- Ted Bundy
- The Jolly Green Giant
- Tonya Harding
- Ernest Borgnine

What do these names have in common? Not much, except that they're all valid entries for a stupid game that some friends and my sister and I made up years ago while sitting around a kitchen table at a slow-moving birthday party. It's a bastard cross between 'Password' and 'Charades', where everyone writes semi-famous names on scraps of paper, and then one person has to describe the entry while their team members try to guess who the hell they're talking about. But you can't say the name directly, which is where the fun begins.

Tim Dunn was one of my earliest childhood friends, and has no relation to this game whatsoever except that one of the entries in the very first game was the name of a cat he once described in a joke:

E-Timmy, I-Timmy, O-Timmy, Rum-Rum, Nicapollo-Wollo, Squeegee-Weegee, Ching-Ching Chop-Chop, Oshtoomi- Bo Bo

For some reason that broke up the group, and so we decided to name the game in his honor. Other than that, it's all pure nonsense, which is what these games tend to devolve into as the evening wears on.

Start thinking up names of has-been celebrities or minor historical figures, and bring along paper and good markers so we can read your handwriting under dim bar conditions. We'll revisit Ha Ra's in the Tenderloin, since it was closed the first time around.

Ha Ra Club
875 Geary at Larkin
(Take the 38 bus, or walk 1-1/2 blocks from Van Ness)

Tuesday, June 19
5:30 - 7:00 or so