Shimmy Shimmy, Ko-Ko Bop.

I thought I had a pretty good New Year's Eve party planned. There will be champagne with pomegranate seeds in it (for extra festivity). There will be a sit-down dinner, featuring a fabulous (if I may say so myself) Asian-inflected panko-topped baked salmon and some vegetables or other. There will be desserts brought by my guests. There will be plenty of wine for everyone. There will be an array of ridiculous hats that people can take turns wearing. There will be leftover Christmas crackers, with the dumb jokes, the little toys, and the hilarity-generating paper crowns. There will be "Dance for Our Evil Pleasure."

What? You have never played "Dance for Our Evil Pleasure"? The game started from a game I used to play at New Years with my friends from college. At that time it was called "Crazy Crazy Eights," and basically you play Crazy Eights but we made up a whole array of special "values" for each number. There would be a large poster on the wall, so that you would know what it meant to play any individual card to the person sitting next to you. Sure, there were things like "draw 4" or "change direction of play" like in Uno. But then there might be:

King = drink
Queen = remove an item of clothing
Jack = change direction
10 = wear something dorky on your head
8 = wild
6 = draw four
5 = drink some more

You get the idea. Then one year we added

7 = dance for our evil pleasure

Everyone else got to choose the music and you had to dance to it until we thought it was hilarious enough and then you could sit down.

So for our friends last year I decided that we were all drinking plenty, and probably no one was interested in undressing, and frankly everyone was already wearing hilarious hats. What was missing? Dancin'! So we assigned "dance for our evil pleasure" to several different numbers and away we went.

You should try it with your friends, but first you need to collect an array of appropriate music. Here are some tracks I can personally recommend:

"Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen
"Rock Lobster" by The B-52's
"Walk Like an Egyptian" by The Bangles
"Deep in the Heart of Texas" by Gene Autry
"Dancing Machine" by The Jackson 5
"The Ride of the Valkyries" by anyone at all
"Brick House" by The Commodores
"Hit Me with Your Best Shot" by Pat Benatar
"Axel F" by Harold Faltermeyer
"The James Bond Theme" by the Monty Norman Orchestra
"Land of 1000 Dances" by Wilson Pickett
"Honky Tonk Women" by The Rolling Stones
"I Wear My Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Hart
"Milkshake" by Kelis
"Jam on It" by Newcleus
"Arabski kjuchek" by Yuri Yunakov
"Soul Bossa Nova" by Quincy Jones
"Balkanization of Americanization" by J.U.F.
"Grazing in the Grass" by Hugh Masakela
"Middle of the Road" by The Pretenders

But really the possibilities are endless!

Well, anyway, I thought my New Year's Party plans were the very best of the best, until I came across this! Now, that would seriously rock.

I hope your New Year's Eve is fun and safe. What are your plans?