Last night, calling for Duke City Singles, I took advantage of “National Abet and Aid Punsters Day” and read shaggy dog stories (a type of pun I really like, with an elaborate setup leading to a really awful denouement) before each tip. It was a riot, with the added advantage of abetting the real punsters in the club who, like Frankenstein unleashed, regaled the club with puns all night.

If you ever want to try this (warning: only among friends…), here are some sources for shaggy dog stories:

• The MacScouter — Scouting Resources Online
• Tarzan’s Tripes Forever, and Other Feghoots – The Web’s First Shaggy Dog Story Archive
• Bad Puns – Get your muds wordled!

I also used a set dance, the Levi Jackson Rag. It’s a dance for five couples, done to the “Levi Jackson Rag,” available from several sources, including Cal Campbell’s “Dancing for Busy People” CD. (Cal’s site doesn’t mention the CD…the hazards of not keeping up-to-date…but it’s available from Supreme.) The dance is popular in the international folk dance community, but it uses nothing but square dance moves, so it’s a fairly easy teach to a MWSD group. The problem is to get them to do it in time with the music and to keep moving. I had one successful set and one that was less successful; even though I had slowed the music down substantially (hooray for MP3s and Vic Ceder’s program), they just couldn’t keep up with the constant pace, with no time to regroup after each sequence. But they had fun, and some even wanted to try it again.