College students, already provided too many opportunities to drink alcohol, have created some new ones: Whenever a guest throws a chair on "Jerry Springer." Whenever anyone says "stat" on "ER." Whenever Bill Clinton refers to "the American people."
As if we needed further proof that TV kills brain cells, the drinking game -- that perennial college dormitory icebreaker -- has been assimilated into the information age. Pick a TV show -- or a movie, a radio program or a sports team, for that matter -- and chances are, someone's created a drinking game about it.
As any 21-year-old can tell you, drinking games are supposedly fun ways to consume mass amounts of alcohol. They also can be considered training exercises for alcoholics, and contributors to an increase in casualties on campus. Just this week, two dozen Boston area colleges announced a large-scale plan to curtail underage and binge drinking.
Traditional competitive drinking games such as Quarters still exist at campus parties, but for young computer geeks who speak popular culture as their lingua franca, drinking games based on useless knowledge -- shared useless knowledge -- are preferable to genuine human interaction.
"The people who create these games have too much time on their hands, drink a lot of booze and watch too much TV," says Martin Espinoza, basically describing the typical college student. Espinoza, 21, a lab administrator for Cisco Systems in Santa Cruz, Calif., 21, a California administrator who runs a drinking game Web site.
Drinking diversions based on television shows have been around for years: The "Hi Bob!" game, in which participants drink whenever Bob is greeted on "The Bob Newhart Show," is probably the best known. But recently there has been an explosion in such games -- some obviously invented just for grins -- as evidenced by the hundreds of Web sites like Espinoza's.
"This is where TV and the Internet are made for each other," says Robert Thompson, the director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television. "Many of these games have existed in the folk culture, but the Internet makes it possible to turn every broadcast into an excuse for a party game. The Internet is using TV as its raw material."
To their credit, some who create the new games are often more interested in ridiculing popular culture than in drinking. There are games with so many requirements for imbibing that they clearly are more theoretical than practical.
Of the game he invented based on the show "Friends," Tang says sheepishly, "I tried playing it once, but it was too confusing because the rules weren't too well thought out. We were just constantly drinking."
The range of games shows a certain giddy creativity. There are games modeled after "Days of Our Lives," "The Dukes of Hazzard," "Hawaii Five-O," the song "Roxanne" by the Police, a visit to Disneyland, "Lord of the Dance," James Cameron films, Hardy Boys novels, the 1996 presidential debates, the Weather Channel and a Van Halen concert. The Ultimate Drinking Game Web site, which receives about 240 visits a day, lists 477 games.
A sampling of games and some of their requirements:
The "Dr. Laura" Drinking Game: Drink if radio shrink Dr. Laura Schlessinger insults the caller directly.
The "Star Wars" Drinking Game: Drink when someone does something apparently suicidal that turns out to be a good idea.
The Dennis Miller Drinking Game: Every time Miller runs his hand through his hair, drink a shot or take off an article of clothing.
The Gulf War Drinking Game (retired in 1991): If someone on TV says "Scud," take a swig of beer and change the channel. If someone says, "Patriot," everyone in the room must salute, and the last person to salute takes a shot.
The Jerry Lewis Telethon Drinking Game: Drink when Jerry makes a joke that only Ed McMahon laughs at. Drink twice when Jerry sings "You'll Never Walk Alone."
The Denver Broncos Drinking Game: Drink when Terrell Davis runs the ball on consecutive plays; drink when anything is said about the "West Coast offense."
The most ironic game may be the one based on the film "Leaving Las Vegas," about an alcoholic who drinks himself to death: Take a sip every time Nicolas Cage's character is curled up in a fetal position, wakes up in front of the refrigerator, etc.
There has been little research on the connection between drinking games and alcohol abuse, but the link is fairly obvious -- and troublesome. "The way college students drink is often inattentive to their own body's reaction to alcohol," says Mark Goldman, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida at Tampa who co-chairs the college drinking subcommittee of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
In other words, normal drinking proceeds one drink at a time, and the drinker typically passes out when the alcohol level becomes threatening. But when a fraternity makes its pledges polish off a keg or down shots in a certain amount of time -- or when a group is supposed to drink every time a character shows her bra strap on "Melrose Place" -- then the imbibers pay less attention to how the alcohol is affecting them, and might ingest so much that they die from alcohol poisoning.
Many of the Web sites contain caveats such as "I maintain this list for scholarly purposes. I am not responsible for what you do with it." They also emphasize that these games can be played without alcohol.
"This site does not provide access to anything illegal," says Michael Grabois, 32, the founder of the Ultimate Drinking Game site, who trains astronauts for a NASA contractor in Houston. "It doesn't give people beers to drink."
The main intent of these games, if not to get people drunk, is to poke fun at the limitations of television, its reliance on formula, catch phrase and repetition. Homer Simpson says "Doh!" Scooby Doo eats Scooby Snacks. Rosie O'Donnell calls someone a "cutie patootie." On "Star Trek," a newly discovered planet is "much like Earth." Pundits blame Congress.
"The games celebrate one of the things we most disdain about TV but also love about it," says Syracuse's Thompson: "its incredible predictability, the comforting sense that it keeps repeating itself over and over again."