Mary-Mary-Mary -- what a crummy party

Remember those horrible Mary Richards parties on the old Mary Tyler Moore Show? She would plan and plan for weeks and they would royally bomb. Nobody would have good time, and the entire atmosphere would be dismal and dreary with people starting to check their watches at 9 p.m. The parties were like that because they were ‘planned’. There was no spontaneity. Her guests felt forced. You can't force people to have fun.

People hate feeling forced, especially if they are being ordered to have a good time. For me, and I suspect for many of you, it just doesn’t work that way. You have probably found that your absolutely best times in life have been impromptu sets of circumstances in which everything just clicked into place.

It’s like planning for sex. You have soft music, maybe a comforting Jacuzzi bubble bath together, scented candles, champagne, sexy lingerie, and everything that should make for a carnal encounter par excellence. And it fizzles. What you recall, in fact, are those delicious encounters on a walk in the woods, or in a car, or someplace where you couldn’t wait (sometimes literally) to get your hands on each other and to come together with the most amazing fireworks. Those are the ones you remember because nothing was planned. Good old-fashioned horniness was allowed to prevail and it was wonderful.

So, the forcing thing, the planning thing, really gets my goat. Please, don't anybody try to demand that I have a good time, or even support your venture. Back in 1987 there was a thing called Expo in Vancouver. It was an extravagant world’s fair. The hype went on and on for months before the thing happened. I didn’t go.

I didn’t go because everybody, especially ‘officialdom’ told me I must. My late (and often lamented) mother-in-law told me I “should” go. Wow, “should”, that’s the kiss of death for me. “You’ll regret not going,” she said. I’ve never for a smidgen of a second regretted not having gone.

Now, we have the Olympics. We are constantly and consistently told that in Vancouver in 2010 the heavens are possibly going to open up and maybe Jesus himself is going to come down and bless these games, and that is what justifies spending 27 trillion of my tax dollars to hype this stuff and build the infrastructure. Infrastructure that is actually thoroughly needed for regular old folk to get by in life, but no, this infrastructure is for 2010.

And, they’re telling me I ‘must’ go. They’re telling me I ‘must’ support what they’re doing. Know what? I’m already not going. I am so not there, and won’t be in 2010, either.

The news came out last week that the Olympics organizers want to take more of my tax money so they can carry out telephone polls of the citizenry to find out how excited they are about the games. They want to, of course, hear very upbeat things about my passion for the extravaganza. I really, really hope they phone me so I can offer my views.

I don’t write any of this cynically. I don’t even object to athletic events. I often wander to the park down the way to watch the kids play Little League ball. I do that because nobody tells me I have to do so. It’s spontaneous.