Competition Olympics Prizes for Winners

Ok, lets turn up the temperature a little on this one. There's gonna be prizes for the outright winner of each leg of the Inaugural Honorary LUCYTAKESOFF Competition Olympics 2007. I would like to clarify that these individual-round prizes will NOT be presented on a plinth with garlands and a cup to hold aloft in pride and achievement, but are merely teasers, you might call them, to string you along and get you entering. Good lord. Racy.

When we have completed all the legs of the Inaugural Honorary LUCYTAKESOFF Competition Olympics 2007, then and only then will all the names be put into a hat and drawn from a drum that goes round and round by an air hostess with a blindfold on, and the winning names read out over a microphone in some kind of a live webcast by a minor Irish rockstar. Flashing discolights might also feature. And the plinths, garlands, medals, bathing suit etc. bit you already know from previous posts.

This week's prize:

drumroll drumroll drumroll drumroll

A set of five vhs copies of Simpsons Featurettes, or perhaps they're Simpsons Thematic Treasuries, each about 88 minutes long, which I found on a stoop at 6th avenue and President Street in Park Slope, this evening. Here's the rub, though. You'll have to watch them with me, because I don't have a video player and I'd love to see them. But I'm saying it now, ladies and gentlemen, I will NOT be wearing a bathing suit for the screening.

So far, the lovely Constance is in Pole Position as the ONLY entrant in the competition. And for all of you who have recently started reading the blog, dig deep to at least a week ago, there's another competition, which was Leg One of this prestigious and highly unusual Olympic variety, which is still open, though another New Yorker, the lovely Chris, is in a similar Pole Position there.

I wish you the best of luck.

"LUCYTAKESOFF is the only blog for me at the end of a hard day, because ... " in words ten or less. Post in the comments section of the original post please.

I've heard ugly rumours that the comments section is a gmail or blogger account-only zone or someshit by Blogger. I do hope this ain't so, and will be investigating whatthefuck.

Good lord, I've got a dirty mouth this evening. Just come back from the spelling bee at Freddy's Backroom tonight.

It's got to be that.

Competition Olympics, Leg 2

Do you remember the days when tayto crisp wrappers and teabag boxes had competitions on them? You'd answer some cryptic question about cheese and onion flavours and then you'd have to come up with a really good way to finish the sentence "I love Tayto Crisps because..." or "Lyons Blend is the only one for me because..." in less than ten words. Many of us tried, and just couldn't summon up the creative genius for the project. It was our Waterloo.

Some people were really good at it. They won cars and holidays in Majorca. Their children became copywriters.

Of course, at that time, there were no copywriters in Ireland. There were competitions for slogans on the back of Cornflake boxes. The whole country was full of amateur enthusiastic copywriters hoping to get a free car or holiday in a time when Ireland was not the fourth wealthiest country on the planet.

Others, and this flavour is definitely in the general air in Ireland, wrote any old shit in blue biro and saved their tokens, sending them in with the cheery expectation that "if you're not in, you can't win". I love this aspect of Irish consciousness. It really gives the country its character. It's the same kind of spirit that will see my parents donning their wings to go and swim in the hotel pool in Majorca later this month.

My mum is in her fifties and my dad is in his sixties and there they'll be, swimming around happy as larry in their wings. They're becoming stronger swimmers with each sun holiday they take, I think. And they didn't win their holiday from a teabag box. They paid good money to get out of the rainy Irish summer for a week or so. May it shine on the island of Majorca that week.

Clearly my opening competition was too much for you, because there has been only one guess posted in the tumbleweed zone that is my comments section. Well it's just a good job I'm not crippled by a need to be popular, is all I can say.

So here's another competition. It will be combined with the first and maybe further ones, and we're gonna have winners dammit! I repeat: there's going to be three plinths, one high one in the middle with the number ONE on it, and two lower down ones saying 2 and 3, like the trains that take me out of here. There will be flower garlands, medals and I may well don a bathing suit to present the thing, should such a need arise.

Drumroll drumroll drumroll drumroll

Complete the following sentence in ten words or less:

"Lucy Takes Off is the only blog for me at the end of a hard day, because..."

Bated breath. Arched toes.