boilermakers and depth charges

[Gregory {Greg} Downing]

At 08:31 PM 3/31/2000 +0100, Lynne Murphy <lynnem at COGS.SUSX.AC.UK> wrote:
>Hi Bob - drinking game in which each participant either drinks a shot or
>chugs a beer everytime someone says "hi Bob" on the Bob Newhart Show.
>Since Bob often walked into crowded rooms (group therapy and the like) I
>(as the nondrinker) got to be scorekeeper and let people know how many
>shots they had to do. Last one conscious wins.  Of course, there are
>many variants on this, depending on what's being rerun on TV at the
>time.  We also had seasonal variations for Charlie Brown holiday
>specials.
>

A few weeks ago I read about a more contemporary version of this. In a
recent magazine interview that was also reported on in some newspapers, the
female lead in the US sitcom "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" reported a similar
game in which every member of a group of people watching the show agrees to
have another good swig every time the talking cat on the show says something
-- which I gather is not infrequently.

I wonder whether these kinds of games are always being reinvented from
scratch without any knowledge of the "history" of them, or whether people in
younger age-cohorts deliberately update older games? I wouldn't be shocked
if versions of this particular game already existed in radio days....

On a radio business report this morning, I heard the reporter jocularly
refer to a plane flight that is often used by those travelling between (so
to speak) California's Silicon Valley and NYC's Silicon Alley as "the nerd
bird." Hapax legomenon, or neologism I hadn't heard before?


Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at is2.nyu.edu