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From: inc@fluke.UUCP (Gary Benson)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Dave Barry - Your New Years Eve Party
Message-ID: <490@tpvax.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 2-Jan-85 14:18:48 EST
Article-I.D.: tpvax.490
Posted: Wed Jan  2 14:18:48 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 8-Jan-85 05:08:30 EST
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Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 187


  *-  R A T I N G   Y O U R   N E W   Y E A R ' S   E V E   P A R T Y  -*
 
						       -By Dave Barry 
 
 
    If you threw a New Year's Eve party, the worst thing you could have done
was throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today and call you up
to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be expected to throw another party
next year. 

    What you should have done was throw the kind of party where your guests
wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've
been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a
recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of
their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one. 

    So next time, make sure your party reaches the correct Festivity Level: 
 
    Festivity Level One: Your guests are chatting amiably with each other,
    admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around the
    upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling at hors d'oeuvres. 

    Festivity Level Two: Your guests are talking loudly - sometimes to each
    other and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your Christmas-tree
    ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright piano, gulping
    their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres. 

    Festivity Level Three: Your guests are arguing violently with inanimate
    objects, singing "I Can't Get No Satisfaction," gulping other people's
    drinks, wolfing down Christmas-tree ornaments and placing hors d'oeuvres
    in the upright piano to see what happens when the little hammers strike.
    
    Festivity Level Four: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over their
    naked bodies, are performing a ritual dance around the burning Christmas
    tree. The piano is missing. 

    You want to keep your party somewhere around Level Three, unless you
rent your home and own firearms, in which case you can go to Level Four. The
best way to get to Level Three is eggnog. 

    Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many
people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable comes
from the English word "egg," meaning, "egg." I don't know where the "nog"
comes from. 

    To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine, gin and, if they are in
season, eggs. Combine all ingredients in a large, festive bowl. Then induce
your guests to drink this mixture. 

    If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless
your party is very successful, in which case they will lob tear gas through
your living-room window. As host, your job is to make sure they don't arrest
anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make
sure it isn't you. The best way to do this is to show a lot of respect for
their uniforms and assure them you're not doing anything illegal. Here's how
to handle it: 

     Police: Good evening. Are you the host? 

	You: No. 

     Police: We've been getting complaints about this party. 

	You: About the drugs? 

     Police: No. 

	You: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the 
	     guns? 

     Police: No, the noise. 

	You: Oh, the noise. Well, that makes sense, because there are 
	     no guns or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard 
	     in the background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining 
	     about the noise? The neighbors? 

     Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the 
	     recent complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you 
	     thing you could ask the host to quiet things down? 

	You: No problem. (At this point, a Volkswagen bug with 
	     primitive religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges 
	     from the living room and roars down the hall, past the 
	     police and out the front door onto the lawn, where it 
	     smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out onto the 
	     grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind down. 
 
    If you survive the party, and you're looking for something to do that
won't take you too far from the bathroom this morning, you should watch the
New Year's Day football bowl game parades on television. Bowl game parades
offer a world of variety, mainly marching bands, floats, bands of people
marching, and large motorized vehicles that are covered with flowers and
driven down the street. 

    Famous celebrities like Ed McMahon and Charo are on hand to explain how
much fun everything is. 

      Charo: Ed, this tasteful float is the creation of Pi Lambda 
	     Zeet fraternity, and its theme is "Everybody Should Be a 
	     Lot More Aware of Starvation." It has 65,000 blue 
	     carnations to represent the generous spirit of the 
	     American people, and 34,000 white carnations to 
	     illustrate the value of rice as a protein source. By the 
	     way, Ed, last spring 23 members of Pi Lambda Zeet set a 
	     world record by hacking a grand piano into raisin-sized 
	     pieces in exactly 63 seconds. 

 Ed McMahon: That's marvelous. Were they raising money for charity? 

      Charo: No. 

 Ed McMahon: And here comes a marching band. 

      Charo: Ed, these are the award winning Fighting Marmosets from 
	     El Redundo, Texas, playing either "On Wisconsin" or the 
	     theme from Star Wars. These kids raised the money to 
	     come to this year's parade all by themselves by nagging 
	     their parents incessantly. 
 
    And so it goes, hour after hour, until it's time for the actual football
game. Bowl games are extremely important because they decide which of the
top college football teams will win the bowl games. The top teams are
usually Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&I, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma,
Texas I&E, Alabama, Texas AEIO&U, Arkansas, Alabama and Penn State. 

    The games themselves are actually fairly boring, consisting mainly of
young men lunging around and risking spinal injury. So to liven things up,
the camera often zooms in on attractive female cheerleaders, attractive
females in the crowd and the Goodyear Blimp. The people who televise college
football have some kind of obsession, obviously sexual, with the Goodyear
Blimp. 

    Anyway, here's how the bowl game telecasts go: 
 
    First Announcer: Well, it's a perfect day for a football game, as you
		     can see from this aerial shot from the Goodyear Blimp.
		     All 650,000 seats here at Eldridge B. Spud Memorial
		     Stadium are filled, and the fans are really excited.

   Second Announcer: We're expecting a whale of a football game. The obvious
		     favorite is Southern Aeronautical, Botanical, Nautical
		     and Orthodontical State College University; they've won
		     84 consecutive games, and all of last year's senior
		     starters are back this year under wily veteran coach
		     Bill Ray Joe Ted Parsnip. And now let's meet the
		     starters. 

    (The camera zooms in on an enormous person, who appears to have had his
    neck surgically removed. He is wearing jersey number 99.) 

    Enormous Person: Hi. I'm the center and my name is...(he looks down at
		     his jersey)...Sixty-Six. (The camera quickly zooms away
		     to an attractive female cheerleader, just as a male
		     cheerleader picks her up by her posterior.) 

    First Announcer: Before we start today's game, we'd like to show you
		     this brief film, which was prepared by Southern ABN&O
		     State College University in cooperation with the
		     National Collegiate Athletic American Association to
		     reassure everybody that, in addition to football teams,
		     these schools have books and classes and stuff like
		     that. 

    (The films opens with pictures of buildings, and an announcer is talking
    in the background.) 

	      "Southern ABN&O University, founded during the Korean
	      War, is dedicated to improving the minds and bodies of
	      young people, as you see by these actual color
	      photographs of large stone buildings. Our students come
	      from all races and sexes. Here, for example, is a picture
	      of a female looking through a microscope. Last year
	      alone, Southern ABN&O granted more than 23,000 diplomas,
	      many of them written in actual Latin words. So we're not
	      just a football school. Really." 

    Then comes the actual game, for the benefit of viewers who have not
fallen asleep or switched to a UHF channel to watch "The Bowery Boys Buy
Municipal Bonds." 


-- 
Gary Benson ms232e -*- John Fluke Mfg Co -*- Box C9090 -*- Everett WA 98206 USA
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