Shuffling Towards the Weekend Drinking Game!
Friday, June 30th, 2006
In our endless quest to discover new and exciting ways to make your life more fun, we’ve come up with a saucy new spin on our beloved Shuffling Towards the Weekend feature. See, there’s only one thing we love more than shuffling our iPods and sharing the resulting 5 five songs, and that thing is booze. So in a moment of inspired drunken genius, we’ve developed a fun way to combine our two great loves into one awesome drinking game. Best part is you can play with friends or (if you’re like us and tend to do most of your drinking alone while surfing the Internet) all by yourselves! See how the game works after the jump, then knock yourselves out with it (maybe literally). But don’t forget to post your first five resulting songs in the comments section so people without iPods can play along too!
Further instructions for how to play can be found below, but basically you just take a drink whenever your shuffle results in a song that matches any of the following criteria:
- Any song you have never actually listened to prior this moment.
- Any song by a band you used to like, but now think is lame (drink twice if you just tell people you think the band is lame, but secretly still like them. Drink three times if it’s The Strokes).
- Any song whose title features the word “Love”, or any of its variations (drink twice if you hate that song).
- Any song you downloaded from a music blog (drink twice if it was Stereogum).
- Any song that’s supposed to be “ironic” (drink twice if it is Alanis Morissette’s song “Ironic”, and stop being so f*cking literal).
- Any song your parents have probably heard before (drink twice if they liked it).
- Any song from an album that you own in its entirety, but didn’t pay for (whether it was downloaded illegally or received free of charge).
- Any song that is the only one on your iPod by the band that performed it (drink twice if that band is Gnarles Barkley).
- Any song by a “jam band” (drink twice if the song is longer than 6 minues long, and take a shower you filthy hippie).
- Any song by a band whose name starts with “The” and ends in a plural noun (ie. The White Stripes, The Vines, The Shins, The Beatles, etc.)
- Any great song by a bad band, or any bad song by a great band.
- Any song you’ve ever put on a mixtape (drink twice if it is by Coldplay).
- Any song performed by anyone who’s ever been on TRL (drink twice if…wait a minute, you’re not old enough to be drinking!)
- Any hip-hop song performed by a white person (drink twice if it’s one of those stupid “acoustic covers” where some sensitive rock dude like Ben Folds is trying to be ironically funny).
- Any song you’ve paid more than $20 to hear performed live (drink twice if you were disappointed by the result).
- Any song released between the years 1980 and 1989 (drink twice if it happens to be Patrick Swayze’s “She’s Like the Wind” - and feel good about the fact that you’re just chillaxin’ with some brews and listening to an awesome tune).
SINGLE-PLAYER VERSION
For this bare-bones method of playing the game, all you need is booze, an iPod, access to this post and the ability to rationalize the fact that you’ll be drinking alone, on the Internet. Simply shuffle your songs over and over, taking a drink whenever the results match any of the above criteria. Hell, you don’t even need an iPod - simply apply the same rules to the songs readers have posted in the comments section of this post, then take a drink for every one that applies.
MULTI-PLAYER VERSION
Same as above, except everyone takes turns and you’re not drinking alone - yay!
LIGHTNING ROUND VERSION
If you have one or more friends hanging around and lots of drinking to do, you can also play a series of rotating one-on-one “lightning rounds”. The two combatants will simultaneously shuffle their iPods, then have their third friend act as a judge, determining which person has the superior song. The loser drinks, then the process is repeated over and over again until you’ve reached a point of violent intoxication that might endanger the judge, should his musical tastes continue to differ from your own. VERY IMPORTANT: We realize that there is a certain amount of subjectivity involved with one person determining which songs are superior to others, but that’s part of the fun. The judge is always right, no matter how much you think he or she is a moron. If you have enough people, try putting together a more diverse panel of judges to vote on each song - but if it’s just the three of you, remember it might not be the best idea to entrust judgement powers to that friend who’s really into Dave Matthews.
WARNING: Never, ever attempt operating a vehicle or communicating with anyone you used to date after playing the lightning round version of the game.
Look, all the fireworks and rock music this weekend are probably going to take a toll on your hearing, so why not try a little pre-emptive warm up exercise so that your poor ears can build up a bit of a tolerance to all the pain and suffering you’re going to inflict on them this weekend? Might I suggest turning up your volume and listening to 
I’m mad at MTV. Back in the good old days (the 90’s) I’d get excited for holiday weekends because you knew it meant MTV would roll out one of their patented Top 200 Videos Of All Time specials that would air non-stop and inevitably finish with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Thriller” in the number 1 spot. Those were the best! Nowadays, they don’t do that anymore. In fact, the only marathon I could find on TV this weekend is the Grounded For Life marathon on Fox and honestly, that just doesn’t do it for me. 
Rob Schneider was