jamie doom

This past week, the day after Christmas, I took a break from being a slacker/part-time terrorist and became the host the Foreign Language Department Christmas Party. This “party” had the entire usual “Craptacular” fair except that all the skits and songs were either in English or Japanese, and I was the co-host. John Pasden at Sinosplice has already written the definitive entry detailing the strange and wonderful nature of Craptaculars. I’ll wait here while you go read it.

I agreed to be a co-host as a favor to all my friends—the teachers and students—in the Foreign Language Department, but also because I yearn to be in front of people wearing a fake grin and Santa Hat. Along the way, I’d like to think I learned a couple of things. First, I lobbied for them to replace the word “Party” with “Event,” “Gala,” or even the more increasingly user friendly “Craptacular.” I explained that it was simply misleading to call it a “Party” if there was no food. I was shot down immediately. I was reminded that even though the Communist Party isn’t always concerned with food, they don’t go around calling themselves the “Communist Gala.” Also, I was reminded that there are no details of any finger food being served at our own Boston Tea Party, only tea. Laid low by two irrefutable historical facts, I agreed to host a “Party” that had no food. But I still chafe at the term. I will say that.

Second, I learned that I am an idiot, and not an attractive one. You see, my co-hostess was a freshman Business Japanese Major who speaks fluent Japanese, fluent English, and Standard Mandarin. During the event she also displayed an amazing singing voice when she flawlessly (I’m told) sang a song in Japanese which had a little rap break in the middle. Also, she is funny, tall, and pretty. People may have showed up to see the silly foreigner host the show, but they soon forgot he was there. Standing next to her, I finally realized what male cheerleaders back in the States must feel like—all that hard work and the only people looking at you are the ones who want you to mess up.

Things went off almost without a hitch. It started a little roughly. At the beginning, while we were on stage honoring all the “important” people who were there, more “important people” kept being spotted. Small, hurriedly scribbled notes were repeatedly hustled onto the stage long after we had stopped recognizing the “important people joining us that evening. So we had to keep interrupting our hilarious opening monologue which I had carefully written. At the really subtle yet clever good parts of our opening dialogue, we would have to stop and introduce somebody else—me in English and her in Chinese. We would end up saying something like: “Oh and we want to also welcome Zhu Fan who is the Chairman of the Department of Hair Technology and Truck Driving.” Then we would go on only to have another small note slipped into our hands moments later.

Finally, I put an end to the madness, and made a blanket recognition. “To all you really important people we missed: you are so important that speaking your name out loud at a Christmas Party would almost sully your refined and noble standing among us, so we will all now take a moment of silence and say your beautiful names silently to ourselves while rocking slowly back and forth.” That seemed to work well enough.

Then we were off. My co-hostess and I took turns introducing acts. Every so often, we would break the monotony up by appearing on stage together. At these times we would charm the crowd with bits of “spontaneous conversation” about the last Britney Spears song and dance or the next excerpt from My Fair Lady. All the performances were by the freshman English and Japanese Language students. I was so proud of all of them for their hard work and their polish. I know I am being bias, but this was the best Foreign Language Christmas Party (without food) that I have ever seen. I also commend them for their patience when the mics didn’t work right or I pronounced their names wrong. I always blamed the latter problem on the former.

Girls wore a lot of make-up with tell-tell clumps of glitter. Boys performing in Japanese plays painted on their little mustaches and beards with black markers. Whirling dervishes of flashy skirts rustled between performances back stage. My co-hostess switched back and forth between English and Japanese flawlessly. I managed not to trip and fall or drool. It’s all heady stuff when you are in the middle of it. The only problem I had with the entire evening is that the Japanese uniforms in an earlier Japanese play were the same uniforms used by the Prince’s guards in Cinderella. Suddenly Cinderella had much more of an imperialistic feel to it. I hope she is happy now but I suspect she was just scared of his guards. I’m not sure she really wanted to live happily ever after with a Japanese Prince with an unhealthy foot fetish.

At the end, a foreign teacher dressed in a Santa outfit came onto the stage to the applause of five or six hundred people. All the performers came out for a curtain call. After that, we all danced off the stage to that endless bunny hopping favorite, “Left, Left, Right, Right, Turn Around, Go, Go, Go.” And suddenly, the day after Christmas, I was very much in the Christmas spirit.