Tonight was... my brain feels dirty from re-watching BloodRayne. I know we had company, and it's nice to have something on — but no more letting a bad movie take over my life like that: the subtext of every Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode was the struggle I just lost.

I think it was Nick who divined the real reason behind the awfulness: plot-wise, BloodRayne is best grasped not as a failed vampire movie, but as a failed softcore porno. There was exactly one sex scene, ridiculous even in a genre notorious for its ridiculous sex scenes.

I thought yesterday would be a similar wash, but special guest Dylan called and invited me to a party a block or so from our apartment. Very nice to walk to entertainment for a change.

I was blown away by their variation on my favorite drinking game, King's Cup. Sometimes called Waterfall — or any number of names, really — if you take away the cup. Last spring, I posted the canonical King's Cup rules, taught to me by the Politician himself oh-so-many years ago.

Their version, Categories, is familiar but retains few of our rules. There is no Seven Sentence, no Red Dead (instead it's "two for you, three for me"), and only one of those cards where you have to pay attention. Guys drink on six, girls drink on four. There was no cup, no surprise there. There are other changes, some of them lame.

Here's what really struck me though, as an appreciator of art:

1. Queen Question is different. You are the Questioner until the next Queen card is drawn, and if anyone answers a question you ask, they have to drink. (They let you answer without penalty if you swear at the Questioner, but this rarely came up.)

2. The Five is still a reaction card, penalizing the last person to put his or her thumb on the table, but as with the Queen, the person who drew the Five has this power until the next Five is drawn.

3. Eight is still the rule card, but you can either make a rule or veto a previous rule. If you make a new rule, the others remain in play.

Categories was fantastic, and though the new rules were a bit hard for me to pick up, I rocked as the Questioner. Afterwards I played my first-ever game of Beer Pong, on a team with the drunkest guy in the house. The game wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I still wasn't very good at it. We lost to Dylan's fiancee.

Having drank surprisingly little (there was significant spillage, go team), I left after the game and met up with Jenna and Markie, who were partying with the social group that we've started calling simply "the Lesbians."

Not a very accurate label... maybe 20% of this group? But evocative.

I remember good Czech beer, and clearly winning some kind of impromptu dance contest. And delicious pizza, and arguing over whether said pizza was hand-tossed. (Like clockwork, I find myself on the wrong side of an argument, and mind-numbingly wrong, every time I drink.) It's always a good time at the Lesbians.

Also, there was someone trying to pick a fight, I guess? He was certainly being rude and parochial, in any case. One minute I was calmly talking to him about voting and the next minute he was saying that none of my opinions were valid on any subject and storming off in disgust.

It was so strange to meet such a willfully rude party acquaintance; you can usually count on them to be pretty good, or at least neutral. On my way out, I scooped up some kids from St. Thomas who had wandered into the parking lot, because things between them and the rude guy looked very close to violence.