ENCOUNTERS. HAPPILY UNSTUCK.

Are you up for an experiment in audience participation? Then here is an encounter for you. In an event called Hello For Dummies, the audience is split up into random pairs. They sit on benches and carry on a conversation without looking at each other. The lines are fed to them through earphones. According to summerworks.ca, this will free them from the tyranny of facial expressions and get them happily unstuck.

Alternatively you could escape the tyranny of facial expressions by using a phone and talking to Beverly Smith, sight unseen. She will pay for your long-distance call if you find the bottle with her husband Gordon’s ashes, currently afloat somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean (viralnova.com). As for Gordon, he’s already happily unstuck.

Or else, you could escape the tyranny of facial expressions by avoiding people altogether and reading a book entitled Unstuck. It’s available on amazon.com and promises to get you happily unstuck from your money problems. Let me know if it works.

The other day I watched a performance of Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane. I wonder whether Stuart Hughes (playing Sloane) was also trying to escape the tyranny of facial expressions. It looked like he was wearing a punk mask which, unhappily, never came unstuck.

Maybe he should have visited unstuck.com and gotten the new app Unstuck, which gives you instant personal growth through on-demand coaching and makes you see all the possibilities if, for example, you can’t find time to see your friends. But isn’t that one way of escaping the tyranny of their facial expressions?  

Meanwhile Kate Woolstenhulme, who packs a gun, was stuck with unfashionable holsters (NYer, 5 August). So she created Designer Concealed Carry, which allow the fashion-conscious gunwoman to draw her weapon from a fancy ostrich or crocodile skin purse. That’s one happy way of getting your face unstuck.