PARANOIA

Courtesy of Greg Ingber of the Traitor Recycling Studio, this post written by (really!) Sheila O'Malley (a name for PARANOIA fans to conjure with) about a topic rather unhygienic in nature but expertly realized: a giant high-tech public bathroom -- or should I say "bathroom complex"? -- in New York City's Times Square. Greg comments, "Some of this I would actually consider TOO over the top for a PARANOIA session."

There's a small blue-carpeted corridor (and everything is very controlled - there are barriers to keep the crowds in line) and then you emerge into a space that defies description. It is part playroom, part disco club, part bed and breakfast, part TV studio at Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and part FREAKFEST. [...] Everywhere you look is blue carpet. And also Charmin signs. Big plushy white couches line the walls. There is a fake fireplace (I am not kidding). There are also TV screens everywhere, and huge video monitors and ... I honestly wondered if I dreamed this part of it ... but I did not. Playing over and over and over again is a video - with happy smiling dancers, a multicultural mecca of talent, against a blinding white screen - and music blares from speakers - as the "dancers" do their thing, lip synching to a song about toilet paper. I'm not kidding. At one point, all of the dancers line up like the family Von Trapp in "So Long Farewell" ... and they sing, full on, face front, "We're singing in two-ply harmony!"

Watching that (or, rather, being unwillingly subjected to that) I suddenly despised the entire human race.

There are photos, too. Wish I'd known about this when I was updating, for the forthcoming PARANOIA reprint mission collection Flashbacks 2, Edward S. Bolme's The People's Glorious Revolutionary Adventure. Longtime fans well remember that mission's extended opening battle in a Communist bathroom.