The Open Road

Christmas is a time for family. It brings people together. It’s a time for honoring traditions, whether it be a delicious meal of chicken stuffed manicotti on Christmas Eve or celebrating Jesus’ birthday at a local watering hole. This year, a new tradition was born unlike any other. It involved family and bringing people together, much in line with the spirit of Christmas. It started by way of carrying out a different tradition, and so the tale begins…

It was the Wednesday before Christmas; my brother and I were shopping for some last second gifts at Wal-Mart (Christmas Tradition!). My bro, a famous procrastinator*, pretty much asks me in the store what I want and buys it on the spot. He always tries to hide it at the checkout even though I'm standing right there, bless his heart.

*He once wrapped a shoebox with a $20 taped to the inside of the lid.

Sorry Brasha, the stores closed on me. Merry Xmas. What's thin and green and on Christmas can get you anytheen? Dolla Dolla Bills Ya'll.

As we are perusing through the DVD section, I spot a particularly intriguing film and check it out in more detail. There were a couple reasons why it was intriguing to me: A) it was starring Justin Timberlake and Jeff Bridges, and B) despite the semi-high profile actors/celebrities, I hadn’t ever heard of it. After further inspection, we saw that JT’s love interest in the film is the chick from Shooter (Kate Mara). You may know her as E’s new secretary on Entourage or as the widowed fiancé in We Are Marshall. Her being in the movie was enough for my bro to immediately insist that we buy it. I was quick to oblige him.

That's hot.

Obviously this movie was a straight to DVD release, if not, it was one of those playing in ‘select’ cities. It couldn’t have come to my city, I would have remembered. My bro and I knew what we were getting in to. I told him the movie was going to go one of two ways, depending on our attitude. We were determined to make it an AWESOME experience.

I like JT as an actor. I’ve seen Alpha Dog and from what I remember he held his own. Also, his skits on SNL are hilarious. Jeff Bridges is The DUDE so obviously he isn’t a stranger to comedy. The movie was dubbed a comedy, and we were ready to laugh, but we figured we needed some help (see: straight to DVD release comedy). We couldn’t just watch the movie like any other film, with some popcorn and candy, so we decided that the only way to guarantee the movie didn't make me stab my eyes out, was to develop an adult beverage consumption game to play while we watched. That is exactly what we did.

After only reading the back of the movie case, it was somewhat difficult to develop the rules of the game. We knew that JT was a minor league baseball player, and that he hadn’t seen his father (Bridges) in 5 years. Bridges was a good ol' boy, a boozer, womanizer, and a retired MLB player. Here are the rules we started with:

1. Someone says JT’s character name (Carlton) – 1 drink
2. JT strikes someone out (we guessed he was a pitcher) – 2 drinks
3. JT gives up a bomb (or anyone hits a bomb) – 5 drinks
4. When JT and Bridges are reunited, you must drink from the time they both see each other until one of them speaks
5. You had to be drinking anytime JT and Kate Mara were making out

As it turns out the only baseball in the movie is shown in the first 30 seconds, and JT is not a pitcher. We did get to use rule 3 once as there was a highlight of Bridges hitting a homer, but rule 2 never came in to play. Much to our chagrin, neither did rule 5 (on camera at least). Those were minor speed bumps. As we got more of a feel for the characters, new rules developed quickly. Here are the rules we ended with, in addition to one through five:

6. Random famous people in the movie that we didn’t previously know about – 5 drinks
7. Bridges tells a joke – 1 drink
8. Bridges uses an analogy – 1 drink
9. My bro or I call any part of the plot – 10 drinks

Rules 6-9 pretty much made the movie. Rule 6 was made after Ted Danson was the minor league manager in the first scene of the movie. Later, Lyle Lovett made an appearance as a bartender. It was clear 2 minutes after meeting Bridges' character, that rule 7 and 8 were essential to the enjoyment of the film. Jeff Bridges was not talking in this movie if he wasn’t telling a joke or using some kind of metaphor or simile, usually combining the two for a double whammy. Rule 9 was added so we could make nonstop predictions for a chance to consume more.

Sample prediction: My bro called that they would show a camera shot of cows while they were driving down the middle of a country road, and literally 3 seconds after he said that, there was a shot of a countryside pasture with about 30 cows grazing. It doesn’t seem like that was very difficult prediction now, but at the time it was the greatest call of the century. We yelled so loud that I think we woke my sister, who was 1 floor up and at the other end of the house.

It took us roughly three hours to finish the 90 minute movie because we had become, hmmm how shall I put this lightly, oh yes I’ve got the correct word now, drunk. We had to keep re-watching parts because we didn’t hear what joke Bridges was telling or we needed to see the shot of JT and Kate Mara’s faces in the car to confirm that they hooked up the night before (even though it wasn’t shown) validating our plot prediction, thus making use of rule 9.

The great part about rule 9 was, if both parties were in agreement that the plot was correctly predicted, we had 10 drinks. As it turns out, my bro and I were really seeing eye to eye that night (see: bro’s cow call scene). You could say we were really 'n' sync..... a-thank-you. We had polished off a 5th of Bacardi and were well in to part of a 1.75 by the 45 minute mark, just to give you an idea of how many jokes Bridges was telling. In fact, we were so torn up, we had finished watching the movie and were naturally on youtube watching JT’s SNL skits when we realized we didn’t remember how the movie ended sooooooo, we watched the last 25 minutes again. True story.

I can’t say for sure whether or not any of you will have the same experience we did. It depends on your attitude and how strong you mix your drinks. I can say for sure that I had an awesome time, and that I recommend this activity to anyone up for the ride of a lifetime. Maybe you had to be there. All I know is that I was there and I had to tell the world.

I can't figure out which one is photo-shopped. The one with Bridges smiling? Or the one with him pissed off. The bottom one definitely screams COMEDY!