It has recently been brought to my attention that it’s never too early to begin planning a bachelor party. Nine months may seem like a long time, but if you want to reserve the really good roller-skating monkeys, you have to plan ahead. Hey, sometimes it’s the non-traditional bachelor parties you remember most fondly. Sure, I’ll never forget crashing that one in the San Francisco bowling alley, where two highly-skilled professional ladies performed amazing and possibly illegal feats of flexibility. Then there was the one with the videos featuring highly-skilled professional ladies and unskilled barnyard animals, and the other one where the not-so-highly-skilled cut-rate semi-professional lady writhed and grunted on a stinky couch in a hot, muggy attic. Good times, good times.

But my two favorite bachelor parties featured no lewd content whatsoever, unless the sight of Harvey Korman cooking in shiny space drag pushes your buttons.



Yes, Mr. Big Pantz’s bachelor party was a small gathering, just a few beers and a steaming hot bootleg copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special. It may not sound like much, but oh, the laughing! The choking! The wheezing! The shooting gut pains! There were several instances where we probably should have received immediate medical assistance. Bea Arthur’s cantina! Itchy and Lumpy, having long conversations entirely in Wookie! The most embarrassing moment of Harrison Ford’s career! All this and Jefferson Starship, too! For my money, this is the high point of the whole Star Wars saga, but it seems George Lucas does not agree.

But even that magical evening is eclipsed by the Chief’s bachelor party, sort of a Sam Raimi affair centered around a woodsy cabin on a dark, quiet Maine lake. The secret ingredient: Super-Soakers. I confess, I cannot remember all the rules to the Most Dangerous Game, but basically there were hunters and the hunted, and playing cards somehow figured into it all. (Perhaps Mr. Big Pantz can help me out here. We could probably sell the rights to ESPN and they could air a celebrity version of it.) Of course, this might have been even more fun with the participation of strippers, but you can’t have everything.

(By the way, can you believe Adrian Zmed had his name above the title on the Bachelor Party poster? And equal billing with Tom Hanks? I bet he has that poster over his bed and cries himself to sleep every night.)