The Friday Challenge - 5/8/09

Well, there's good news and bad news this morning. The good news is that Robert Rodriguez's $80M remake of Barbarella isn't going to happen after all, so we can all thank our respective personal deities for small favors received.

The bad news is that we have precisely one entry in the 5/1/09 Friday Challenge, and that entry would be:

Henry, John Carter and the Bronze Men in Mars

While this would seem to make the rendering of judgment and awarding of prizes a foregone conclusion, I will instead adhere slavishly to form and remind you once again that, even if you have not entered this week, you are invited to read, comment on, and vote for your favorite among the entry, with the winner to be announced on Sunday.

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Turning now to this week's challenge: once again, it's becoming mid-May, and hereabouts that can mean only one thing—

That any moment now, some person you haven't heard from in years and didn't much like when you did know them will suddenly contact you out of the blue, all gushing and excited about your upcoming high school reunion!*

So that's what we're looking for this week. Tell us your best, or worst, or funniest, or most dreadful story about your high school reunion. (Or if you aren't that old yet, your most entertaining nonviolent PG13-rated fantasy about what you would like to do at your reunion.) For example, my best reunion story remains the following lines of dialog, which are mostly true. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

ME: "Wow! Who is that babe?"

Old Almost-Girlfriend: "Where?"

ME: "Over there, that gorgeous redhead in the slinky dress who's hanging all over Tony Vermicelli. I know I didn't go to school with her."

OAG: (squints and stares) "Uh, Bruce? I've got bad news for you."

ME: "I did and I missed her? Who is she?"

OAG: "David Schwartz."

ME: (pause) "You mean David Schwartz, who all the girls adored because he could joke and sing and dance like Fred Astaire? David, the star of the play and the musical and the talent contest? David, who was going to Hollywood to become an actor?"

OAG: "Yup."

ME: (longer pause) "You think we should warn Tony?"

OAG: (longest pause yet, as she apparently remembers something that I probably would rather not know and then downs her drink in one gulp) "Nope."


As always, we're playing by the ever-changing but rarely updated Official Rules of the Friday Challenge, and playing for whatever is behind Door #3. The deadline for entries is midnight Central time, Thursday, 5/14/09.

Now haul out those old yearbooks and get shuddering!

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* As I look over this post before hitting the Publish button, I can't help but wonder if Disney isn't already working on some pre-packaged synthetic and scripted entertainment experience a la "High School Musical" that will obviate the need for actual reunions with actual people you knew. Call it, "High School Musical: The 10-Year Reunion?" Anyway, there's another option for you: if you don't have or aren't willing to tell any stories from your actual reunion, you can script a scene from your version of the stage show.