Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Pin the Tail on the Apocalypse: How to throw a killer (belated) End of the World/New Year’s party


Party in true Willard-style.

 

These 21 easy steps have been tested at Willard Laboratories and are proven to provide a maximumly awesome party experience:

 

1.       Choose a venue. Preferably a family member’s house with a large kitchen and wide-open area with a hardwood floor dubbed “The Ballroom.” Invite a dozen or so family and a couple of friends.

2.       Decorate with a foil flower garland, shiny purple and green end-of-the-world palm tree (repurposed from a 14th birthday luau), and Mayan statuettes obtained on South American vacation.

3.       Dress awesome. Define awesome in own terms, then dress that way.

4.       Wear a mask. Any kind will do. For best effect, combine glittery, flouncy-feathered Mardi Graz masks with creepy Halloween masks. Since number of available masks will likely exceed persons present, it is acceptable to create various mask combinations, including “evil Satan on his way to a nice masquerade party”, “scary monkey face on backwards body”, and “four faces at once, one on each side of head.”

5.       Despite debilitating lack of cooking ability, make delicious Oreo balls by mashing up a package of Oreos with a package of cream cheese, rolling them into little marble shapes and dipping them in melted almond bark chocolaty-stuff. As people rave about how scrumptious they are, make sure everyone knows you did these ALL BY YOURSELF. Tell no one the recipe.

6.       In keeping with the theme of preventing apocalyptic zombie attack, cool beverages using specially-made ice cubes from molds made to look like miniature bullets and guns.

7.       Using the plastic-cup-labeling Sharpie, on your beverage write: “I survived the apocalypse and all I got was this lousy cup.”

8.        Play “Pin the Tail on the Apocalypse” using an enlarged picture of the X-Men villain, Apocalypse. A picture of the back of the Apocalypse action figure from a toy website works perfectly, as do printed outlines of Eeyore’s tail. Participants over 40 spin blindfolded one time. Under 40 spin three times.

9.       Draw a picture of the earth and tape it in the middle of the floor. Borrow four pairs of your brother’s grey socks and roll them up into asteroid-shaped balls. Take turns throwing them at the earth.

10.   As a family, sing the “I Touched the Rains Down in Africa” song by Toto in multi-part harmony because you can.

11.   Turn the hardwood floor into a stocking-footed skating rink. Don’t bash into the china cabinet.

12.   Establish traffic patterns for skating rink to accommodate multiple occupants and minimize collisions.

13.   Don’t try to skate fancy like your niece.

14.   On hardwood floor, do the Electric Slide to music from Xanadu. In fact, do the Electric Slide to every song. It works most of the time.

15.   Do impression of Lily Tomlin’s “Edith Ann”, a five year old girl telling about the time she made a mustard, peanut butter, pickle, olive, pretzel, raisin, lettuce, cheese, and oatmeal sandwich; then decided it was yucky, so she took it apart and put everything back where it was.

16.   At 11:45 prepare noisemakers and those party-blower things that unroll when you blow into them.

17.   Discover that when inserted into the rolled end of the blower-thingies, the noisemakers can be launched across the room with a surprising degree of accuracy.

18.   Spend several minutes perfecting the art of noisemaker launching.

19.   Hone your skills to the point that two or three of you can simultaneously launch noisemakers at each other, then all catch them.

20.   At midnight, dance and sing “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” by REM at the top of your lungs. Chorus only—verses are too hard. Then mumble along while everyone else sings Auld Lang Syne because you don't know the real words.

21.   Enjoy 2013. J



 

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