Are parlor games even a thing anymore? They can't be, because parlors — formal rooms reserved for entertaining — have pretty much vanished, turned into living rooms where we slump in front of the flatscreen (I originally typed "slump in front of the television" but "television" suddenly felt wrong, like calling a refrigerator an "icebox.")
Is entertaining still a practice? Occasionally we invite people over, after realizing we haven't seen them in years. And even more occasionally we are invited over. But work isn't the only realm where we've retreated indoors to play Wordle.
Or maybe that's just me. Maybe you are partying with your pals like Holly Golightly. I don't want to forget Thoreau's essential dictum about never mistaking a private ailment for an infected atmosphere.
Perhaps I should define my terms. I think of parlor games as the silly challenges hosts impose upon their guests at cocktail parties. (Cocktail parties! I remember those. Thirty years ago we had cocktail parties and invited our many friends. I'm sure young people still have them. At least I hope they still do. Cocktail parties were fun).
Now we have family gatherings — lots of them. For Jewish holidays — Rosh Hashanah is coming up. Passover in the spring. Beer and brats at Hanukkah. And secular holidays. Fourth of July. Or the Sunday before last, a joint Labor Day/Oldest Son in Town barbecue. Not a lot of people — 15 friends and relatives; we might have had 10 more, but several families were out of town. We grilled hot dogs, chicken and salmon burgers.
My sister-in-law and her eldest daughter had been shopping at the Skokie International Market on Lincoln Avenue, and were struck by the array of unusually flavored chips. Wanting a pretext to try them without saddling themselves with lots of bags of chips they could never eat, they concocted a game: guess the flavor, dubbing it "The Matching Game."
She prepared eight paper bowls, numbered one through eight. Then gave us sheets headlined "Matching Game: Identify the flavor of chips in each bowl!!"
Perhaps I should define my terms. I think of parlor games as the silly challenges hosts impose upon their guests at cocktail parties. (Cocktail parties! I remember those. Thirty years ago we had cocktail parties and invited our many friends. I'm sure young people still have them. At least I hope they still do. Cocktail parties were fun).
Now we have family gatherings — lots of them. For Jewish holidays — Rosh Hashanah is coming up. Passover in the spring. Beer and brats at Hanukkah. And secular holidays. Fourth of July. Or the Sunday before last, a joint Labor Day/Oldest Son in Town barbecue. Not a lot of people — 15 friends and relatives; we might have had 10 more, but several families were out of town. We grilled hot dogs, chicken and salmon burgers.
My sister-in-law and her eldest daughter had been shopping at the Skokie International Market on Lincoln Avenue, and were struck by the array of unusually flavored chips. Wanting a pretext to try them without saddling themselves with lots of bags of chips they could never eat, they concocted a game: guess the flavor, dubbing it "The Matching Game."
She prepared eight paper bowls, numbered one through eight. Then gave us sheets headlined "Matching Game: Identify the flavor of chips in each bowl!!"
 |
| Game sheet |
Down the left side, numbers 1 through 8. Then a list of the flavors: Mexican Chicken & Tomato; Peach Beer; Beef Wellington; Steak Kebab; Roasted Cumin Lamb; Numb & Spicy Hot Pot and Roasted Fish.
At the bottom, more instructions: "Draw a line to connect the bowl number to the flavor you think it is! " And then a final reassurance, given the number of vegetarians and vegans at any family event: "Note: these are artificially flavored .. none contain actual meat or fish!" (More exclamation points than I would use, being miserly in that department. But a key to games is to impart enthusiasm, so exclamatory zeal can be forgiven).
We sat around the coffee table, passed the bowls, one at a time — this seemed important, for encouraging discussion. Much better than just having the guests have at the bowls in a random rush. Fun was had,
The most notable thing about the results were how indistinct most of the flavors proved to be. Only one really stood out and was universally declared — the really repulsive Peach Beer. I kept score, in my reportorial role. Some flavors completely stumped the dozen players — nobody identified Kebab correctly. The most flavors anyone guessed correctly were three — the winners my wife and our 8-year-old grandniece. One player was disqualified for amending his answers as the flavors were revealed. The process took, oh, 20 minutes. It was fun.
In retrospect, if you want to add spice (sorry) to the game, you can ask players to speculate what cultures enjoy which particular flavors. "Peach Beer" struck me as Middle Eastern, simply because I encountered a bottle of Mood Peach Malt Beverage in a taco place a few years back, and it hailed from Jordan.
At the bottom, more instructions: "Draw a line to connect the bowl number to the flavor you think it is! " And then a final reassurance, given the number of vegetarians and vegans at any family event: "Note: these are artificially flavored .. none contain actual meat or fish!" (More exclamation points than I would use, being miserly in that department. But a key to games is to impart enthusiasm, so exclamatory zeal can be forgiven).
We sat around the coffee table, passed the bowls, one at a time — this seemed important, for encouraging discussion. Much better than just having the guests have at the bowls in a random rush. Fun was had,
The most notable thing about the results were how indistinct most of the flavors proved to be. Only one really stood out and was universally declared — the really repulsive Peach Beer. I kept score, in my reportorial role. Some flavors completely stumped the dozen players — nobody identified Kebab correctly. The most flavors anyone guessed correctly were three — the winners my wife and our 8-year-old grandniece. One player was disqualified for amending his answers as the flavors were revealed. The process took, oh, 20 minutes. It was fun.
In retrospect, if you want to add spice (sorry) to the game, you can ask players to speculate what cultures enjoy which particular flavors. "Peach Beer" struck me as Middle Eastern, simply because I encountered a bottle of Mood Peach Malt Beverage in a taco place a few years back, and it hailed from Jordan.
Wrong. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. While peach beer is a common beverage — I found this article on 26 popular American peach beers, Lays Wavy White Peach Beer Chips are imported from China. I suppose we're going to have to get used to it.
Oh, dear. I adore potato chips, especially BBQ, but these flavors sound awful.
ReplyDeleteI hate potato chips. Eating just one really is impossible (like taking just one shot of heroin) and they are as unhealthy for me as can be imagined: sodium, fat, carbs, all exceed what I should eat in a week and they don't even taste good. But one after another I pop them in my mouth until they're gone. All I need is an accomanying beer to make the concoction suicidal.
Deletejohn
john
Lay's does have low sodium chips.
DeleteWow, John, while I was appalled by your first sentence at 8:51, I was mystified by your third. If chips didn't taste good, I wouldn't be so beguiled by them.
DeleteAs it is, they're one of the few remaining dietary vices that I indulge in more than I should. I really enjoy them, and, despite the litany of faults that you detail, I feel that having even a bit too many of them on occasion is not as horrible for me as a lot of other things that I deny myself. As potato chips are one of the ever-dwindling number of products that seem to still thrive in local / regional versions despite the giant brands, I've long enjoyed sampling different versions in different places.
However, I agree with Dennis, below. Enough with the freaking flavorings! Plain chips, English breakfast tea. But am I allowed to put half and half in my coffee-flavored coffee? ; ) Though I've appreciated the craft beer explosion, I have no more interest in peach-flavored beer than I have in peach beer chips.
While the game described in today's post sounds like fun and is one that I'd have been happy to participate in, I wouldn't buy a bag of any of those chips were I to have the opportunity.
I have my last bag of Ketchup flavored chips I got while in Canada that I am slowly enjoying..
ReplyDeleteYou can buy those at Pita Inn market in Skokie
DeleteI agree, I only buy BBQ chips, but I will eat the plain ones if that's all that are available at a party.
ReplyDeleteTwo thoughts. When I first moved to the Illinois suburbs of St Louis, it surprised me that there seemed to be no children in the neighborhood. One day I happened to get behind a school bus and discovered that every other house had a child running from the bus to the front door. The modern child, it appears, doesn't play outside with their friends as we did, they stay inside all day engaging virtual worlds in isolation. A troubling development.
ReplyDelete2nd thought. I like coffee, tea, potato chips. When I go into, say, a service station to buy these classic, time tested products, I will search in vain for the basic flavored version of coffee, tea, or potato chips. I can get any repulsive, pointless flavor of these perfect concoctions, but not the fundamental flavor that grounded, rational people prefer. Coffee flavored coffee, potato flavored potato chips. Where are they? It's got to be the lonely kids who spend most of their time staring at screens in their bedrooms buying this awful stuff, trying to find some simulcra of variety in their isolated lives, and ruining sensible people's access to the classics.
Or not. It could just be that I've become a cranky old geezer.
Dennis, if you haven't already, be sure to look out for unsalted or lightly salted potato chips. They are by far the most potato-y flavored chips. They make regular chips taste like salty grease. The first time I tried them it was sort of a revelation, and now I'm sort of on a personal campaign to get other people to start buying them. I don't want them to ever get pulled off the market.
DeleteI'm a little disgusted now, not by you, but by the chip flavors. Gak!
ReplyDelete"Is entertaining still a practice? Occasionally we invite people over, after realizing we haven't seen them in years. And even more occasionally we are invited over. Or maybe that's just me."
ReplyDeleteNo, Mr. S, it's not just you. It's probably a lot of people, and entertaining was fading away even before the Plague. We haven't entertained anybody inside our now-piggy, cluttered, geezerly house in years. And when we finally did, one Halloween during the Plague (2020), we and our esteemed guests (both of them) sat in widely-spaced chairs on the patio, for obvious reasons. It was not just a cool party...it was cold (40s).
We get invited over once a year, for New Year's, and spend a few luxurious days with our classy hostess, in Michigan. We are treated like royalty, in lovely surroundings. But even that is probably about to end. We think she's pissed off at us, over something I said about her late stepson, a Hollywood actor who was notorious for his boorish behavior.
We, too, once had family gatherings — lots of them. My wife's extended family threw huge Christmas and July 4th bashes...for decades. But we're thirteen years your senior, Mr. S, so everyone's either already gone...or just elderly and/or dying off. All the parents, aunts, and uncles have long since departed. Now we are losing our cousins, much too quickly. My wife has lost two...one in just six weeks' time. Others are not doing so well. And I have lost five. It's hard to have family gatherings when the Iceman begins showing up (and I don't mean Jerry Butler, either). But whatchoo gonna do? It is what it is.
My feeling is: you're a game player or you're not.
ReplyDeleteYears ago, when I was married, we had a group of friends who got together monthly for games: pictionary, charades, etc. One of my favorites, you'd give each person a word and only one would have the real definition. If you didn't have the definition, you'd have to make one up then a designated person had to guess who had the real definition. When it was my turn to host I, spent all day Saturday looking up obscure words in the dictionary. I wound up spending hours just reading through the dictionary. Never knew the dictionary could be so interesting.
The Dictionary Game. Don't have to buy it, just need a good dictionary and some interesting friends. Everybody takes a turn, picking out an obscure word from the dictionary. The dealer/ host reads and spells the word, the players make up a definition. The best players skillfully imitate formats used by dictionary publishers. The dealer reads the fictional and real definitions and the players guess which is real. Everybody takes a turn as dealer and the winner is whoever fooled the most players. Eating chips is allowed, but don't leave greasy prints on the dictionary.
DeleteHere I prefer pie-eating contest.
ReplyDeleteSome prefer dark chocolate with pink sprinkes.
Some prefer Asian pear pie.
Some prefer blonde Apple pie.
Some prefer whipped cream pies.
I tell no lies; I could go on day and nite on my pies. Hot cinnamon red pies are are to find. Scoop them-up for the contest.
Does your mouth accept a hot piece of pie?
Shari, the commercial form of that game you're playing is Balderdash, and it is indeed pretty addictive and very entertaining for group play. Our in-laws play it at many family gatherings.
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to say that our family has invented our own slightly ridiculous game that we play every evening at the dinner table: The Birthday Game™. Every day the newspaper publishes a celebrity birthday list, generally a dozen or so famous names from various fields who are celebrating a birthday that day: music, theatre, movies, whatever. We start with the oldest and work our way down: I read the name, and we go round the table with each person guessing the celebrity's age. Winner gets one point.
What makes it ridiculous, in a fun way, is that you'd be surprised how often a careful guess will be right, even if you have no idea who the alleged celebrity is; we usually end with a winner getting 2 or 3 points, not to mention ties getting broken on the very last guess, along with many Oooh-so-close! guesses that were only off by one.
It always sparks discussion along the way about how old so-and-so is, or surprise that someone is still alive, or why does that name sound familiar and who was he, etc. It gets everyone talking, and devices are put aside at least for a short while. The best games are self-perpetuating, and we've been playing our Birthday Game every evening for at least a couple of years now.