Mad Atoms

Let’s start a worthwhile trend, want to? When we go out to dumb it down this weekend, let’s leave our high-tech tchotchkes at home. Granted, it’ll be an adjustment. When our friends all disappear, we won’t have a glow-in-the-dark prop to make us look loved. We won’t be able to text directions to laggards, but you know what? Let them figure it out for themselves. It’ll be fun. Like a scavenger hunt.

We’ll be shutting out everyone who didn’t show up. But we’ll be striking a blow against the pussy-ass mediocrity that’s tainted every aspect of American life, most notably the time-honored, cathartic weekend beer bash.

For a lot of us, toting a cellphone is a professional necessity.  But fuck anyone who wants to talk about work on Friday night. (Or Thursday night, which is the new Friday night, making Wednesday the new Thursday.) When did we start bringing Blackberries, MP3 players and GPS trackers to parties? Whenever it was, I’ll bet it coincided with the disappearance of assassination games, impromptu pudding fights, pouring malt liquor on attractive strangers, and everything else that once made parties worth attending. You can’t get away with that shit anymore. Not when you don’t know how many thousands of dollars worth of gadgetry your fellow drinkers have concealed on their persons.

No one wants to commit a four-figure party foul.

Leave the phone at home. Or stick it up your ass, set it on fire, and throw it off the roof. The iPod, too. If you don’t trust the hosts’ musical tastes, bring that scratched-up copy of Bell Biv DeVoe’s Poison – if it gets destroyed, no big deal; if it survives, someone will get naked. It’s not yet safe to throw water balloons at the overdressed promoter by the BBQ pit, but you’re fighting the good fight.

When some coked-out glitter-girl shoves us into the swimming pool, we can enjoy her squeals of delight, and when she says “Now you push me in,” we can oblige, knowing our Treos are safe with the cats.