And Benga was their name-o

If you’re looking for a cheap way to keep yourself entertained through the winter funks, and the snowshoes you made from the cardboard box your HDTV came in just aren’t cutting it, Trashcan Jenga is a really fun and inexpensive game to play with your housemates.

The beauty of Trashcan Jenga is its simplicity; some people play their own variations on it without even realizing it. It’s one of those games that just kind of sprouts up organically, like polo when there are a bunch of horses, mallets, and rich people lying around. All you need to play Trashcan Jenga, though, is a trashcan (didn’t see that one coming, did you?), some trash, and, above all, the desire to outwit, outplay, and outtrash your opponent.

Winning at Trashcan Jenga is like rebounding in basketball – you have to want it more than the other guy. I am the Dennis Rodman of Trashcan Jenga. The rebounding Dennis Rodman, not the cross-dressing Dennis Rodman. Sometimes at the Gap, though, it is hard to tell which is the girl’s side and which is the guy’s side, but before I get to the register, I always check the tag to make sure it’s a dude’s low-cut demi bra.

Okay, enough of that. Here are the rules:

1) All trash must go in or on the trash can.
2) When the can is full, you must balance your trash on top of the heap. If the heap gets taller than you, you may stand on a chair.
3) If you added the last piece to the trash tower, it is your responsibility to subdue and remove any raccoons from the kitchen.
4) The last person to have added a piece when any part of the tower falls to the ground loses.
5) The loser has to take out the trash.
6) Yakety-yak.
7) Don’t talk back.

Which brings me to the point of this article, which is this: any moment now, US Weekly will start calling Jennifer Garner “Jenga.” You hear it now, too, don’t you? That is the sound of inevitability.

Now I’m no journalist -- I just do a poor imitation of one in the newspaper -- but I’m pretty sure I just delivered my very first scoop. Hopefully, you’ll remember the first time you heard somebody call Jennifer Garner “Jenga” the same way you fondly remember the first time you asked, “What’s a Google?” Or, if you never asked that, the first time you asked, “Can I get an internet on my abacus?”

The thing that makes the “Jenga” nickname so inevitable is the fact that she is, according to several covers of US Weekly, dating Ben Affleck. Sure, we’re all still paying off the therapy bills from the emotional scars left by Ben and Jennifer Lopez’s breakup, but I think it would make us all feel better to have another really, really stupid celebrity name combination. So goodbye, Bennifer; hello, Benga.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve never seen any of us in US Weekly. It should really be called THEM Weekly. Or maybe Please Don’t Encourage US Weekly.

Oops -- I almost got all the way to the end of this column without telling you the most important – oh, gotta go – raccoon in the kitchen.