It’s Not a Party, It’s an Intimate Get-Together...

The task of hosting Superb Academic Pastime, known crudely by some as SAP and even more foolishly by others as the SING! After Party, was honorably and quite jokingly bestowed upon the juniors this year. With the torch being passed to the younger generation for the first time in recent memory, it was up to them to show the rest of the reputable and intellectual population of Stuyvesant a “wholesome” and “big-brainy” time.

Now that there was finally some fresh blood running the show after the show, it was reported that super-excited junior Evan Wong was going to totally revolutionize the SAP activities list. On passing by him coincidentally in the hallways during my lunch, and then again two periods later, and then AGAIN after school, through no fault of my own, I caught a few glimpses into what had been planned to rock the house this year.

In fact, a more accurate description of how explosive this year’s SAP was going to be came from a snippet of conversation I heard in the bathroom between Evan and his good comrade, junior Owen Potter. “It’s going to be totally tubular, man,” I heard Evan say as he presumably took a puff of his JUUL from within a bathroom stall (hopefully that was where that rising cloud of black vapor was coming from). “It’ll be louder than that smell on the bridge while it was being painted,” he said. At this point, Owen was finished conducting his business at the urinal and realized that there was a third presence in the space. After some awkward eye contact, I beat a hasty retreat back into the hallway.

From what I gathered that day and in the days to come, there was going to be some pretty spicy additions to this year’s SAP. Sadly, the SU had not allotted enough money this year for SAP funding, citing, “In a world where we need to pay off local businesses to give Stuy students discounts on the unhealthy food they so desperately crave, you’re welcome.”

So it is with melancholy pleasure that I reveal to you the awesome, rockin’ plans the juniors had for SAP this year, before fate yeeted them ever so cruelly.

* A chocolate fountain. Duh, every good party has one. But how were the juniors going to make it extra special? By putting it IN THE BATHROOM. So hey, if you were allergic to whatever ingredients they put in when they were mixing that chocolate, you would have had convenient access to a location in which you could flush yourself down the toilet and leave, you party-pooper.

* You know that song, the Electric Slide? No? Well, neither did the SAP planners, because when they heard that it was a popular party mainstay, they just thought it the GRANDEST idea. Using their vastly advanced superior knowledge about engineering, and with a little extra help from Mr. Blay and Pulse Gang, they constructed a fully-functioning, semi-automatic, systematic, HYDROMATIC GREASED LIGH—sorry, got a little carried away there. They constructed an actual, real-life Electric Slide. Because, you know, when you’re going down a thick, plastic playground slide on a hot day, you just love all those mini-static shocks you get—you’re gonna want more of that feeling.

* An alternate model to the original Electric Slide was also built, which consisted of a conveyor belt wrapped around an inclined plane. Because sometimes, sliding using your own weight is just too much work. On the plus side, the DOE is considering using that to replace the four-to-two down escalator this summer to save money, given that it is a piece of master craftsmanship and ingenuity. The only more effective annual advertisement of SAP than a by-produced, fully-functioning escalator permanently residing in Stuy would be a truck with an LED billboard. But who would be silly enough to advertise to Stuy students in any other place than the morning announcements or a Facebook post??

* A bouncer, to make the party seem that much more authentic, whatever that means. Who would the said bouncer have been, you ask? Well, the choice would’ve been obvious: only the most infamous, biggest bad boy on the streets of Tribeca these days, Mr. Howard Barbin, better known by his street name on the basketball court as Hairless Howie B. Legend has it that once he’s changed at least four letters in your name and added two syllables each time he attempts to address you, you will feel so thoroughly belittled and humiliated that you will never try that funny business ever again.

* A karaoke machine was set to dominate the entire venue, along with a strangely-implemented game of Hide & Seek. With TVs and mics connected to each other in all the rooms, a giant console in the main room would control the song selections and feed audio from all of its offshooting mics to be transmitted to the main speakers. So if any partygoers’ friends got lost or “lost,” it would require but a request to the main console for “Every Time We Touch” or “I Want It That Way” to play in the adjoining rooms to quickly locate your friend or “friend” by way of his or her irresistible singing voice, whether your friend is conscious or slightly less conscious.

* A bubble tea cart. The only thing thiccer than that hot [insert preferred noun for sexual preference] you would’ve been dancing with all night is the boba they would’ve been serving up in those neatly packaged plastic cups. Seriously—what is IN those bubbles?

* Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir. Its purpose would’ve been two-fold: one, to physically represent the heavy weight of living and responsibility that you’ve been carrying for so long, and two, so that you could flex on everyone around you without actually being expected to lift something.

* And finally, the crowning achievement of Evan and gang’s celebratory ingenuity. As you entered through the mystical doorway into pubescent wonderland, you would’ve noticed an all-consuming, ethereal mob of mist engulfing you, pulling you into its embrace, seeping into your pores to your very core… and it’s cucumber flavored? Can you feel yourself getting shmacked? That’s right, you guessed it—they built their very own JUUL-POWERED FOG MACHINE. This nouveau twist on a party favorite, akin to the ingenious potato clocks and wind-up animal toys of yore, would’ve made your eyes shudder and roll back in your head, guaranteed. Aerosolically and aromatically releasing a continuous stream of divine, intoxicating mists into the air, one could almost imagine they were walking on clouds—expensive, electronic clouds, generated by tiny flash drives! Like the Electric Zoo, except the party animals would’ve been real, of course, based on what we know of Evan’s incomparable strategizing savvy.

All in all, Evan Wong’s go at SAP was looking to be a banger. If the administration hadn’t spent most of its money paying teachers to stay after school to supervise our dumb activities, maybe our school would’ve been treated to a real hoedown this year. Alas, it was not meant to be. I suppose I will just have to use my senior discount to attend a regularly unruly SAP. A toast: to the party that will never be—like birthday parties for unvaccinated kids.