By George Petersen

Whether working live or in the studio, a lot about audio production involves a bunch of hurry up followed by a bunch of sitting around. No matter how well planned out, there’s always some unexpected delay that creates downtime, whether it’s waiting for a courier to deliver a master or waiting for the lighting guys to finish rigging before the mains get flown. Or sometimes it’s something just as stupid as waiting for the club owner to show up with a key or the classic two hours of punch-ins while that “one take” vocalist lays down a useable track. Either way, there’s a whole lotta downtime to kill.

There are lots of alternatives in this regard–if you’re lucky, you can grab a guitar and jam a bit or work out lyrics to your new hit, but sometimes you just wanna vegge out and do something mindless. A deck of cards is the old tour bus standard, but poker or crazy-eights can get boring after a while. Sorry to get off the pure audio track here, but a couple years ago, my brother in-law Greg and I were in just such a killing time situation and we created a card game that’s easy, fast-paced and fun–whether you win or lose. We called it “Grapeshot” (after the mounds of huge grape-sized pellets that ship cannons would occasionally fire), because the real fun in this game is not necessarily winning, but wreaking out some nasty revenge on other players and causing THEM to lose.

Here’s how it works: Grapeshot is essentially like low-ball poker, where the object is to end up with the WORST hand possible. But here’s where the fun comes in: Instead of throwing away the cards you don’t want and getting a draw back from the dealer, the players pass two cards to the player on their right. This card passing happens one time for each player in the game, so with three players, you deal out the cards (five to each) and then announce “first pass” and then “second pass” and then “final pass” (three players = three 2-card passes), with everyone in the game passing their two cards at the same time.

What on the outside seems like a very simple game quickly becomes fairly strategic. If you begin by passing a high pair (say, aces or kings) on the first pass, chances are those same cards will come back to you–bad idea. But by delaying when you pass pairs or other high cards, you can often select the intended recipient to be any other player, and as the idea is to end up with a low hand, it is often the game’s last pass that delivers the coup de grace, just as a load of grapeshot at the waterline could sink a ship. Best of all, Grapeshot is easy, fast-paced and each game takes less than a minute–just the thing for killing some time while you’re waiting for your Thanksgiving travel connection to get de-iced or just on the way.

Speaking of same, have a great (extended) weekend, eat some great food, spend a little quality time with your loved ones and if you’ve got time to kill, try a little Grapeshot.

When not working on Mix stuff, George Petersen records and performs with the SF Bay Area-based rock band ARIEL. Check ‘em out at www.jenpet.com.

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