Welcome to the first annual Smokers’ Celebration of Culture! This exciting week of fun-filled activities for the whole family will be devoted to all those arts, sports and other cultural events which wouldn’t be possible without the generous sponsorship of your friendly neighbourhood tobacco conglomerate.
SUNDAY: The Smokers’ Celebration starts off with a bang with a full evening of fireworks down by the waterfront. Teams from Phillip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, Imperial and other international tobacco corporations will compete to see whose logo is bright enough to be seen from the suburbs! Best of all: you can leave your cigarettes at home because there’ll be so much smoke in the air that everybody will naturally have a raspy throat!
MONDAY: Today is day one of the qualifying heats for the ASSCAR Grand Prix, which will be held on various streets downtown. Formula one stock cars won’t be the only things smoking today — but the boys in the pit better be careful where they toss their butts; the fireworks were scheduled for last night!
In the evening, the Stained Finger Poetry Slam will be held at the hippest club in the city. Here, poets will compete for recognition for the most original and creative way of tackling the theme “Should freedom of commercial speech be guaranteed to merchants of death?” Dig those crazy rhymes, hep cats!
In the afternoons all week long, Phillip Morris will be sponsoring a Punch and Judy show for the children featuring special guest: Joe Camel! Parents can attend other Smokers’ Celebration events comforted by the knowledge that their children are in good hands. Company President James Morgan will be on hand today to give out free samples of his favourite addictive substance — Gummy Bears!
TUESDAY: Comedy rules in clubs all around the city today. Can the amount of money spent on each year on medical bills of people suffering from various smoking related cancers be funny? You bet! (Admission is half price for people who bring proof of purchase of five packages of Slims, Skinnies, Sexies, Dirties or any other brand which links smoking to sexuality.)
For an informative look at the history of tobacco marketing, check out the exhibit “A hundred years of avoiding the truth” at the local museum. Here, you’ll see pictures of tobacco company executives publicly proclaiming their product isn’t addictive while privately shredding internal documents which clearly show that it is! Did you really believe them when they said they weren’t trying to sell cigarettes to children? We’ve got transcripts of board meetings which show that they were! Who says culture can’t be informative as well as fun?
ASSCAR trials continue.
WEDNESDAY: Think that cigarette sponsorships are only for low cultural events? Think again! Tonight, the 78 piece Metropolitan Orchestra will be on hand to help a local dance company perform the “Death of a Faun” ballet. The climax of the ballet alone, the “Croaking Chorus,” with its powerful vision of the main dancers hacking up a lung all over the stage for the final 20 minutes, rivals anything Wagner created for its subtle poignancy!
ASSCAR trials continue.
THURSDAY: Back at the hippest club in the city, Omar “Bad Breath” Dixon and the Tobacco Belt Bluesters will be jamming with their version of freestyle jazz. How free is freestyle jazz? Omar is in the habit of leaving the club to smoke a cigar, coming back an hour later and picking up the riff right where he left off! Of course, the Bluesters have performed a few songs in the interim, but they quickly follow Omar’s lead. Cool, daddio!
For the kiddies, there will a poster drawing contest will be held in the headquarters of the Celebration. (In Canada, company logos are not supposed to take up more than the bottom 10% of the poster, and we definitely want to comply with the rules, but, well, you know that children always have problems keeping within the lines!)
ASSCAR trials are taking a day long smoke break.
FRIDAY: The Smokers’ Celebration concludes with world class tennis action: plan to spend the entire day watching some of the greats of the sport knock a little white ball around a green court! And we mean plan to spend the entire day: since most of the players have emphysema, asthma or other breathing problems, individual matches sometimes last as long as seven hours!
ASSCAR trials continue.
The Smokers’ Celebration of Culture — come help us celebrate all the fine things that cigarette companies bring to you!