The ultimate regift opportunity

It’s the Christmas season, and we all know what that means — bad gifts from loved ones and co-workers.

We’ve all been there. According to USA Today, 70 percent of Americans re-gift. The other 30 percent lie. Think about it, the fruitcake was the original regift item. Now cheap Chinese crap from Wal-Mart has replaced the humble fruitcake.

Of course, it’s always an awkward moment if you get caught regifting, so Dan The Man has a solution for you. During the holidays, if you receive NUTS (Needless, Useless or Tasteless Stuff), set them aside and bring them to trivia on Jan. 6. Your NUTS will be used for trivia prizes. And if you have birthday NUTS, or any other kind of NUTS, bring those, too. I’m calling it Operation NUTS Removal.

Any one who brings in NUTS will earn 1 bonus point for their team. Each team can earn a MAXIMUM of 4 bonus points.

A few guidelines:

• Your NUTS must be small enough to fit in a shoe box.
• Your NUTS can be hideous and ugly, but they must be new, or at least in near mint condition. No used NUTS.
• No private/perverted NUTS. If you would not be willing to talk with your grandma about your NUTS, then leave them at home.

Now that I’ve got the 7th-grade humor out of my system, here’s some more regift trivia. According to USA Today survey, respondents said they were most likely to regift an item to:

• A co-worker 25 percent of the time
• A family member 22 percent of the time
• A service person 20 percent of the time
• A neighbor 12 percent of the time
• A close friend 8 percent of the time.

Put another way, 1 in 5 of your family members is NUTS, but less than 1 in 10 of your close friends are.  =>

A Christmas Story trivia

The annual 24-hour marathon of “A Christmas Story” begins 8 p.m. Thursday on TBS, so now is a perfect time for some trivia about Ralphie and the gang.

Jean Shepherd was a radio and TV personality who wrote of series of humorous short stories for Playboy in the early 1960s about growing up in Northwest Indiana. Shepherd had the stories published by Doubleday in 1966 in a book titled “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash.”

B-movie director Bob Clark heard Shepherd tell the story of “Flick’s tongue” on New York’s WOR radio station in 1968 and became interested in doing a movie based on Shepherd’s stories. The studios had no interest in such a film until 1981, when Clark’s semi-autobiographical movie “Porky’s” became a box-office hit. The studio wanted a sequel to “Porky’s,” which Clark agreed to write and direct if he the studio would agree to let him produce “A Christmas Story.” The rest is history.

Did you know?

• Ralphie’s last name is Parker
• The neighborhood bully is Scut Farkas
• The most serious of all dares is the triple-dog dare.
• Ralphie’s father (known in the movie as “The Old Man”) is constantly yelling at the Bumpuses, the neighbors with the mangy dogs.
• When The Old Man’s major award arrives, he thinks it’s from Italy. (Old Man: “Uh, ‘frah-gee-lay.’ It must be Italian!” Mrs. Parker: “Oh, I think that says ‘fragile,’ honey.”
• Ralphie’s friends are named Flick and Schwartz.
• The Parkers to eat Christmas dinner at the Chop Suey Palace & Co.
• While sucking on a bar of Lifebouy soap, Ralphie dreams of going blind because of soap poisining.
• Director Bob Clark says Jack Nicholson was originally considered for the role of The Old Man.

DTM Playlist for Dec. 21

Here’s the songs that are topping my playlist this week. As always, a couple of these will be used in the music round on Dec. 23. The link will take you to iTunes to hear a sample of the songs.

One change for this week (and this week only): All of the songs in the music round will be Christmas songs. Because many artists record the same classic Christmas songs, it is sometimes difficult to determine just by listening which artist recorded the song. Therefore, I’m changing the scoring. Each song will still be worth 2 points, but you’ll earn 1.5 points if you know the title of song and .5 (half a point) if you know the artist.

• Merry Christmas, Baby – Lou Rawls
• All I Want for Christmas is You – Mariah Carey
• Five Pound Box of Money – Michelle “Evil Gal” Wilson
• Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow – Michael Bublé
• Run Rudolph Run – Chuck Berry
• Last Night ( I Went Out With Santa Claus – Big Bad Voodoo Daddy