Jul 22 - Bachelor party striptease!

Marco just left for a weekend-long bachelor party in the southwest of France. No worries, however. Bachelor parties are not the sleazy affairs found back home. In French it's not even called a "bachelor party" actually. It's called "the burial of boyhood" (or girlhood for the ladies). The biggest and most essential feature is that the group of guy buddies take their friend out for a jokingly humiliating day in public. They dress him up in a humorous theme of some sort, and make him interact with people in public.

One of Marco's friends, who had lived a year in Australia, had to wear a rented kangaroo costume and visit Parc Asterix (a big theme park) and ask questions to passing ladies. Then in the evening he had to put on a wetsuit and flippers and go paddle around on a bodyboard in Paris' famous Trocadero fountains in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. The point is not to hire strippers and such, but to have a big laugh with buddies.

The best and most clever joke I heard of though was within the same group of friends. They took a weekend trip to the south by train. One of the friends in the group works for the French national rail system, SNCF, and he borrowed an official train conductor uniform for the weekend, including the ticket-punching device.

They had their soon-to-be-married friend put on the conductor's uniform and pass through the train car, punching tickets. BUT, in the middle, they pulled out a boom box and played "You Can Leave Your Hat On" from the movie Full Monty, one of the world's all-time striptease songs. At that point their friend had to do a striptease in front of the passengers, who all thought he was an actual SNCF employee. And he did, down to the boxer shorts. They said they've never seen looks of amazement like it in their lives.