Stephen Colbert’s Commencement Speech: the Drinking Game!

Yesterday, Stephen Colbert delivered the 2011 commencement address to Northwestern’s graduating class.

To help you through all 21 minutes of Colbert’s speech, I have assembled this handy-dandy Drinking Game! It is very collegiate, challenging the fortitude of your delicate organ tissues.

Please note: Drinking Game Participation shall be in strict accordance with the laws and bylaws of players’ respective counties, states, provinces, whatevers, et al. Note, too: I have also assumed that participants are just lonely enough to sit at their laptop computers and drink directly from Beam bottles. Play at your own risk.

The conditions of the Game are delineated below:

1.) Drink anytime Stephen Colbert gets “meta” or “postmodern.” To clarify, I’ve transcribed an example:

Now, as you have explained to your grandparents, my name is Stephen Colbert. But I also play a character on TV who is named Stephen Colbert, and I don’t always know which one of us has been invited to speak. Well, today I am fairly confident that I am me, because I went to Northwestern University. And my character went to Dartmouth, so he was there for graduation last weekend and heard Conan speak. It was a really good speech, but he was hoping it was gonna be Leno.

2.) When Stephen Colbert names an animal, take a little sip. Wildcats and armadillos count, too.

3.) If you try to drink to every recession joke — you know, grads moving back in with their parents, grads turning to prostitution — you may well poison yourself. Good luck.

4.) Drink to every instance of the Easiest and Most Ubiquitous Joke, the “Generation Gap” wisecrack. Colbert will reference the Sony Walkman, Wang Chung, what it was like before the advent of mobile phones, and having to explain pop culture ephemera to your grandmother. Hang in there.

5.) Surprisingly, there’s only one extended allusion to Professor J. Michael Bailey and the fucksaw debacle. Might as well chug to it.

6.) To cultivate a truly killer hangover, drink anytime Mr. Colbert utters the words “love,” “service,” and “brothels.” It’s like he planned his own drinking game!

7.) Drink each time the video gets all weird and glitchy. I think a Northwestern alumnus ripped the video in real-time from a live webcast. (Don’t worry! The sound is fine.)

Is the room spinning yet? Go U Northwestern!