MSN Mondays: 14 Ways to Entertain in style

If you're like me you probably own a home. It's fair to say that most people are probably like me. If they aren't then I'd have to rethink all of my strongly held opinions about things like gun rights and social security and whether communism is amazing or not. Anyhow, let's just assume that most people are like me because it will help me sleep easier at night. This night in particular.

Since you're like me you often probably find yourself drinking some white wine in your backyard, complaining about bugs and wondering how you can show all of your stupid friends how awesome you are. Guess what? Now you can. I've searched far and wide, (inside my own brain) to come up with fourteen ways that you can show all those rotten people in your life how much better you are than them. Incidentally, this is the blog where I attempt to rewrite Catcher in the Rye for a modern audience.


1) You should throw one those mystery parties where everyone dresses up like Miss Scarlett, and then you murder someone and you have to figure out which Miss Scarlett did the murdering. That way everyone will be wearing nice cocktail dresses the whole night, and it will be funny to compare notes down the road on who was the best Miss Scarlett and who wasn't. Also, don't really kill someone because then it wouldn't be a stylish party. Mainly because blood is hard to get out of fabric.

2) You could have a Titanic themed party and hire an orchestra to play while the ship goes down. Also, sink your house and buy a chandelier and an old lady to talk about diamonds. And maybe steal the Hope diamond because we all know where it is, and I bet it's not that hard to steal if you really wanted it. People on the Titanic dressed up real nice, so you'd have that going for you, then you could get large blocks of ice and let everyone at the party carve their own sculpture, which is stylish. This party idea has gotten so good that I'm going to stop before you steal it from me.

3) It's high time that you flooded your house, built some crazy ass glass walls, and threw yourself a mermaid/merman party. But don't invite so many mermans because everyone knows that they are weird and carry pitchforks. Anyhow, then someone could say something bad about one of the mermaids, like, "That mermaid looks like a whor- or something," and you could say, "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," and everyone would laugh because in this case it would be true instead of a saying, and the whole thing would be really stylish. Also, the waiters should be fish. Highly trained fish. And maybe you should get some scuba gear or something because everyone would die otherwise or spend time treading water and treading water is not very stylish.

4) You could throw a black out party. Everyone would be wearing black ties and black dresses and all the lights would be out and everyone would be bumping into each other, and you'd have to guess if it was your date's hand that you were holding or just some old guy that was lost. It would make a real statement about how you didn't care what people looked like until everyone's eyes got adjusted to the dark after forty minutes or so, and then you could kind of peer at each other and maybe realize that the person you've been talking to this whole time is someone that you never would have talked to if the lights were on, and how strange it is how our perception changes in the dark. And maybe you'd drive home and write her marginal but really passionate love poetry. That sounds like a good party.

5) Dinosaur party. At this party everyone dresses up like a their favorite dinosaur, which probably doesn't sound stylish to you, but I can be forgiven if I have crummy ideas every now and again can't I?

6) You could do a Mad Men themed party because everyone on that show always looks real nice. Although, you and I both know that all the extras always look so good because of all those pretty girls who move to CA to be in the movies but who end up being just kind of blurry shapes in the background of television shows, which is better than being in a porno I suppose, so they've got that going for them. Anyhow, this party could be real crazy but at some point you'd have to bring in your lawn mower and run over someone's foot, and I've only got a push mower, so I'd just leave a mark and piss the person off, and what kind of party is that?

7) You could have a cloud themed party on your roof where everyone came as a different strata of cloud with all sorts of information about that particular type of cloud. This is the sort of party that you should do if all of your friends love the Weather Channel or are doing the weather on the local news. If someone got really annoying you could threaten to throw them off the roof, but they'd be fine because of the floating thing. You should probably get some new friends because these people sound strange.

8) You could have a party where everyone dressed like someone else at the party. This party would be great because is would allow everyone to really express themselves and have a good laugh. Although, I've found that when people imitate me, or create a caricature that it secretly hurts my feelings, and I laugh like everyone else, and clap the person on the back, and say, "You got it right, I sure do say that." But deep down I'm thinking about how I can whap the person over the head with a bat or lure them into a hornet's nest or something. Maybe this party wasn't such a good idea.

9) You could have a fur party. That would be real fancy. You could have an endangered species party where everyone had to wear the fur of some endangered species. I can't have this party because my wife loves the environment, so send me a letter if you have it and it all goes well. I'm jealous of you. I'd probably wear a bunch of black-footed ferrets because of the Beastmaster. If you haven't seen it it's a movie about a guy who looks like He-Man and his ferrets, and his panther, and hawk or falcon or something. I think you'll really like it.

10) You could have a party where everyone dressed up like the thing that they most wanted to be. None of the costumes would be slutty. This party is not Halloween. Everyone would just be dressed up as the thing they most wanted to be, like an astronaut or an art critic or a hermit crab or whatever weird stuff you and your friends like.

11) You could have a sprinkler party. Where everyone stands around talking and drinking wine and stuff except every twenty minutes or so each person has to run through the sprinkler and shout Wooooooo to remember what it was like to be a child and not such a stupid stuffy adult sitting around drinking wine and complaining about their job and stuff.

12) You could have an age party. Where people could dress up as Iron or Bronze or uhmmmm, fire. Did we have an age of fire? Anyhow, the people at the party could master the language and cultural mores of the time period they were to represent and then they'd have to act like that all night. Like someone could be an upper crust Brit from just before the dawning of the Industrial Age, and he could be talking about his income and traveling to Italy for his health and someone from the age of barbarians could come up and put a shiv in his ribs because he's so damn stuck up. If there isn't an age of Barbarians be sure to make one because people can be annoying.

13) You could have a zero gravity party. At this party you'd have to get some help from NASA and everyone would float around on the ceiling, or enter through the front door sideways, and you'd be in the bathroom taking a piss only to look up and discover that one of your friend's wives is standing on the ceiling in the corner. I know what you're thinking you perv. We wouldn't have any of that kind of stuff at this party. It would be nice because no one would have to wear those stuffy astronaut suits but we could all kind of cut loose and maybe vomit and stuff.

14) Maybe you could have a party where you invited all of the people that you love. Even those people who don't really know that you love them. Maybe you could get them all in one place and spread them out in a line and tell each and every one of them why you love them. And if someone couldn't come, you'd mention them to, how much you loved them. This is the sort of party that I'd never go to because praise makes me feel awkward. I'd probably just tell you to shut up and have a drink, and that's what you love about me.