WHY GOD CREATED YOUTUBE™: When Holiday Parties Attack! (B-52s Edition)

Even those of us who work in private academic research libraries are not immune to the phenomenon that is the annual Holiday Party, and so it was last night I found myself once again nestled in the cold embrace of the campus' "Hall of Dead White Men" to partake in rituals old and new: playing "Who's Your Grandfather?" with the portraits lining the walls that give the Hall its name; having a duel to the death of the conversation with Ivy while using stick-shaped vegetables as weapons; attempting (and eventually abandoning) several America's Next Top Model-themed conversations; and dashing Legolas and Eels' hopes of witnessing my legendary Zinfandel-fuelled tabletop acapella performance of Eddie Murphy's Party All The Time. "OOOO, oo oo OO oo oo oooo" indeed.

But of course a Holiday Party just wouldn't be a Holiday Party without the inevitable declaration "This place blows. Let's go somewhere only slightly less socially inhibitive!" -- which explains how I eventually ended up in the company of Psychictoad, Shady, Legolas, and several non-aliased compadres in a dimly-lit corner of a local public house drinking Guiness, eating curry chips and denying up and down that the morning would find me writing this very essay (writer's block can be such a cruel, heartless animal).

And how does this all relate to the above-embedded video, you ask? Well, between two-fisting buffalo wings and Coronas, Shady found the spare breath to continually ask me "How's this for generic music?" whenever the establishment's iPod-powered sound system spat out another feel-good party classic. It wasn't until the whoops, hollers and treble-soaked snare hits that herald the commencement of the pre-Metrosexual Revolution anthem-of-abandon Love Shack met my ears that I actually started complaining about the music; and considering this was at the point in the evening when the conversation had finally devolved into sharing stories about vomiting, I felt pretty lucky I'd made it so long without having to display my usual cultural consternation. Plus I'd like to believe it was my riveting high school story about witnessing the son of a local sausage magnate vomiting on the back of the head of one of my friends in sophomore history class that actually prevented our table from joining in the screeching cry of "TIN ROOF...rusted" that inevitably accompanies this song, but that may just be wishful thinking.

So here's to Holiday Parties, those special occasions each year when we find ourselves helping coworkers avoid walking head-on into traffic, drinking something so tasteless its name is actually an I.R.A. reference, and driving your friend's car home because they're too tipsy to remember where they parked -- all in the name of peace on Earth.