Morning Commute Thought

[moon_custafer]

Is “stealing a traffic cone and taking it home” the direct replacement for “putting a lampshade on your head” as the trope for indicating that a Very Good Time was/is being had? They both have that feeling of performative drunken zaniness. OTOH, I think of the traffic cone as more of a UK and the lampshade as a North American thing; also the milieu is house-party vs. evening out bar-hopping with your mates— but that may simply reflect a shift in how and where social drinking happens. 

I haven’t seen the lampshade thing referenced in at least twenty years, except in the deliberately retro work of Shaggy or Ape Man or whatever he’s calling himself these days, but (thinks) it’s a present-tense way of indicating you’re tipsy, isn't it? You're doing it to amuse/annoy your fellow guests, and you leave the lampshade at your host’s house at the end of the evening. By contrast, traffic-cone stealing is more like bringing home <i>proof</i> of your evening out, even/especially if the only audience is your hungover self the next morning.

I might have my Hallowe'en costume sorted.

Comments

[sovay]

Is “stealing a traffic cone and taking it home” the direct replacement for “putting a lampshade on your head” as the trope for indicating that a Very Good Time was/is being had?

I think they are roughly equivalent, but I also think that the traffic cone can signal that a Very Good Time was had even if you don't remember it, whereas the lampshade is (as you observe) evidence in the moment. One traditionally wakes up with the traffic cone and wonders where it came from. At least, that's how the trope functioned on Red Dwarf.

[moon_custafer]

TV Tropes has also made the lampshade/traffic cone link, though they and other people discussing lampshade instances appear to conflate drunken lampshade-wearing with hiding-by-pretending-to-be-a-lamp, which is not the same thing at all.

It appears from google that there are more modern examples of lampshade-wearing, at leas tin fiction and stock photos, than I’d realized, which for some reason cheers me. Several writers do note that the lampshade connotes not just “party drunk” but “annoying party drunk who thinks he’s funny,” though one person claimed to have seen an example in the wild and that it really was hilarious at the time.

[sovay]

though one person claimed to have seen an example in the wild and that it really was hilarious at the time.

I wonder if it was ever not ironic.

[moon_custafer]

There must once have been some ur-drunk who either was so sozzled he actually mistook a lamp for the hat rack, or who tried to imitate some vaudeville/silent movie sketch where Chaplin hid by disguising himself as a lamp, or who just thought he’d look cool in one of those shades with the decorative fringe.

Some have said it could also have been part of a suggestive “play with my light switch” joke, but that assumes the light switches of the day were the modern kind with a little phallic lever, and the older houses I’ve lived in had switches that looked like two circular buttons one above the other.

[thisbluespirit]

*nods*

I never had that kind of evening out, but I was at uni in Wales in the mid/late 1990s and traffic cones regularly appeared in student flats (including ours) signifying that a Good Night had been had by some members of it, who may or may not remember the details.

Have never come across the lampshade thing before, but probably that's my fault for not going on the right sort of evenings out.

[moon_custafer]

Lampshades do seem like more this-side-of-the-pond thing.

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, I feel sure it can't be unknown over here. I mean, hilarious joke when you're pissed, right? It's not your fault I've just never been pissed.

ETA: Also you have to be adult to have a handy lampshade. Students by and large aren't big on them.

[moon_custafer]

Yeah, I think it's a gag that presupposes a house-party or hotel-suite setting, unless you come wearing the shade already.

[nineveh_uk]

I have a feeling that through my childhood I saw the statue of Robert Peel on Woodhouse Moor in Leeds, close to the university, with a traffic cone on his headmore often than without.

[pedanther]

There's a statue of Wellington in Glasgow that's apparently been wearing a traffic cone almost continuously for decades -- every time the authorities remove it, somebody puts a new one on.

Someone I know once told me that when Scottish Independence becomes a reality, the statue will be replaced with a statue of a huge traffic cone with a tiny Wellington on its head.

[sabotabby]

I don't get invited to those sorts of parties.

[moon_custafer]

I don't get invited to those sorts of parties.

Me neither. Alack?

I think my mother said something once about her relatives putting lampshades on their heads at parties when she was young, and her feeling terribly embarrassed by it; but then her side of the family were/are a clan of frustrated vaudevillians.

Some neighbours borrowed a couple of our lampshades for Hallowe’en costumes, but they actually dressed up as lamps—had cardboard or heavy paper rolled around themselves to represent the bases—so it wasn’t quite the same thing.

I tried putting a lampshade on my own head this morning before work. I can’t tell how it looked, because I couldn’t see through it.

[readinggeek451]

I tried putting a lampshade on my own head this morning before work. I can’t tell how it looked, because I couldn’t see through it.

Take a selfie with it on?

[palain-7.livejournal.com]

My paternal grandfather had a graduated cylinder marked off in cartoons showing how drunk you'd be if you filled the cylinder to each level and then drank it. This would have been from the late forties to early fifties. The lampshade guy was the third highest level of inebriation and was labelled 'Zany'. The next two were 'Morose' and 'Blotto': the latter being a guy passed out hugging a lamppost..

[notasupervillain]

I'm from Canada, and a millennial, and I don't know anyone who uses the lampshade phrase.