis. His veins were collapsed so we had to find one in the bottom of his leprechaun foot. I also ate like five shish kabobs-" "FIVE?!"

Puppy Puke: People watch TV shows and think it's okay to give the dog human food because that's how kids on 1950s sitcoms got rid of their brussel sprouts. LOL classic. Fast forward to the pooch consuming turkey, cornbread, peas, and rice casserole over the course of three hours and try to guess if he'll puke all over the living room before or after your brother conveniently disappears when it's time to do the dishes. Another approach is to count the amount of times you tell your dad not to give the dog any people food because it's really not good for him, only to have him respond, "He likes it!" then tell you you're overreacting when you call him stupid while blotting vomit out of a rug. I hope you're reading this, Bill.

The Significant Otherlympics: Family calamity is one thing when you're generally immune to it. When you're an outsider who's trying to impress everyone while acting like the suffocating passive aggression  wafting over the table isn't awkward at all, the holidays are taken to a completely new level. Watching your sibling's "special friend" try to keep their facial twitch under control while Aunt Susan blatantly insults your mom's cooking might as well be the height of a figure skater's triple axel: will they nail it? Will they fall? WHAT WILL HAPPEN? When two or more boyfriend/girlfriends are present at the table, you can pit them against each other in a battle of wits to see who deserves to still be around come Valentine's Day:
"Hey Pete, you're really pro gun control right?"
"Yeah..."
"And Brooke, you're an atheist right?"
"...Yes..."
"Wonderful. Have you met my grandpa? The 65-year member of the NRA and ruthless Catholic? Aaand GO!"

Good luck this holiday season! Maybe the fam will finally remember that you're a vegetarian (and have been since 2009) this year! Just kidding, they won't.

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Playing With Myself

When I was younger, my mom's tactic for getting me to get a chore done faster was to put me in an imaginary competition with a girl from a different country (typically Jamaica. Nope, no clue why).

"Skylar you have to beat the girl from Jamaica in unloading the dishwasher!"
"See if you can vacuum the living room faster than the girl from Jamaica!"
"I need you to take the dog on a long walk. Be gone...longer than the girl from Jamaica."

My mom is a scheming little genius, but this trickery instilled a lasting competitive spirit in me that has since caused me to seek and find the game in every situation. Why suffer through a nine-hour road trip when you could be racing on the real-life version of Need for Speed's Rusty Springs track? I need to unlock the secret ninth car! I want to drive the Warrior! The Mitsubishi Eclipse next to me doesn't know it but we're totally in two-player head-to-head racing mode right now, and I. don't. lose.

 

Life should definitely not be taken seriously, so if you need to participate in your own personal game show to get yourself through the day, feel free to get yourself started on one of my favorites:

Treadmill Races: Everyone does this. If you are side-by-side with someone on a treadmill, and you both happen to crank your speed up to 7 at the same time, it's so on. Once, I had already run my two miles and was about to slow down to a walk when a girl jumped on the machine next to me and immediately cranked it up to a sprint. Part of me thought, "Have fun with your shin splints, idiot," while the rest of me realized she was about to win. Win what? I don't fucking know, but I wasn't going to lose it. My inner Shaun T said to dig deeper, so I upped my speed to a 9.5 and prepared to dominate.
She totally noticed.
Other people totally noticed.

 

It was the most unnecessary display of female peacocking that has ever taken place inside of a university gym, minus the sluts in the corner successfully out-whoring each other with their thrice-rolled Soffe shorts. We hung together for about a minute before the awkward side glances started to happen, silently asking, "What is even happening right now?" Need I remind you that I'm not a quitter, so I ignored the gargantuan cramp developing in my ribcage and pretended like this was just a casual yog. This was a girl after my own heart, because she stuck it out for another 15 seconds before she let out a small gasp and desperately punched the keypad down to a cool five miles per hour. I'm a gracious winner, so I continued on for 30 more seconds before I calmly turned down to a 3.5. I went on to walk home like a newborn deer because my legs were completely shot, but whatever, I had Flo-Jo'd the shit out of that girl.

 Clean Up on Aisle 3: If I don't have a game plan upon entering the grocery store, it is a complete disaster and I end up panic-buying three bags of almonds, pizza dough, and a greeting card. A shopping list is not only an orginizational tool, it's a necessity. However, even with an outline of my needs I can still get distracted and find myself spending an inordinate amount of time comparing the protein amounts in various brands of hummus.

 

I came up with a solution to this problem by accident. I had been running errands all day and was starving, but the grocery store was the last stop on my itinerary so I just scooped a 32-ounce Gatorade and kept moving.
By the time I got to the parking lot I was legitimately in fear of my bladder. Boy, was she angry. Still, I needed food, and the Get Out of the Store Before You Pee Your Pants game was born. I was checking out, with precisely everything on my list, in 12 minutes. Now, when I know I don't want to waste time/money perusing the aisles, I drown myself in water and then do a little jig as I pick out my 10 for $10 yogurts before I speed home.

Secret Singing: I really get down with my bad self while listening to music in my car. If Rihanna ever had a freak vocal cord accident and needed someone to sing the rest of her set list, I could grab the mic and belt out both parts of "Stay" without issue. I took voice lessons for five years and, as the youngest child of three, am a natural-born performer, but I still have serious problems singing in front of people. Even within the confines of my car, where no one can actually hear the sweet magic coming from my mouth, I am self-conscious about the guy next to me on the highway noticing my solo performance. To avoid embarrassment, I have come up with a series of tricks that allow me to trust the voice within while appearing completely normal to the outside world.

1. Pretend to be on the phone - Unless you live in California, New Jersey, or any other state that prohibits cell phone usage while driving (safety first!), simply holding the phone up to your ear and singing your heart out just looks like a very passionate conversation to onlookers. Foolproof.
2. Nose scratch - The point here is to create distraction in the vicinity of your mouth. Just make sure it is very obvious that it's a casual scratch. Appearing to dig for gold is infinitely more embarrassing than being caught belting out "Timber."

3. Drinking from bottle - Pretend you're going to take a sip of water, stop short of getting any liquid in your mouth, and proceed sing it loud and proud. Bonus: it works as a mini microphone!

Six Degrees of Tanning Bed Music Separation: I will admit, this one is a bit excessive. You're literally just lying there, so you've gotta do something to stave off your mom's incessant warnings of skin cancer. A typical tanning bed sesh lasts about 12-15 minutes, or about four popular songs from 2007. Let's say these songs are "Buy U a Drank" by T-Pain, "Kiss Kiss" by Chris Brown, "Umbrella" by Rihanna, and "Good Life" by Kanye West.
Lets play: I clearly remember getting in trouble at a high school dance for grinding up on a kid from my math class too intensely (you're welcome, buddy) while "Buy U a Drank" played romantically in the background. T-Pain was also featured in Chris Brown's "Kiss Kiss" that year, and with two years before the Rihanna Smackdown would go down, those two were still cute together. Rih came out with "Umbrella," which I'm still not sick of, featuring Jay-Z. Jay-Z and Kanye West are butt buddies. Kanye had released Graduation aka not as good as The College Dropout and Late Registration and "Good Life" which featuuuuured...T-Pain.
Technically that's only five degrees of separation but I can feel my moles changing in color and border regularity so it's time to get out.

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Holiday Movie Drinking Game: A Christmas Story

Whoever the genius at TBS was that came up with "24 Hours of A Christmas Story" better get a massive bonus every December. It is one of my favorite Christmas movies, if not one of my top ten movies of all time, and the fact that I can watch Ralphie whale on Scut Farkus as many times as I want is a true Christmas miracle.

If your holiday is anything like mine, the A Christmas Story drinking game will be a life saver, as sometimes you really do need to be wasted for an entire day. For Jesus.

• Ralphie asks for an "official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle" - Drink!
• Someone curses, or yells out jibberish that's meant to be an extreme profanity rant - Drink 2!
• An adult in costume is legitimately frightening - Drink!
• "Bumpuses!" - Drink 2!
• Scut Farkus "haw haw haw!"'s - Drink!

• You think Ralphie's mom might be on a cocktail of painkillers - Drink 3!
• Randy whines and/or cries - Drink!
• Someone's nose bleeds - Drink 2!
• Ralphie has one of his fantasties - Drink!
• Someone says, "You'll shoot your eye out!" - Drink 2!
• The furnace acts up - Drink 2!
• Randy refuses to eat - Drink 2!

• Ralphie breaks his glasses - Drink 2!
• "Hey, that's mine!" - Drink!
• The Old Man makes a thinly-veiled sarcastic comment - Drink!
• "Oh my God I shot my eye out!" - CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG!

 

 

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Holiday Movie Drinking Game: It's A Wonderful Life

My dog Clarence is named after the guardian angel in It's A Wonderful Life, so clearly this movie is a pretty important part of my holiday season.

Bapie!

My family would always watch it on Christmas night when we probably should've been at church or something, until one year we realized that at least half the room was asleep at any given time. So, the tradition was dropped. Maybe if we had added alcohol into the mix it would've stuck around a little longer, or (if nothing else) the pass-outs would've been understandable.  

• Someone adds "See?" at the end of their sentence, in true 1940s fashion - Drink!
• A bell rings - Drink! Side Note: This happens roughly 40 times throughout the movie. You're fucking welcome.
• One character physically assaults another - Drink 2!
• "Buffalo Gals" plays/is sung - Drink 2!
• People fall in water - Drink!
• George cries - Drink!
• Harry Bailey is hot. Like, really really hot - Drink!
• Someone says a wonderfully retro phrase like "holy mackerel" or "doggone it" or "what the sam hill" and you wish people still said those things - Drink 3!
• George says something awkward and borderline creepy in an effort to flirt with Mary - Drink!
• A prayer is said - Drink!
• Sam "hee haw"s - Drink 2!
• Someone mentions George's sore ear - Drink 2!
• Violet is a slut - Drink 3!
• George has more friends than you - CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG!

 

 

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Holiday Movie Drinking Game: The Santa Clause

I'm not ashamed to admit that The Santa Clause kept me believing in Santa for about a year and a half longer than I rightfully should have. There was too much believability to it, minus the painfully obvious fact that Bernard the Elf was Jewish (wrong holiday, bro). In my letters to Santa, I begged him to wake me up so we could chill out in his sleigh, talk about life, and see what he could do about making the My Size Barbie a few inches shorter (it was speculated that I might be half midget throughout the better part of elementary school and she was too tall for me). Memories!

What better way to relive the happier parts of the holiday season of yore than to pour yourself a rum and eggnog (light on the eggnog) and realize that there was some severe sexual tension going on between Scott Calvin and Judy the Elf.

• Charlie pouts and whines and is just fucking annoying in general - Drink!
• Side note: We could stop the game here and you would be sufficiently wasted after about 10 minutes.
• Someone refers to the idea that "seeing is believing" - Drink!
• "Claus" and "Clause" are used as homophones, leading some of us to still use them interchangeably/incorrectly to this day - Drink 3!
• Bernard kvetches - Drink 2!
• Scott asks, "What if I fall off the roof?" - Drink 2!
• A sexual innuendo is made - Drink! I see you, Disney.
• A drug/alcohol reference is made - Drink! I see you, Disney.
• Scott makes fun of Neil for being a douchebag - Drink!
• A reference to "Home Improvement" and/or Tim the Toolman Taylor is made - Drink 2!
• A kid in the real world has elf ears - Drink!
• Comet the Reindeer is sassy - Drink!
• Charlie's mom exasperatedly says, "Scott!" but you can tell she's still into it - Drink 2!
• E.L.F.S. Leader drops a badass one-liner - Drink 2!
• You want to remove the memory that they made two sequels after this, neither of which will ever live up to the original masterpiece - CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG!

But Daaaddd, I need to complain about everything to distract from my unfortunate bowl cut!

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How to Play Fat or Pregnant

I would say that about 96 percent of the time I’m a genuinely kindhearted person. I’m not Mother Theresa by any means, but I tip generously at restaurants, enjoy the sound a child makes when they’re running through a sprinkler, get excessive joy out of buying people Christmas presents, and apologize to road kill when I drive by even though it wasn’t my doing.

 

The other four percent of the time, I’m either sleeping or out socializing, and the real fun begins. Life is full of free entertainment, and one of my favorite people-watching games to play is a gem called Fat or Pregnant.

 

FOP originated five years ago while attending one of my first-ever college parties. Fascinated by the debauchery surrounding me, I was experiencing firsthand the realness of, “What’s your major?” used as a pick-up line and girls that were well-versed in the Freshman 15.

 

“Holy shit,” Young Skylar thought, “I had no idea fupas existed before age 40!”

 

What is even happening.

I inquired with a fellow party-goer as to whether or not a girl passing by was six beers in or six months along, and thus, FOP was born.  

 

Luckily, the corrupt good times didn’t end after graduation. It’s actually even more fun to play FOP post-college, because you can set up some pretty hefty wagers since the chances of the woman at The Greene Turtle at 1 a.m. on a Thursday seriously having a bun in the oven are that much greater.

 

Here’s how to play Fat or Pregnant, aka The Game to End All Games. Word of advice: don’t let anyone hear you making your guesses, as a knocked up woman can get pretty feisty, especially when she’s four Liquid Cocaines deep.

 

 

Step 1: Pick your target. The ideal candidate is wearing low-rise Miss Me jeans one size too small with a cami held together by loose threads and the will of God. There will be enough stomach protrusion to cause you to question the possibilities at stake, but not enough to make it obvious that Janelle from “Teen Mom” is her spirit animal. She will definitely try to break it down on the dance floor, most likely to a song by Pit Bull.

 

Step 2: Place your bet. Make sure you’re playing alongside someone who’s aware of the game and who lacks morals, or else it’s no fun. “Cami chick: Fat or Pregnant?” (Don’t point, you’re better than that). Weigh all of the options carefully. Ex: Is it a food baby? Did she have a big lunch? Does the belly look like the result of a cheat day that went on for five years or a girl who didn’t read her Plan B instructions carefully? Does her hair look thick and her nails strong? Is there ketchup on the corners of her mouth? Etc.

 

Step 3: Investigate. No, this doesn’t mean straight up scream across the room, “HEY GIRL BRIELLA IS THE TRENDIEST BABY NAME OF 2013 JUST A THOUGHT!” Discretion is key. Observe her behaviors: if she seems embarrassed by the fact that she’s drinking beer in public and copes with the shame by drinking more beer in public, chances are she’s knocked up. If she’s a Woo Girl who’s grinding up on your boyfriend and displaying her stretch-marked boobs as if she was the Venus de Milo, you’ve just got someone on your hands who used to be thin and has taken up a taste for Kalteen bars. It’s not her fault, but it’s not yours either, so play on.

 

 

Step 4: Repeat. FOP is like The Song that Doesn’t End on “Lamb Chop;” it just goes on and on my friends. And if you started playing it not knowing what it was, you’ll continue playing it forever just because you’re a quasi-bitch whose personal code of ethics is a bit suspect.

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The Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives Drinking Game

It’s no secret that I have a borderline unhealthy obsession with “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives” on the Food Network (only to be eclipsed by “Chopped,” which I have seen every episode of seven times and it’d be great if I was lying). My sophomore year of college, I would run on the treadmill while flipping back and forth between this piece of beautiful culinary television and “Man vs. Food” on the Travel Channel, pumping the speed up to eight miles per hour and ignoring the fact that this ironic combo was probably the reason why I have never and will never have six pack abs.

 

Watching the show as much as I do, I have become the self-proclaimed master on all things Guy Fieri. Some days I can’t stand him, others I wish he would tickle me with his bi-colored goatee and tell me I’m pretty. To be fair, that can be said for a lot of people.

 

Food and alcohol pairings are extremely sophisticated, which is why I can’t think of a better way to spend the next Saturday afternoon Triple D marathon than by cracking open a Bud Light and playing the Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives Drinking Game.

 

 

• You think,’ Is he actually driving that Chevy Camaro while talking to the camera? Seems unsafe’ – Drink!
• “Hey it’s Guy Fieri and we’re rollin out” – Drink!
• His sunglasses are on backwards – Drink!
• We all go to Flavor Town – Drink!
• He condescendingly describes how to put together a marinara sauce – Drink!   
• “Everybody in the pool” – Drink!
• He flirts with a female chef, regardless of her attractiveness and/or sexual orientation – Drink 2!
• The chef clearly despises him – Drink 5!
• One of his celebrity chef buddies makes a “random” guest appearance – Drink 2!
• He assumes The Hunch position – Drink!
• “Love, Peace, and Taco Grease” – Drink!
• You think, ‘He’ll probably suffocate on that huge bite of sandwich he just took’ – Drink!
• He jokes, “Do I have a little something on my face?” when it’s obviously everywhere – Drink 2!
• Something is so delicious he just grunts and points forcefully at the plate – Drink!
• He makes a dramatic display of the fact that he doesn’t like eggs – Drink 2!
• He mentions his college days at UNLV –Drink 2!
• He claims a sauce is so good that it could be eaten on a flip-flop – Drink!
• Something delicious is described as “Money!” – Drink!
• “Winner winner _______ dinner” – Drink 2!  
• He mentions his sons Hunter and Ryder – Drink 2!
• The end-of-show blooper reel rolls – CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG!