Last post, I mentioned my deep, insatiable love for Pictionary. This week, I shall rhapsodize about another of my favorite games: Gambling for Trinkets! God, how I love this game so much. You show up, drink, and possibly win cool shit while getting rid of all the stuff you don’t want. There is nothing bad about it!
To think if we’d never seen the movie Benny & Joon, there’d be no trinket gambling. But the idea of winning Johnny Depp in a card game inspired Twist and me, and so it began, us gambling away our crap during a game of “Gutterfuck” (“Orange Juice, if anyone else asks,” Twist advised) and using the Minor Arcana cards from a tarot deck. (Another card deck we’ve used has been Game of Thrones-themed, and yet another featured illustrated Moulin Rouge dancers and was in French, which made for slow games [“Does ‘R’ beat ‘V’?”])
Gutterfu—I mean, Orange Juice isn’t difficult to play; it’s similar to Asshole (or whatever more polite term you prefer for that game). But obviously you can gamble for trinkets to whatever card game you want. To incorporate the gambling aspect in Gutterfuck, all players (have as many as you’d like, the more the merrier) should come to the game with their trinkets, which are defined as simply anything the owner no longer wants. One time, a friend didn’t have trinkets, so he went out and bought them, which he admitted defeats the purpose of the trinket aspect. His purchases included zebra-print pencils, a rainbow array of mini Play-Dohs, silly bands, and GlitterGirl Tattoos. (More trinket examples to follow.) My mom especially loved when we’d G4T; she would run around the house, throwing random stuff in giant boxes and bags and unabashedly enabling my gambling habit.
At the start of the game, we all “trink up,” or otherwise toss at least one trinket into the pot (i.e., some section of the room we deem close by but out of the way, like the top of the unlit stove).
Then the game gets underway. Every time someone can’t contribute a card to the pile, he or she has to trink up again. Other rules that I’m too lazy to explain are also involved. Once someone is out of cards, that person is declared the winner, and the whole trinket pile is his or hers. (Eventually, the winner would just loot and plunder the pile for whatever he or she wanted then leave the rest in the pot as the initial trinket at the beginning of the next hand.)
Winning is irrelevant here. In fact, you don’t really want to win a round, ever, if you actually want to get rid of crap; the winner has to deal with all the shitty trinkets. But if you win a round toward the end, it’s especially rough because all the good stuff (relatively speaking) is gone. God forbid if you win the very last round. Even worse is when you host the game at your place; all the crap no one wants gets left on top of your stove.
One evening, a couple won the majority of the games because they sat next to each other and cheated, but no one cared. They lost their lust to win, however, when they realized that winning stuff meant transporting stuff home: “I don’t want to win this one. What do we do about this?”
But never mind all that—gambling for trinkets is still a fine opportunity to get rid of the weirdest, wackiest stuff you own that the Salvation Army probably wouldn’t accept, and it’s so much fun to see what everyone tosses into the pot. And heck, who knows—you might actually acquire something kind of neat. (A friend once arrived with a little tote of trinkets, yet wound up going home with two garbage bags and a paper bag full of all his winnings, which included a Care Bear, tons of Animorphs books, and glitter hairspray.) And somehow, even though I rarely win, I’ve still wound up with some memorable spoils of war, such as the following:
- A printout of a Taylor Hanson slash fiction story written by an 8th grade Twist
- A snake pin
- A glass giraffe statue
- Fifteen million bottles of lotion
- A loony big-eyed deer statue
- A glossy photo of Captain Kirk
- A white pillowcase on which Twist had drawn Rurouni Kenshin
Other notable trinkets that have put in an appearance at past games included
- A craft doll with its head hanging off its neck by a thread
- Little bottles of booze
- A movie-theater-sized poster of Jurassic Park
- A set of orange IKEA curtains
- A kite
- A VHS copy of Dances with Wolves
- An unused bar of Zest soap
- A battered Playboy centerfold with a hole in it
- A California Snowman water globe (which wound up atop Twist’s kitchen sink)
- A turquoise Gameboy
- Pheasant and whitetail deer tin plates
- An unbalanced fruit topiary
- A super monkey that went “dunadun dun dun dun super monkey”
- A leopard print jogging suit
- The issue of a Playboy featuring Madonna’s “monster bush”
- A jockstrap
- A how-to-seduce-your-man guide geared toward the sensual ’80s housewife, with excerpts that included “Masturbate him into a wine glass. Taste it. Swirl it about on your tongue…” and “Have him wear a pair of your soiled panties to work underneath his business suit,” which begs the question, “What do they constitute as ‘soiled’?”
- A piece of Skeleton’s hair held together with a sparkly barrette (Its existence might’ve been breaking at least one state law.)
As you can see, someone has yet to trink up Johnny Depp.
And now that you know the gist, you can plan your own evening of trinket gambling! Here are a few finishing touches you can add to the night:
- Booze a/o beer is always a grand idea. In fact, you may find it just as necessary as the trinkets.
- Snacks are totally welcome. Twist once adorably hosted a game and plied us with taquitos and chips and Mello Yellos.
- Never forget the importance of a great soundtrack. We once hoped for “riverboat gambling music,” but surprisingly that genre—nor the band The Riverboat Gamblers—exists, so we had to alternate between Scott Joplin and The Wu-Tang Clan. Once Twist wanted to listen to Disney music so some Lion King jam played.
- And finally, don’t be afraid to really sell your junk. Twist likes to present her trinkets like a QVC star, supplying with the item’s background history and providing helpful suggestions for what the trinket could possibly be used for.
Question of the Week: Have you ever gambled for trinkets or done something similar, or won something interesting/insane/irreplaceable in a game? If so, leave a comment below and share this post via one of social media buttons below!
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1 Comment on "Gambling For Trinkets"
Oh and Mom has a lot more things to store in a box or bag for when the Gambling for Trinkets comes this way again.