Bingo in Smoking

They thought it would never happen. “Blasphemy!” they said. Also, “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.” (Although, to be fair, this doesn’t make any sense.)

But it seems they are wrong, for I am writing a post. Stranger things have happened.

For example.

Since living in the UK, I have noticed several seemingly tiny but culturally huge gaps in the things British and American societies deem important. Soccer and peanut butter respectively top this list.

However, it seems the gap is closing and we are embracing one another’s traditions. In return for the Americans embracing Victoria Beckham as a valid human being (in some cases), British teens have run away with the concept of senior prom.

Prom, where memories are made, is typically tacky and gross and therefore unsurprisingly something of an industry. I was too cool (read: misanthropic) for the prom committee, but I have been in physical contact with catalogues containing everything you need for your perfect magical evening.

Sometimes this gets out of control. My best friend, who was on the prom committee, claims that her senior prom’s color scheme was established to match a committee member’s dress. Further to this, she claims that she visited her high school during prom season years later and found that they had developed a new and unique prom theme all by themselves: Candyland After Dark.

If I remember anything whatsoever about Candyland, I recall it being relatively frightening in broad daylight. Not only did it feature Gloppy the Molasses Monster, the Lord Licorice of the ’80s looks like Satan and the Candyland Kids themselves look like they belong to Aryan Nations or Prussian Blue. I can’t imagine anything in Candyland being improved by darkness.

For that matter, the idea of any character-based board game after dark has potential to be utterly frightening. Clue After Dark. Guess Who After Dark. Don’t Wake Daddy After Dark. Hungry, Hungry Hippos…After Dark.

Is prom’s UK invasion a good thing? Will the obnoxiousness be lost in translation? Let’s consult our Magic 8 Ball After Dark.

Hmm. Outlook not good.

TRICKS AND TREATS

A Deterrant
Prussian Blue - Skinhead Boy
What’s Your Prom Style?

Hello. My name is Aleshia, and I’m a hypocrite.

“Hi, Aleshia.”

There are some social phenomena that I fail entirely to understand, but in which I participate.

For example, almost every day for the past 7+ years, I have bought a bottled soft drink for $1. This is roughly $2,555 worth of Diet Pepsi, and that’s only if we assume that I bought only one per day and that I have not lived in England for the past year and a half (thereby making each one cost essentially $2). Also, I do not recycle when it is not convenient for me to do so.

But I think the most astounding of these phenomena is the concept of “I’ll try.”

A few weeks ago I held a party, to which a friend said she would “try” to come. How can you try to go somewhere? Either you plan to leave your house and reach your destination or you don’t. Saying “I’ll try” makes it appear as though you’re precontemplating an accident.

“Well, I’ll try to come, but there’s the possibility that I’ll be hit by a bus and be paralysed from the waist down. Then I’ll crawl along the roadside and try to hitch a ride, but one of my hands will get caught in a bear trap. The other hand, in a strange coincidence will be caught in the spokes of a passing bicycle, thereby breaking my wrist and all my fingers. But I will pressed on. I will chew my entrapped arm off and pull myself along by the lips, but by the time I arrive at your house, everyone may have already gone home! But I’ll try.”

I have perhaps used this phrase in the past, but I vow to never use it again, as it makes no sense. I encourage you to do the same.

Just say “no”.

I’ll be riiiiight back. Really.

So, to answer the all-important question of the pop-punk band Mest, the “dilio” is this:

I’m getting a Master’s degree writin’ for the talkin’ pictures and I’ve been writing like a madperson. But I will return soon. Not like Jesus, who said he’d be back soon and 3,000 years later we’re still waiting. I’d like to know what HIS “dilio” is.

Anyway. This is why I’ve deserted you, for which I apologi[z/s]e. Please take comfort in the fact that I have not forgotten you.

In the meantime, I insist you play THIS.

Discuss.

Sigh. Does anyone miss this as much as I do?

TRICKS AND TREATS

Mystik Spiral - Freakin’ Friends

It’s tough to possess the secrets of the universe.

Day after day people approach me on the street and ask, “Aleshia, what do I need in order to live a life of purpose and fulfillment?”

And I answer: “Cheese.” Obviously. Show me a person who can think of something that can’t be improved with cheese, and I’ll show you a person who has not reached his or her creative potential.

I understand that for some — bless their little cottons — cheese is not enough. Which is why, like all things worth mentioning, there is a “top five” list of life’s bare necessities:

1. Cheese
(Previously discussed.)

2. Entrance Music
I think everyone will agree that there is no better way to announce to the world that, yes, you have arrived and yes, your arrival implies awesomeness than if Funkadelic’s “Freak of the Week” played every time you walked into a room. This could be decidedly inconvenient if walking in late for a final or if you (accidentally or intentionally) entered an “opposite” restroom. I suppose since we are operating within the city limits of Hypotheticalville, we could amend the entrance music to sound only when we need it most and not necessarily always in an entrance-type situation, like when we get strikes in bowling or when a salesperson is helpful.

Five Really, Really Good Entrance Music Songs (in no particular order)

1. Europe - The Final Countdown
2. Kenny Loggins - Danger Zone
3. Johnny Rivers - Secret Agent Man
(commonly mistaken for “Secret Asian Man,” thus making it ideal for individuals of oriental descent or those who would like to be)
4. Lenny Kravitz - American Woman
5. Def Leppard - Pour Some Sugar on Me

3. An Alias
Above any other human right, everyone deserves an alter ego. If for no other reason, you always have a reliable person on whom to blame your shortcomings and the deletion of answering machine messages.

Five Notable Musical Aliases

1. Elvis “Napoleon Dynamite” Costello
2. Garth “Chris Gaines” Brooks
3. Prince “Alexander Nevermind”/”Joey Coco”/”Jamie Starr”/”Paisley Park”/”Camille”/”Weird Symbol Thingy” (Rogers Nelson — who’da thunk?)
4. David “Ziggy Stardust” Bowie
5. John “Mel Torment” Lennon

4. A Signature Sign-Off
Of equal importance to trumpeting your arrival, your exit, when you choose, should be solid and finite. We can pretend all we like, but there is no better way to control an unruly crowd of admirers than to answer everyone’s impending questions with a single comment.

Top Five Signature Sign-Offs Which Most Readily Leap to Mind

1. “Seacrest out!” - Ryan Seacrest
2. “And that’s the way it was.” - Walter Cronkite
3. “Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.” - Jimmy Durante
4. “Take care of yourselves and each other.” - Jerry Springer
5. “Bon appétit!” - Julia Child

5. Bacon

TRICKS AND TREATS

Funkadelic - Freak of the Week
Sheena Easton - Sugar Walls, as written by Alexander Nevermind
Bauhaus - Ziggy Stardust

As any red, white and blue-blooded, well-versed, gen-u-ine Ameri-person will tell you, one’s cultural identity is based upon the events that take place on the following dates:

April 16: The Day After Tax Day
Key ingredients: Large quantities of alcohol to drown out the undeniable fact that you have just spent upwards of $12 to send forms (probably filled out incorrectly) to the IRS overnight. Somewhere between “sober” and “unable to control bodily functions,” you will inevitably realize that you make little enough money that you could’ve just done the whole thing over the phone.

July 4th: The Fourth of July
Key ingredients: A pontoon boat homemade by your male relatives out of empty plastic drums and plywood; several large and noisy and orgasmically menacing pyrotechnic items; and lots and lots of very cheap beer. Somewhere between “sober” and “Hey, let’s run an extention cord out to the boat from the house so we can hook up some lights and the stereo!” you realize that you have inadvertently driven your truck into the lake.

The third Thursday of November: Thanksgiving
Key ingredients: Food. Namely, a dish suggested by NPR’s The Splendid Table which calls for - when one doubles the recipe - 2 small cloves of garlic. You and the artist formerly known as your boyfriend make this dish; unfortunately, you have the combined culinary prowess of a large rock and mistake a bulb for a clove, thereby multiplying the intended garlic content of said dish by six. Furthermore, in the absence of a food processor, you combine the cheese and liquid items in a blender.

Though specific traditions will vary depending on the family you’ve been bestowed upon, they invariably involve the exponential increase of any and all neuroses. By which I mean “creating a seating chart.” Despite any amount of planning to keep families together and the silly idealism of casting aside generation gaps, the arrangement was some variation of this:

While the adults’ table was adrift in the calm seas of Thanksgiving merriment, the kids’ table was without fail a proverbial monsoon of pandemonium: Aaron spills Kool-Aid all over Tiffany, Tim eats all of the mashed potatoes without making sure that everyone has had first helpings, T.J. is on Megan’s “side” of the bench (as if there were enough room to allocate personal space), and two of the little ones, whose names everyone has forgotten, have to eat under the table as there is not enough available seating at ground level.

We loved it.

I must say, though, that celebrating Thanksgiving in Britain was quite a change of pace. There was no raucous air of impending disaster, no forceable pie consumption, no even remembering it was Thanksgiving until receiving a MySpace comment asking whether or not Thanksgiving is celebrated in the UK. Apparently not. Especially since my Thanksgiving dinner consisted of some Brazil nuts, rice and a bowl of Lucky Charms, which my mother transported from the homeland in October. There is no better way to give thanks than over a bowl filled with tiny marshmallow manifestations of someone’s paranoia.

TRICKS AND TREATS

Bring Lucky Charms to the UK!
Big D and the Kids Table - Can’t Be Caught
Give Thanks for Mad Libs

It has been brought to my attention that I seem to be catering to folks who may have a deep understanding of adding unnecessary letters to words and pronouncing the last letter of the alphabet incorrectly, but who have little background information on Paul Reubens.

But first, a conundrum.

Family Guy has been a part of my life since my sophomore year of high school when Gary Winchester and I would phone each other so that we could watch it and then talk during the commercials. It has gained momentum on the Isles, too, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it strikes me as more than a little zany that a show is so popular wherein the references made are understandable largely only by Americans.

• Exhibit A
• Exhibit B
• Exhibit which Totally Contradicts My Point but Is Still Hilarious

Now, for your enjoyment: a segue.

This reference is, of course, a parody of the introduction of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, a children’s program that aired on Saturday mornings before some show featuring Jim Varney, or, to lesser mortals, Ernest. My father, known to lesser mortals as William C. Haselden (or to scattered individuals in the ’70s, “Wild Hair”), and I watched Pee-wee’s Playhouse religiously, often combining this activity with cereal followed by general living room roughhousing, sometimes breaking things and then blaming it on a cat.

But I digress.

The point is that this icon of my childhood Saturdays was arrested in 1991 for not concealing the duckie at an adult movie theater. Also, in 2002 he turned himself in to L.A. police after being charged with misdemeanor possession of kiddie porn. Today, he is making something of a comeback, as Pee-wee’s Playhouse:The Movie is in production.

Oh God, PLEASE let it be rated R.

TRICKS AND TREATS

Pee-wee’s Playhouse Opening Sequence
The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

How YOU Fit In:

Bugs Bunny & The Monkees - Kool-Aid Commercial #6 (1969)

CHALLENGE: Can you link Leon to Paul Reubens? S/He who can do it with the fewest links wins my respect and the possibility of a secret prize.

Does anyone else think it is completely and utterly ironic that Paul Reuben is involved with this?

TRICKS AND TREATS

Brian Ellis - Pee-wee’s Playhouse Remix

Boys and girls, the time has come to discuss something magical and special that sometimes happens between consenting individuals who may or may not know eath other’s names.

Syphilis.

According to an article that I read over someone’s shoulder on the National Rail train today, the number of cases of syphilis in Britain has doubled since 2003.

This would have been shocking had it not been for three recent incidents that prepared me somewhat for the shock:

1. Witnessing the distressing emotional trauma of an individual who witnessed a couple exercising their apparent right to public fellatio on a train.

2. Witnessing the distressing emotional trauma of the same individual walking into a train’s lavatory after a man had left only to find a scarcely clad woman still inside.

3. Reading an article some weeks ago from the same newspaper which encouraged women to have more one-night stands. This article included a mildly amusing anecdote from a woman who, when she noticed that street cleaners were watching her engage in prurient acts in the doorway of a shop in the wee hours of the morning, waved at them.

This would not only suggest that syphilis is, in fact, likely to be on the rise, it would also suggest that a train is not the place to be if you want to avoid contracting it. But this is beside the point.

The article featured in Point #3, which I sadly did not keep long enough to include a scan, asserted that sex restricted to a stable relationship was contrary to the lifestyle of a modern independent woman. While this ethos may not be exactly my cup of tea, I understand that these things happen and we’re only human. But let’s not pretend to be appalled and surprised when syphilis cases are on the rise. While the article did list several socially acceptable excuses to give if you do the nasty with a person and then do not wish to see that person ever again, it made no mention of the importance of wrapping it up.

And why the hell not? As Uncle Ben said in Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility, and sometimes in the heat of the moment we cannot be bothered to obtain and recall such mundane details as a person’s sexual history or last name or distinctive facial features. Therefore, we would do well to remember to make sure Little Jimmy has put on his diving suit.

Aunt Aleshia’s message is simply this, kids: Just be safe. Please enjoy the following verbal and audio delights as encouragement as you venture syphilis-free into a safer, less diseased Britain.

Just be sure to stay off the trains.

TRICKS AND TREATS:
Background Information for the Knowledge-Thirsty
E-Rotic - Willy Use A Billy…Boy
What IS a Billy Boy?
Madness - House of Fun

And we’re back! After a moderately long hiatus, Bingo in Smoking is back in action, righting the world’s wrongs and bringing justice to those who care to be justified. Yes, if you need validation or even if you’re a block of text and you need to be spread evenly between left and right margins, I’m your individual.

And now. Back to our regularly (if you can stretch your imagination far enough to call it that) scheduled programming. But first! A story problem:

If person “A” gets 4 hours of sleep per night without exception for 3 weeks despite the distinct nonexistence of person “B” (who could be any of the following or anything equally disruptive: a very motivated but decidedly abhorrent accordeon player living inside one’s mattress, a person who juggles houses, Fran Drescher, etc.), does person “A” automatically become a member of the undead, or is there an application process?

I don’t know about you, but I, for one, am getting the worst sleep of my life. This may be due to the fact that I am no longer spoiled by the magic and wonder that is Sealy Posturepedic®, or perhaps it is because I am now sleeping on a mattress that was fashioned by Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherers®. Whatever the case, my quality of rest categorically Blows®.

Not sleeping well has its distinct advantages, though I am too tired to remember any of them. However, I am remembering my dreams with an accuracy that is usually reserved for pi decimal placements.

(Tangent: There is a wonderful band called The Andy Ober Orchestra who I once saw perform a parody of ‘NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” called “Pi Pi Pi” in which they encourage the crowd to sing along as they recite pi to 60 places. They also did a Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” commercial parody about Mario Van Peebles. You MUST support this band.)

Of course, using the word accuracy in reference to dreams is a paradox of sorts. There is nothing accurate about, one minute, drifting to sleep and, the next, helping the brother of your high school valedictorian move into his dorm room along with one of the sons of your former babysitter. Or introducing someone to large groups of long-forgotten people as “Jake” when his name in real life is Rob.

These things make sense in dreams. Of COURSE you, your best friend, Aubree, and your sister, Alaina, are racing around a castle with bugged phones trying to find a way out before the air supply runs out. What ELSE would you be doing? Fretting because your “pet pidgeons” (also nonexistent) were released via the window of “your room” (a room you’ve never seen before) by an evil blonde girl named “Kelly” (conjured from eating cheese too close to bedtime)?

This insight into my subconscious admittedly makes little sense, particularly as I am not generally of the mindset to make sense of anything including my own motor functions. Which works out. Word on the street I’m a hot candidate for the undead.

TRICKS AND TREATS:
Real Men of Genius - Mr. Jean Shorts Inventor
The Andy Ober Orchestra - Pi Pi Pi