Tis' the Season for Office Christmas Parties

While the downturn in the economy has put a damper, or forced the cancellation of many office Christmas parties, they do still happen, but on a smaller scale. 

If nothing else we have our memories of the horrible food, drunken booses, and Ted from marketing disappearing into the bathroom with one of the interns. 

Have any great stories?  Send them in, here are some I've come across to get you through the big office bash.

En Fuego

Back in the early '70s I was a teaching assistant during graduate school. One of the department secretaries hosted a faculty and staff Christmas party. It was a time when everyone smoked wherever they wanted, and I was a smoker at the time.

I was talking to someone in the living room with a cigarette in my hand. As I spoke I was gesturing with broad sweeps of my arms. At one point, I accidentally hit the wall with the lit end of my cigarette -- the same wall their couch sat against.

The party went on. It was time to leave. As I was leaving I smelled smoke and looked over to see a steady plume of smoke rising from the back of the couch, caused no doubt by the embers from the hot ash of my cigarette as it hit the wall.

"Oh look!" I cried out. "Your couch is on fire!"

It was Cancelled!

I got the wrong date for the office party that was to be held at a very expensive restaurant. I showed up at work and asked a fellow co-worker if she and her husband wanted to ride to the party with us that night and she responded, "Why? The party was last night. Where were you? We waited for you and your wife for 30 minutes before we got started."

In preparation for the party, we both bought new clothes and had to sell NBA tickets because of the supposed scheduling conflict.

This happened five years ago and I am reminded of it EVERY year when the holiday party is being scheduled.

I couldn't face my wife due to all the trouble we went through to get ready for the party. To this day, my wife thinks they cancelled the party - I was too embarrassed to tell her I got the dates wrong. It is my dirty little secret!

Dozing Off

After enjoying myself at our office holiday party, I was feeling very tired and had to go outside and lay down in the back seat of a co-worker's car. Turns out it was my boss' car and he didn't realize I was asleep in the back seat until he had driven all the way home! So, I went inside to call a cab, much to his wife's disapproval.

The Musical Entertainment

At my first company Christmas party, the entertainment was a group of female impersonators who dressed up like Cher, Tina Turner, Bette Midler and a few others, and sang and danced like they were real women. Other than a couple of oversized shoulder blades, you would never know they were men. Many of the old ladies from advertising and customer service were very impressed. Clueless and impressed. “These gals are really good! They look and sound like the real thing!” I overheard one say to another. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that those gals that they were watching were men. They had gotten their hair done and put on girdles for this party; who was I to spoil it for them.

I See London, I See France

At the office Christmas party, the back of my silk dress got caught my panties after a visit to the ladies room. It was a good 10 minutes I pranced around the party before an "angel" came up to me and told me my status. Ladies, if you see another girl is this situation- help her out (wouldn't you want that too?)

Buckle Up!

Unfortunately, I have to admit my huge blunder. After the classy holiday party at the nicest restaurant in our town I had had a few to many when my coworker and I were outside laughing it up. The party had ended and another co-worker and his future wife were about to leave. This co-worker was very religious and as they were leaving I yelled to him don't forget to buckle up his condom. I had just watched Father of the Bride the previous night and thought it would be funny. Wrong!

Huh?

Let's just say it involved alcohol, a bathroom sink, and I ended up with a nice shiner, although I didn't feel a thing.

Don't End up on You Tube

I went as a date to my best girlfriends office party last year. We spent the day getting our make up done on Newbury Street in Boston, then having cocktails and girly fun in our hotel room before the party. I had a fantastic outfit picked out and was excited to strut my stuff. Fast forward to my girl friends and I being the only ones on the dance floor-- drinks in hand. Feeling sassy, I broke out my signature dance move, involving some hip-swaying, booty-shaking elements. As it turns out, the back of my skirt was up over my panty-less behind the entire time. I spent the next 2 weeks on YouTube hoping that no one caught my little dance on tape. Thankfully, they didn't.

Ron Santo Dead at 70: Can We Now Put Him in the Hall of Fame

Legendary Chicago Cubs player and broadcaster Ron Santo died Thursday night in Arizona. He was 70.

Friends of Santo's family said the North Side icon lapsed into a coma on Wednesday before dying Thursday. Santo died of complications from bladder cancer, WGN-AM 720 reported.

Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts released a statement: "My siblings and I first knew Ron Santo as fans, listening to him in the broadcast booth. We knew him for his passion, his loyalty, his great personal courage and his tremendous sense of humor. It was our great honor to get to know him personally in our first year as owners.

"Ronnie will forever be the heart and soul of Cubs fans."

The former Cubs third baseman had continued to work as a Cubs analyst on WGN, the team's flagship radio broadcast, despite his health issues. He was expected to return for the 2011 season. He missed several road trips in 2010 but insisted he would return.

Former Cubs President John McDonough compared Santo to Harry Caray, another baseball broadcasting legend, noting neither had a filter, broadcast with unvarnished emotion and were enormously entertaining.

Santo mangled names, sometimes lost track of what was going on in a game and occasionally didn't realize some player had been on the roster for months, but none of that mattered because people loved it, McDonough said. "We almost thought he was doing it on purpose," he said. "It added so much entertainment value."

You had to like Santo because he was a Cubs fan and made no apologies for his on-air cheerleading or his utter frustration over a Cub's misplay.

Santo never witnessed his longtime goal of election to the Baseball Hall of Fame despite career numbers that mark him as one of baseball's all-time great third basemen. He finished with a .277 average over 15 major league seasons, with 342 home runs and 1,331 runs batted in.

Though Santo came close to Cooperstown enshrinement in the last decade in voting by the Veterans Committee, he always fell short. In 2007, Santo received 39 of the 48 votes necessary to reach the 75 percent threshold of the living 64 Hall of Famers to cast a ballot. His 61 percent lead all candidates and no one was elected to the Hall.

It was the fourth straight time the Veterans Committee had failed to elect a member, leaving Santo frustrated.

Santo was up for the Hall of Fame on 19 occasions, and first appeared on the Veterans Committee ballot in 2003. He got his hopes up on every occasion.

"Everybody felt this was my year," he said after the last vote in December 2008. "I felt it. I thought it was gonna happen, and when it didn't. ... What really upset me was nobody got in.

Santo began his major league career with the Cubs in 1960, and spent one season with the White Sox in 1974. He earned National League Gold Glove awards five straight seasons from 1964 to 1968 and was a nine-time NL All-Star. He was one of the leaders of the 1969 team that blew the division lead to the New York Mets, a season indelibly etched in Cubs' history.

Though Santo never made the Hall of Fame, his number was retired by the Cubs. He said that was equivalent to being inducted in Cooperstown. Being a Cub, and playing at Wrigley Field, meant the world to Santo.

In recent years, Santos had a couple wild mishaps while announcing, his toupee caught fire in the Shea Stadium press box in New York on Opening Day 2003 after he got too close to an overhead space heater. And last spring in Mesa, Ariz., Santo lost his front tooth while biting into a piece of pizza.  He gave his body and soul to the Cubs while playing and while broadcasting.

Here are Santos' lifetime stats.  You tell me if he is Hall worthy.  The 343 home runs are like hitting almost 500 today, the hits and RBIs are huge, and his contribution to baseball speaks volumes.

             
W             

The Top Searches of 2010

Yahoo has released its year-end list of top Web searches, which identify the trends form the past year. There are going to be many of these search lists released between now and the end of the year,  including the top overall searches, top searches by country and top searches in a number of verticals, like finance, sports, questions and "obsessions" (hot items throughout the year).

For the first time ever, a news story (the BP oil spill) made it into this list, and not only that, but it reached the #1 spot. Typically, top searches are more entertainment or celebrity-focused, as the rest of the list clearly shows. But something about the oil spill encouraged the most searches. Not only did people check constantly for updates ("Is it capped yet? How about now? Now?!), Yahoo's Web Trend analyst Vera Chan speculated that the news also tapped into our society's deeper concerns about the role of big government in managing natural and manmade disasters.

Top Searches on Yahoo! in 2010

1. BP oil spill
2. World Cup
3. Miley Cyrus
4. Kim Kardashian
5. Lady Gaga
6. iPhone
7. Megan Fox
8. Justin Bieber
9. American Idol
10. Britney Spears

Its really something that Britney Spears still makes the top-10 list.  No Obama, no miners, no Wikileaks.  Also iPhone shows up, but no iPad.  Interesting.

Airport Security Stops Joe Jonas

Singer Joe Jonas was trying to board a flight out of Abu Dhabi with girlfriend Ashley Greene of Twilight fame, he was stopped by security who were suspicious of something in his carryon luggage. Turns out the squeaky clean pop-star had placed a set of knives he'd purchased into his carryon bag, instead of his checked luggage. Bystanders said his response to the mistake was, "Whoopsies." When Jonas was approached by security they simply took the knives away and stored them with the checked luggage. If he'd been stopped in the U.S.--with all the new TSA procedures--who knows what sort of ordeal he'd have to go through. Probably some groping or an intense body scan.hat sort of ordeal he'd have to go through. Probably some groping or an intense body scan.

Turkey Tycoon Dies on Thanksgiving Day

Sweet revenge or just ironic?

British turkey tycoon Bernard Matthews -- the man behind the infamous turkey twizzler -- has died at the age of 80 his company said.

His death came on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day in the U.S, a celebration often referred to as "Turkey Day."

Matthews was one of the first businessmen to personally advertise their products on British television, coining the memorable catchphrase, "they're bootiful" in his rich Norfolk accent.

"He is the man who effectively put turkey on the plates of everyday working families and in so doing became one of the largest employers in rural East Anglia and a major supporter of the local farming community," said the company's chief executive Noel Bartram in a statement.

Matthews, the son of a mechanic, left school at 16 and went on to become a household name, only stepping down as chairman of the company on his 80th birthday early this year.

"From simple beginnings, with an initial investment of just 2.50 pounds 60 years ago, Bernard Matthews took the business from 20 turkey eggs and a second-hand paraffin incubator to a successful and thriving multi million pound company," said Bartram.

In recent years his company was dogged by an image problem after the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver maligned turkey twizzlers, one of the company's key product lines. It also was hit hard by the 2007 outbreak of bird flu.  Business has since rebounded,