Cha-Cha-Cha, Charmin

Not sure how many of you have had the pleasure of happening upon Times Square recently, but right in the middle of it all, where Bar Code used to be, is now a huge bathroom. But it's not just any bathroom.

Charmin has rented the entire space out for the holidays and done it up as a huge advertisement, replete with 20 bathroom stalls for suffering holiday shoppers. Being the intrepid, small-bladdered reporter that I am, I just investigated. Here are my findings:

-they have an extended version of the Charmin jingle playing non-stop. Which is annoying. But what makes it slightly bearable (get it? Like the Charmin bear) is that there are flatscreen TV's everywhere, showing people standing on line (like us!) performing a Charmin Jingle Dance that we should clearly be emulating. In fact, there was a stage off to the stage where Charmin representatives pulled people aside to perform said dance. The dance included a lot of "wiggling to the left" and "shaking to the right," which placed in the context of going to the bathroom felt like it meant something else entirely. And gross.

-one of the flatscreen TV's in the facility showed a Charmin Flush-O-Meter. The Flush-O-Meter measured how many times people had flushed in other countries, meaning, of course, that Charmin has put set-ups like this one all over the world. Missourri clocked in at 1989 (great year), Romania just edged Slovenia (big up to Jeff) and then there's my personal favorite, Uganda, with two flushes.

-The whole thing was quite sanitary, with Charmin reps cleaning each bathroom after each use. Through this, I still wanted the VIP booth, which had a big star on it instead of the pedestrian blue ribbon on the other ones. Much to my delight, I got it! Then I got inside.

It turns out the VIP bathroom booth was entirely devoted to the mother from "Everybody Loves Raymond." There were pictures of her and her alone everywhere inside. Which made perfect sense to me for a split second before I realized it was the father from "ELR" (RIP) who died yesterday, not the mother. I guess she's a Charmin spokesperson? It was weird.

-And lastly, there was a fake fireplace set-up, for no discernible reason. Most peculiar about this was how good it looked. This was no chince-y fake campfire (coughCaveman Christmascough). This was the real deal.

Overall, I give the Charmin Times Square Bathroom set-up a B+. Very solid, like "Lost".