Bipartisanship at the bottom of a bottle of beer

For many, the sacred tradition of the State of the Union address has very little to do with the grand history of college drinking games.

Marc Melzer '02 and Howard Deutsch '02, however, showed that presidential eloquence can be perfectly compatible with student inebriation.

Suffering through Intersession ostensibly devoted to their senior theses, Melzer and Deutsch took it upon themselves to add a little more humor and excitement to President George W. Bush's address to the nation with a new drinking game.

The two worked together to come up with the game rules prescribing drinks whenever certain phrases and actions are said or done in the address. Anytime Bush uttered certain words — "terror," "stimulus package" and "Hamid Karzai" to name a few — players were instructed to take a single drink.

The game also called for players to finish their bottle and hit themselves over the head should Bush say, "Don't mess with Texas." Unfortunately, observed the website, Bush did not use that particular phrase in his speech.

When Melzer put the rules for the game on the website www.princeton.edu/~mamelzer/sotudg/ at 2 p.m. on the day of the State of the Union address, he never expected the ensuing landslide of enthusiasm. The site had 8,000 hits by 9 p.m., the start of the address, and currently has more than 46,000 hits.

"Once we started getting good reactions from friends, we stepped up our efforts to get the word out," Melzer said. "The majority of it, though, was word-of-e-mail."

Several websites also posted links to the site along with minor commentary, the most notable being CollegeHumor.com, AndrewSullivan.com and the National Review's corner page.

Melzer and Deutsch have received e-mails about their game, most of them in praise and drunken euphoria. The two posted an e-mail on their website showing the incoherent result of a player who perhaps imbibed nearly all of the total 109 drinks that the game tallied for the address: "25 minute into speech and slipping beneath tabl3, thanks for great game. Sent out ot F&F cros country and feed (drink?) back very [positive. Sorry about what spel chk did not catch, you inderstand tho."

Though this timed beer bonanza is not the usual University festivity associated with Beirut and Robopound, for Deutsch the game was about more than mere competition and drunkenness — it was about bipartisanship and civic responsibility.

"The way I see it, if even one politically apathetic individual was enticed into watching [the address] as a result of our drinking game, then the grotesque state of my shriveled liver and the plethora of brain cells that I so brutally killed off by playing along will have been well worth it," he said.

Deutsch concluded, "With Marc as a Democrat and myself as a Republican, this drinking game is an example of how conservatives and liberals can come together on important issues and get results. Bipartisanship truly can succeed."