Tag Archives: alcohol

King’s Cup

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/15/15
Primary Language: English

“You have like a big, giant cup or pitcher, typically in the middle of a circle at a party and everybody who sits around has their own drink, and you take a deck of cards that are mixed up in the center of the table around the pitcher and you go around the circle, one by one, and you pick up a card and depending on what card you choose will depend on what you have to do with your drink. So if you draw an ace, like that means that you drink, just you. If you draw a two, that means you get to choose someone to drink with you. If you draw a three, then you choose someone to drink. If you draw like a four, like you can come up with like the different rules, but the way I’ve played it like a four . . . all the women drink. If it’s a five, all the men drink. If it’s a six, you do categories, so somebody, like the person who pulls the card would say, ‘Animals’ and then you have to go around in a circle and at like a really quick speed name an animal off the top of your head and when someone pauses or can’t come up with one, they have to drink. Um, and after they drink they pour a little bit in the middle. And then if you pull . . . it goes on, till the end, but if you pull a king, you just have to pour in the middle pitcher.”

 

Interviewer: “What are the other cards?”
“I don’t know all of them off the top of my head, but I know you can, like, there’s one that’s like . . . a rhyme and so like you can say, ‘fish’ and the person next to you has to rhyme with it and say like, ‘dish’ and then it goes around in a circle and if you can’t come up with a word, or can’t come up with a word that rhymes, you have to drink and then pour some in. And so at the end, the point is basically whoever draws the last king of the whole game has to drink the pitcher in the middle and it’s really disgusting because there’s usually like different alcohols involved so it’ll be like a mixture of like whiskey, and like tequila, and beer, and something that’s not tasty . . . There’s [a card] where like if you start to drink the person next to you has to start to drink and when you stop, they can stop, but it goes around like consecutively in the circle, um, so the last person can’t stop until everyone else has stopped in the circle, if that makes sense . . . I wanna say like ten, like the card ten, you drink for ten seconds. Um, I think seven rhymes with ‘heaven’ and I think we all drink. And then one card you have to do, like, ‘Never Have I Ever.” So like you put up five fingers and you say, ‘Never have I ever . . . kissed a girl’ and then anyone who’s kissed a girl, despite your gender, um, has to drink. And you do it, you have, um, you do it until your five fingers are down. And that’s King’s Cup.”

 

The informant was a 21-year-old USC student who studies communication and minors in dance and is a part of a prominent sorority on campus. She grew up in a relatively small town in southern California and was the captain of a prominent sports organization. She has danced for her entire life and, when she was growing up, would often drive for long stretches of time with her family to dance competitions. This interview took place late one night in my apartment’s living room when I began asking her about different games she knew. When I asked her where she learned “King’s Cup,” she said, “I couldn’t tell you who specifically, like a name, but, um, at my first party that I went to in high school, um, it was a game that was very often played and it’s typically more fun with the more people who play it, and so I was kind of like forced into playing it. And so I was forced into like learning the rules and for like my 21st birthday was when I played it with my closest friends and like my mom and we were all playing it. And we kind of just like took the rules that I knew and like would put a twist on it. So like we would change the card numbers, so instead of, I think the typical is like an ace being you drink, we would say like that would be the rhyme one. Like we’d confuse which ones were which, but we would write it down so we knew which card we drew.”

 

When asked why she practices it, she said, “It’s fun and it’s like a social atmosphere and it’s supposed to be funny to like . . . ‘Cause you could be the one who pours in a ton of alcohol and be like, ‘Somebody’s getting fucked up tonight! . . . I mean, screwed up tonight,’ and then, um, you end up screwing yourself over because you’re the one who ends up drawing the last king so then you have to drink the pitcher which is you pouring your whole entire drink basically in there trying to screw someone else over. So it’s supposed to be like funny and it’s like a game of fate, you kind of just, you don’t want to pick the wrong card, but there’s no one to blame but yourself if you do. I don’t know, I feel like people aren’t super serious about drinking the pitcher at the end because everyone kind of knows that if we’re all drinking different drinks it’s probably not gonna actually happen. But also like, people get sketched out, like they don’t want to pour all their drink in knowing the last king’s still out there, you know?”

I asked her what she thinks it means, and she said, “We’re all alcoholics! No, uh, I think it’s uh, I think it means . . . instead of standing around and drinking and talking or like forcing conversation, it’s like an excuse to be in a group and drink whether you know the person across from you or not, it’s just  like a group game and you don’t have to know everyone in the game to play it.”

 

Looking at King’s Cup in particular is really interesting to me because it is an extremely popular drinking game within parts of my generation, yet I have never met two people who play it the same way. Despite the fact that the informant is sure there are some official rules somewhere that would be the “correct” way to play, she does not know what these are and it does not seem to matter. What matters is that there are specific rules and actions associated with every card that someone pulls, and that these are strictly followed once the game begins. In addition to this game being entertaining and a reason for a group of people to get drunk together, it also acts as a way of dividing up the group and defining the people playing it. Many of the cards pulled mean only a part of the group drinks, e.g. the men or the women present, and this draws a subtle, but perceptible line between the people playing. The frequent involvement of other games such as “Never Have I Ever” occurs to reveal embarrassing or “secret” information about the participants to the rest of the group, thereby bonding them to one another or singling out someone at whom everyone else can laugh.

La Llorona- Colombia

Nationality: Colombian
Age: 52
Occupation: Spanish Teacher
Residence: Davenport, Florida
Performance Date: 4/28/2015
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Informant (“M”) is a 52 year old woman from Bogota, Colombia. She moved to the United States in 1992, at the age of 30. She has two kids, a boy and a girl, who she raised in the United States. She has four siblings, two brothers and two sisters, she was the second born. She has a 102 year old Grandmother. Collection was over Skype.

Collector will be specified as “S”. Collector did not speak during this portion.

Transcript:

“M: A cousin always visit us, and he always scared us with a sort of story. He would use the crying woman or the Llorona… I remember he turned the lights off and everyone in the living room, we’d sit down in the living room, and he would repeat the same stories.

“Could you tell again the story of the Llorona?” [said by “M” and her siblings]

” …everyone needs to be quite, never look outside in the windows, she could be outside there.” [Said by the Cousin]

…

The story was of a woman tha…. Uh… let me see thinking about how is this story…. Yeah they say that the husband took the kids from her. Yeah, and she killed herself, and she appeared every night in the cemetery, and she crying “where are my kids, where are my kids?” and the more funny thing is, my cousin was so funny, he said: “I was drunk one day, I was crossing the cemetery”.

He wanted to take a shortcut, so he took the cemetery. And he said the short way was in the cemetery, and when he was passing he heard the voice say “where is my kids, where are my kids?” . He said he was so scared he peed in his pants, and he wasn’t anymore drunk, and he said he ran like a crazy. But the funniest thing is he peed in the pants, when he went in the house, and his in the blankets.

But he doesn’t know if that was real or not, because he was drunk.

That story start in the 18th century, they said that was the time that that happened, in the 18th century.

He told us a lot of stories, that is the one I remember more.

”

 

Analysis:

La Llorona is a myth that has heavily permeated Latin culture, being a very common piece of Folklore in these countries (Kirtley, 1960). La Llorona, or the cying woman, is referenced here with the assumption that the person collecting the folklore knows about her origins, and her ability to be interested as a generic sort of scare in a funny situation only serves to reinforce her ubiquity in Colombian culture. The covering of the windows showed that at the very least, she believe the story could have been true at the time it was being told to her. I should also note, “M”s explanation of her origin story was simply at my request, and did not reflect her original approach to the story (the portion directly after the ellipse).

 

 

 

Kirtley, B. F. (1960). ” La Llorona” and Related Themes. Western Folklore, 155-168.

MAKING WINE

Nationality: Italian-American, Portuguese-American, but a couple generations removed
Age: 55
Occupation: Engineering College Professor
Residence: Boston, MA
Performance Date: 3/25/15
Primary Language: English

ABOUT THE INFORMANT:

My informant is a father of three who lives just outside of Boston with his wife of over 30 years. He is originally from Cambridge, MA, but moved to central MA when he was younger. Graduating from Tufts, Northwestern, and the getting his PHD at MIT, he is an engineering professor.

EXAMPLE:

Interviewee: I’m gonna tell you about making wine.

Interviewer: Okay.

Interviewee: It would always be in October, mid-October or so. That’s when the grapes were in season. We were in Cambridge and we would come home from school. I was like in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade. Kindergarten through third grade we would do this.

So we would come home from school and the crates of grates would be stacked up against the house. And you would know that that was the day.

Interviewer: Did you know that it was gonna be that day? Did you know it in advance?

Interviewee: No, you didn’t know that that was the day until you saw the crates coming home from school.

My grandfather would go to the rail yard. It was over by Lechmere were Science Park is. East Cambridge. So he would go to the train yard and go to the trains that would bring in the fruits and stuff in. So he would get his whole stack of grapes.

Interviewer: When did he immigrate to America from Italy?

Interviewee: He must have been in his 20’s, right? So like early 1910’s because he was born in 1890.

So those crates would be stacked against the wall. And you could actually stick your fingers against the grapes and pull them out and eat them. That was always the first order of business. And my grandfather would actually encourage us to because they were so sweet and fresh.

So then my father would come home from work. And then my two uncles would come. And they would have to get the grapes into the cellar. So they would take the cellar window off. And then they would slide the grape bushels in through and get them down into the basement. There would have to be someone in the basement side too. Making sure the crates got through the window.

The next order was to grind the grapes. The grinder originally was a hand ground machine. So you would have to dump the grapes and then hand grind them. Then you put them in a crate to ferment after.

But my father put a motor on the grinder so you could do it in one night. And at the time we lived on the first floor, my grandfather lived on the top floor, but we were on the first, so it would smell like grape juice. Because we were doing it in the basement, so the whole house would smell like grapes. It was exciting. And so sweet.

A week or two later, my uncles would come back with my father and grandfather. And now they needed to put the ground grapes from the barrel into the press. So in order to turn the press it was kind of like a screwdriver on the side. And the juice would just flow and flow. But they would take turns, turning the press, making sure they could get every last bit of wine out of it.

And my grandfather would collect them in these special tin buckets that he would then pour into storage barrels. And the press, that had like a screen on it, to collect the debris and chunks of grape. So you had to open the press and then clean it off after every single batch. And two people would have to try and turn the screwdriver handle to get every last bit of out of the grapes. And the juice would go into the storage barrel.

Then, they would take the ground grapes and press them. Just to get all of the wine out. And we would watch them and just drink grape juice all night. We could actually get a little buzz. Just because it had been sitting there for a couple of weeks, fermenting.

My grandfather had these gallon jugs,like glass jugs, and he would fill them up with wine. You didn’t buy wine ever. Even after we moved to Medway, he would just load us up with wine when we saw him.

He had this house in Nantasket, on the beach, that he bought when I was like 1. He would move there for the summer in May and we would move in the summer. And we would have to move all of these jugs and jugs of wine. And sometimes we would have to go to Cambridge to give him a refill.

We would use it for everything though. Cooking and drinking. It went to the whole family. At Christmas people who didn’t have their wine would get more. He would take you down to the basement and fill you up.

Eventually the barrels got old and let air in, in the end you could only cook with it. It wasn’t as flavorful because the barrels were old.

But those were exciting weeks, watching them press the wine, the smell of grapes in the house.

ANALYSIS:

This clearly brought my informant back to his childhood, specifically before he moved from the immigrant neighborhood of Cambridge that he lived in with the rest of his family. The smells of the grapes circulating throughout the house, “lasting for days,” is definitely a memory of nostalgia for him. But there was definitely a sense of tradition here. Wine is clearly important to his grandfather, and therefore to the rest of the family as it was a patriarchy. As a little boy, there is definitely something striking about watching any older man partake in a sort of tradition or ritual together. Every little boy wants to do what the big kids do. My informant certainly enjoyed being part of the ritual, drinking the freshly pressed wine, eating the grapes, even if he could not really help.

For his grandfather, this is most likely the continuation of the old world brought to the new world. I would not be surprised if he did the exact same thing growing up with his father and so on and so on. Sure he had to adapt, going to the train yard to get the grapes, putting the motor on the grinder, but I’m sure that the tradition and ritual are very constant.

It is also interesting that this wine flowed through this family. It did not stop and start with the men. Nobody bought wine ever. His wine was the whole family’s. A sense of belonging and identity, this is his family’s wine, all through a drink.

Trick or Drink

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Producer
Residence: Seattle
Performance Date: 4.20.2014
Primary Language: English

Item:

“Eventually it got super boring and some dad drank too much and they had to take care of him, so we left.”

The informant’s hometown had a tradition on Halloween catered toward fathers in the neighborhood. Mothers would typically stay home, passing out candy to kids, while fathers would take the children out for drink or treating. However, at each stop at a father’s house in the group, they would Trick or Drink, which involved going into the house and spending a short while having pre-prepared drinks. The dads would usually prepare the drinks at their respective homes before gathering up to go out, and when they got there on the journey with the kids, the moms would bring the drinks out for all the dads. As the drinking sessions got longer and the dads a little less “focused”, the kids would break off and go out alone or with minimal supervision to continue their trick or treating. The starting house was determined simply by cycling through ones that hadn’t been done in recent years.

 

Context:

The tradition started a few generations before the informant. It served as a way for dads to spend time with their kids but also have fun with each other in the process. The informant remembers it being a rather high energy night until the dads slowed down and took longer at each house, to the point where to kids got bored and wanted to go back out on their own. She wasn’t sure what kinds of drinks were being made since she was so young, but just knows there were a lot of them. Other people in the room chimed in when she mentioned this tradition saying they had looser but similar things that would happen in their hometowns.

 

Analysis:

It’s a little funny how formal this tradition is. While other people present for the performance noted similar tendencies from their hometowns, this particular one had ample preparation, planning, and repetition. While it wasn’t the case that this was the only way the dads could be incentivized to go out with their children, it was obvious that making sure their kids had fun and got candy was not the focus of their night. To a certain extent, it’s a night where the fathers can act more like kids, but with the added benefit of alcohol. The fact that every year at least one dad drank too much and had to be taken care of is also a bit humorous. It wasn’t clear what level of supervision the kids had after they abandoned the dads, or why they needed supervision earlier if they were comfortable going out later alone.

Kings

Nationality: American
Age: 25
Occupation: Bartender
Residence: London, UK
Performance Date: March 13th, 2013
Primary Language: English

This was received via Facebook message from my informant, and is a drinking game that she played with her friends in the UK during university.

“Kings… A deck of cards in arranged in a circle facedown with an empty cup in the middle. Before you play you decide what each card value is… Some are normally agreed upon, some vary per group…So like 2 is you (pick somebody to drink 1 fingers worth of their drink), three me, four floor (whoever touches the floor last drinks), 5 guys drink, 6 chicks drink, 7 heaven (point up), 8, 5 fingers of never have I ever, 9… There are lots of random ones like funny accents (must speak only in an accent til the next 9 is picked), 10 waterfall (first person drinks, next, etc, until the first stops, then next stops… Etc), j make a rule (can’t say “drink”, can’t point, can’t say first names… Etc. break one and you drink), and some other random ones for Q and A, king you put some of your drink in the middle cup. Last king picked has to drink the cup. That is pretty common across the UK, with varying rules for each number. Also fun if you can help design (so I don’t like accents and we normally don’t use the cup because its gross)”

This drinking game is very complicated and flexible, changing every time it is played and changing based on who is playing it. Essentially, each card drawn from a normal playing card deck has a rule assigned to it, and that rule must be obeyed. If that rule is broken, the person who breaks it must take a drink. This game is popular because it is highly adaptable, can be used with any type of alcohol, and only really requires alcohol and a deck of playing cards. It’s also easily customizable, as the players can assign their own rules to each card to incorporate inside jokes. This kind of drinking game is a bonding experience, as the players will get increasingly drunk together while playing a potentially embarrassing game in which alliances are often formed between players against others. It isn’t one generally played with strangers, as other drinking games such as beer pong can be; rather, it is meant to cement already existing friendship ties among a medium sized group.

It can also include other drinking games within it, such as the reference of ‘five fingers of never have I ever’, which is a drinking game in which one person says that they have never done something, and those in the group that have done it take a drink (or put a finger down, as in this case where they would each have five fingers up).