Friday, December 30, 2005

New Year's Drunken Essay Contest

To honor the spirit of the title of this blog, I have come up with an "I Wrote This When I Was Drunk on New Year's Eve" essay contest. If you can recall any of the events of your New Year's celebration, write about it and submit it for Paulie's amusement. If you can't recall anything, you can either post a copy of the police report or make something up. Paul will pick the winner but will NOT post bail for anyone. Good luck and Happy New Year!

1 comment:

TheNotQuiteRightReverend said...

Essay Contest Submission:

Bethany and I went with our friends Grant and Brenda to one of the most surreal places on earth: Branson, Missouri. On New Year's Eve we stepped into an alternate universe filled with "has-been" country singers and "never-were" comedians. After eating breakfast at a place called "Billy-Bob's No Shurt, No Shoos, No Problem Buffet", we drove around town to see what shows were scheduled at the 1400 theaters in town. As though the risk of being snowbound for six months were a real concern in a town south of the Mason-Dixon Line, all of the theaters were closed for the season. Not even So Taguchi, the world famous fiddle-playing Cardinals left-fielder was performing for New Year's. (Or was it Soji Tabuchi?) But we really weren't that interested in seeing Yakov Smirnof or an Elvis impersonator that looked a lot more like Paul Shields than the King.

We did discover that the Stone Hill Winery was open and giving tours and free samples. Our tour guide was a woman in her 60's with painted-on eyebrows that she drew so high on her forhead that her face seemed to be frozen in a permanent expression of astonishment. (That's pretty unnerving when you've had 15 wine samples in less than 10 minutes.) The highlight of the tour was watching a man demonstrate how he puts the bubbles in spumante. (Insert your own crude joke here.) His true talent was his uncanny and accidental vocal resemblance to a Christmas elf on Extasy. He was the happiest elf I've ever seen! When Bob the Bubbly elf asked if anyone had any questions, Grant blurted out, "Does Santa know you're here?"

After the tour, we went to a bizarre place to get a bite to eat for lunch. In one, single building there were a "You only have to have three teeth in your head to get in" restaurant, a gift shop that sold rebel flags and Hank, Jr. t-shirts, a Baskin Robins/Blimpie's/Sbarro food court, a Magic shop, and an IMAX theater. These were all under one roof! As we sat in the food court watching people file in and out of the theater we noticed a startling concentration of people with "mullet" haircuts. (You know- the hair is cut short all over except for a long, stringy curtain of hair in the back. I know you had one in the 1980s; I did.) We thought only hockey players still had mullets, but apparently they are still held in high favor in Branson. Grant reckoned that Canada and Branson must have been connected by some sort of land bridge before the last ice age and that later they got cut off from one another leaving their populations isolated from each other and apparently the rest of the known world. So we decided to make a game of spotting mullets. One point per mullet, two points for women with mullets, and three points for women who's beer bellies protruded from their half-shirts. In less than an hour we spotted eight male mullets with the overall prize going to Brenda for spotting three. She won the tie-breaker with me by spotting the elusive "Silver-back" mullet, who was clearly the alpha-male of the mullet troup. Bethany won honorable mention for spotting the day's only lady mullet which presumably belonged to the alpha female.

Afterwards, we drank a hot-tub full of beer, watched the Ball drop in Times Square, and laughed till we felt like puking as we recalled the series of odd events that was our New Year's Eve.