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B-14? OK, Beach Boys, Beatles, Bono -- Barney!

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Special to The Times

QUICK -- name a game that is the opposite of cool.

If you said “bingo,” you’d be wrong.

Sybil Nicholson and Shelly Brown, staffers at the LA Weekly, are attempting to wrestle the game of pure luck from the embrace of retirement homes nationwide via their monthly fundraising party, Rock & Roll Bingo.

In their quest to make bingo safe for hipsters, the duo have enlisted some high-profile friends, including the likes of Weezer’s Scott Shriner and Audioslave’s Tom Morello -- both of whom have hosted the event in past months.

“We’re addicted to bingo,” co-founder Nicholson confessed last month from the patio of Crane’s Hollywood Tavern, the home of the monthly event.

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Between drags off a cigarette at the January fundraiser (all proceeds from the $5-per-pop bingo cards benefit organizations such as the Free Speech Coalition), the 34-year-old explained the genesis of Rock & Roll Bingo.

“We first did it as a one-off in 2001 because Shelly and I were doing the AIDS ride and we needed to raise $3,000 each,” Nicholson said. “We had just gotten back from Mazatlan, where we played bingo every day with old people at timeshare resorts.”

More recently, the longtime friends resurrected the idea because they figured they could “raise a lot of money for charity since we don’t get paid enough at our day jobs to really contribute the way we wish we could,” she said.

Of course, not everyone in L.A. shares the pair’s altruistic motives. That’s where the prizes come in handy.

Through the duo’s connections at LA Weekly (Nicholson is the paper’s operations manager and Brown works in advertising sales), they lined up an impressive cadre of sponsors, such as Playboy.com, Amoeba Records and Goldenvoice, who offer up freebies in the name of charity.

At January’s event, prizes included a pair of tickets to see Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

How, exactly, the “rock” component of Rock & Roll Bingo figures in -- beyond the prizes -- is a bit of a stretch.

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Players shout out the name of a band or musician that begins with the same letter as the number called. For example, if the celebrity host calls out “I-35,” a player must invoke the name of a band (such as INXS) that begins with that same letter. The same band cannot be mentioned twice during the course of the four-hour event. Yes, by the end of the evening, some pretty obscure band names are offered up.

“It seems like we get a lot of ‘Iron Maidens,’ which is fine, because it’s that kind of crowd,” Shriner said after his January stint as host.

Why do rockers make good hosts for bingo?

“Musicians are good with small balls,” Shriner deadpanned. “It just makes for a perfect combination.”

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Rock & Roll Bingo

Where: Crane’s Hollywood Tavern, 1611 N. El Centro Ave., Hollywood

When: 6 to 10 tonight (and the third Thursday of every month). Tonight’s hosts are Tim Armstrong of Rancid and alt-porn starlet Joanna Angel.

Price: No cover; $5 per bingo card to play.

Info: www.rocknrollbingo.org

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