Catch-phrase of the Year

... "Jason Sims ... Jason Sims. AAAAAUUUGGGHHH!!! WHY is that name so familiar?!?"

I don't like to brag but I do know a thing or two about catch-phrases. Picking up my kids at the school-yard five days a week gives me a window into what's popular with the young people these days simply based on what I hear four times within thirty seconds.

That's why I'm concerned that we may unbeknowingly be raising a generation of terrorists because every day on the school grounds, at least three times I hear one of the tots yell out, "DY-NO-MITE!"

And if it wasn't only the entire civilized world some of them were thinking of blowing up, I also worry about the environment. As in this example of which I witnessed just this morning while dropping Sonny Junior off for a playdate at our daycare, the 'ABC Team,' - "Oh, yeah? Well, up your ass with a ten-pound bass!" Well, I can assure you that he never heard that in this house. Not from my side of the family, anyway.

Anyways, today at work we had our annual 'Holiday' party. Because ol' man Dithers is too cheap to book a place during the prime period of the month that the Christ Child was born - where everyone gives presents and leaves work early.

And, I told him too. After my third roast-beef sub and cranappletonic, I looked him straight in the eye and told him what a cheap bastard he was and that even though I really loved him, as far as I was concerned, he could go shove a twelve-kilogram fish up his stupid rectum.

Somehow it all sounded a lot cooler and poetic when I heard it this morning coming out of the mouth of a five-year-old smoking a cigarette. Luckily for me, he's Uncle Ol' Man Dithers.

Still, Life is like that sometimes, isn't it?

Sometimes, in a social situation we don't know what to say, so we just inappropriately blurt out the first thing that pops into our mind.

Which brings me to the most popular catch-phrase I've overheard on the school grounds for this past month. And apparently it was appropriated by those elementary school hipsters from a commercial on AM-radio.

And I invite everyone to use it themselves over the next two days.

Let's face it - as grown adults, once we hop on the New Years Merry-Go-Round, we are often placed in social positions where we don't know anyone - be it the family Christmas dinner; your spouse's corporate Christmas Dinner - or one of those New Years Eve get-togethers where everyone wears their brand-new Christmas duds and the host wears out his original copy of his favorite-ever Christmas present - Sir Elton's 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.'

So, this is what you do when confronted with such a situation where you are in a room of strangers and don't feel like being a wall-flower. While your ol' lady is in the can, don't be shy but walk up to the first grouping of people you see and as a ice-breaker, repeat this phrase I keep hearing from various Grade 6'ers -

" 'Jason Sims' ... 'Jason Sims,' AAAAUUUGGGHHH!!! Why does that name sound so familiar?!?!"

And then you hit yo-self upside yo head and pronounce in wide-eyed glory, "Of course! He's the real-estate broker who has his face on billboards all over town!"

*** NOTE *** - That's Jason's photo way up top, gracing this blog.

If you pull all that off properly, I'm sure you will be free for the evening. However, if someone misinterprets your ploy as a savvy 'conversation-starter' and actually starts to ask about the current state of real estate, the only way out is to change the topic to the importance of having a good financial adviser. And you know lots of them and most of them are being paroled next month.

If they're still there, interrupting your conversation with the bartender, try this guaranteed 'Been-nice-meeing-you' ... "Read any good books lately?"

I can assure you, you'll be the most lonely-looking guy at the party. And that's always a good thing. Chicks go for that look. And that's according to Marilyn Monroe in 'The Seven-Year Itch.'