If you need more of an excuse to drink during Mardi Gras, you’re not doing it right. But if you want more of an excuse to drink during Mardi Gras, this is the game for you. All you have to do is keep your eyes open — not always an easy task after 17 Hurricanes — and rope some friends into playing with you. Just be warned that the loser … who will also, arguably, be the winner … might get lost somewhere in the French Quarter only to turn up 20 years later as one of the city’s many colorful street performers. Or as a heroin-addicted prostitute.
• If you flash anyone “as a joke,” take two shots.
Nobody wants to see your ghostly February torso, and they won’t give you any beads if you force them to look at it.
• If you get roped into a drunken argument with an evangelist, drink.
There are a lot of them wandering the streets, looking to save souls, and you’re best off not engaging with them. Regardless, be respectful — and that means you should not use their giant crosses as jungle gyms.
• If you’re straight but you accidentally walk into a gay bar, order a drink and drink.
They serve the same booze as any other bar. And hey, if you’re lucky, someone might even buy the drink for you.
• Every time you see a costume that looks like it should be petted or plucked, drink.
Luckily, holding a drink will occupy your petting hand so you don’t get beaten up for drunkenly groping someone.
• Every time you see a dude trying to find a discreet hiding place for his camcorder, finish your drink.
How do you spot a guy trying to take hidden video? Well, he may be wearing a leather duster. Or he may have painfully obvious hair plugs. Or he may be breathing through his mouth. Or …
• Every time you see a parade, drink until it passes.
Okay, maybe that’s a little extreme. Instead, drink every time you see one stop moving.
• Every time you see someone passed out in the street, drink.
Think of it as an acknowledgment that you too may be sprawled over a sewer grate in a few hours.
• If you ask a woman on a balcony to take her top off only to discover that she is, in fact, a dude, finish your drink.
Aw, don’t beat yourself up! Mardi Gras is the cross-dressing Oscars, so the trannys are really bringing their A game.
• Every time you pass a karaoke bar in which someone is warbling “Walking in Memphis,” enter that bar and do a shot of Jack Daniels.
If you’re on Bourbon Street, this’ll actually happen shockingly often.
• Every time you see someone picking strings of grimy beads off the ground, drink.
Picking up beads on the ground is actually a huge faux pas (that’s French for “stupid thing you shouldn’t do, moron”).
• Every time you see someone drinking, drink.
Just kidding. We want you to have a good time, not die.
