I’m a fan of lame fun. It is the best type of fun. It is the only type of true fun one can have. Fun is completely and utterly honest when it is lame. Ergo, lame fun is pure fun.
We have to distinguish “types of fun” now because unfortunately, somewhere along the way, fun became affiliated with cool. From advertisers to storytellers to the self conscious voices deep in the crevices of our brain, fun has been fashioned to become only trendy, hip, and popular. It is as if in order to have fun you have to be apart of the elite. We tell ourselves that we have to have money or status or big freaking kahunas to reach the maximum capacity of super fun times.
And that is just so backwards to me. Think about it. The phrase “Super Fun Times” itself just wreaks of lame-o dorkiness. The word “Funny” equates itself to laughter and even as a standalone collection of syllables, FUN is rather phonetically… square.
Say it.
FFF-AH-UH-NNN-AH.
Not very sexy or sleek, it doesn’t roll of the tongue, and you have almost crinkle your nose to say it normally. Bonus points: try the word in various accents. That’s right, it’s fun to say fun in a lame way. Full circle here, people.
And sure, perhaps for many folks fun can only be had lavishly, like that sleek Vegas commercial with the models and the suits and stuff. Or maybe fun to some is only in dangerous settings, like all those dares in elementary school involving words like “hooky” “cheating” “sneaking” and “fire.” And I guarantee most of us have spent a period of our adolescence thinking we were on the loser side that didn’t get to have any fun. We thought our parents were too strict, our friends were not that crazy, and being alone equaled being super bored. Little did we know our parents are AWESOME, our friends are HILARIOUS, and being alone is remarkably IMPORTANT.
And sure as I reached college I gained some stories that are pretty legendary in rebellious nature, and yeah there have been times when I’ve been looking hot at a club with bottle services feeling cool and shhhhhh (okay that was just one time)… but when I truly look back on the moments where I was having a ball, the time of my life, Fun with a capital F, you know what those times were? Lame with a capital L. Unapologetically lame fun.
And I think it is high time we marry those two words instead, and celebrate the notion of lame fun. Lame fun is not inclusive, or elite, or popular. Anyone can have it, and it doesn’t require that you be part of some expensive club or desire to go against the status quo. Lame fun doesn’t eliminate these elements, of course, but it certainly doesn’t make them a requirement.
So this is my plea. My decree actually. May Lame Fun be known as the most pure and desired type of fun a person can enjoy. May the pursuit of happiness be the pursuit of lame happiness. May lame fun take precedence over cool fun and may it be more frequent than the true enemies of all fun, boredom and sorrow.
It’s easy to make lame fun, that is part of it’s beauty. It’s about making big deals out of small things, being true to deep seeded passions, and acknowledging from time to time that hey, life is pretty great.
Listed below are some of my favorite examples of Lame Fun. Enjoy.
– Create an interpretive dance with your ASU college roommate to the Flo Rider’s “Low.”
– Go to a midnight showing of Pirates of The Caribbean with your friends and when they all arrive dressed up like pirates, you arrive dressed up like Harry Potter.
-Help your uncle dance to the song “Single Ladies” at your brother’s wedding.
– While on the gym’s elliptical machine, get lost in lip syncing a fantasy of fronting your own amazing cover band that does hits like Katy Perry’s “Firework,” Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” and EVERY QUEEN SONG EVER.
– Make comedy videos with two of your best guy friends and make them constantly dress in drag.
– Play Settlers of Catan, and when the time calls for it, force everyone to announce in a funny accent “I am purchasing another settlement!”
– Two words: THEME PARTIES.
– Three words: MOVIE THEME PARTIES.
– Four words: MURDER MYSTERY THEME PARTIES.
– Create a night called Chopped Night, where all your friends come over and bring secret ingredients and then one-by-one they all have twenty minutes to create an appetizer from three of the secret ingredients drawn from a hat. And then you eat it and either like it or hate it.
– Go to Happy Hour at a bar around the corner with the goal of learning the whole bartending staff’s name and then SUCCEED.
– Create a game called Hide The Shot where you turn out all the lights in your apartment and divvy up the rooms to your friends who have shots of a mixed cocktail and then play a song in the kitchen as everyone hides the shot and then once all the shots are hidden, rotate the folks to the next room to search for the hidden shots and then have a race to see who can find the shots first, second, third and so on, and then pass down the shots based on winner to loser. And then keep playing.
– Get Bacon and Egg Flannel Pajamas for free when you get an offer.
– Go to Dim Sum with friends who are dim sum experts and just eat whatever the heck they put in front of you, from delicious shrimp dumplings to OMG chicken feet.
– For your 18th birthday, gather twenty of your friends and go to Casa Bonita in Denver, Colorado dressed in prom attire.
– Day drink. Brunch drink. Sporting Event drink. Drinking Game drink. Innocently drink. Drink until you’re buzzed then stop and enjoy the buzz.
– When giving tours of Celestial Seasonings Tea Factory, figure out a way to slip a Lipton joke while showing off the peppermint room.
– Take a roadtrip with a friend to Antiques Roadshow and be pleasantly surprised when the two random decorations you brought were worth $60.
– Every Friday stay in with your college roommate and watch a Disney movie like you’ve never watched it before.
– Go to free museums and learn lots of stuff.
– Have a few people over Charades, Catchphrase, Scategories, Pictionary, basically any game that requires groups, guessing, and yelling.
– Go to bed at nine o’clock because you are tired.
– When you watch one movie of a series, make sure to watch the remaining films in the series in a timely manner, like by the end of the weekend.
– When playing bar trivia, come up with a pop culture name that is better than the pop culture name you used the week before.
And finally –
– Dance and Sing. Dance and sing to silly songs that everyone and their mom knows the words to. Dance with lots of people or a few people or with one person or by yourself. Dance and sing the way your body moves and sounds, not in any style or with any grace. Dance and sing like that silly quote tells you to. Dance and sing to the Cupid Shuffle, or Baby Got Back, or Bye Bye Bye, or Shout. Dance and sing more often than you should, because at the end of the day, dancing and singing is the root of PURE LAME FUN.
——– One L
“You’re killing me smalls. These are smores stuff. First, you take the graham. You stick the chocolate on the graham. Then you roast a mallow. When the mallow is flaming you stick it on the chocolate. And then? You stuff.” – The Sandlot.
In the Sun with Alison 