Read Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV
Face it: we all want our events to be their best, but we don’t always know how. The Art of Hosting is the guide to hosting you have been craving. It’s warm, candid, and full of practical advice for making your dinner party, barbecue, mixer, or wedding the best it can be. We hope you enjoy it!
Drinks
Make something. Get the fucking blender going. Put a bunch of shit out on the counter and let people experiment. Limes. Sugar. Salt. Juice. Ice. Umbrellas. Coconuts. It’s not that fucking hard.
Bartenders
You can have a bartender. Fine. But like the hors d’oeuvres servers, just make sure the bar- tender is not a fucking lunatic. You know the fucking bartenders who think they’ve just established some mini kingdom they must de- fend at all costs? You know these weasels? They set up their little fiefdom at your fuck- ing party and now they rule it? Don’t hire one of these weasels. The bartender should be there to mix the complicated drinks, fine. But if a guest wants a beer or soda, he or she should be able to reach into the cooler and get one without the bartender raising an eye- brow. Without the bartender being taken aback. The human race is a piece of lint in the boundless fabric of space; we are insignificant and our lives a joke of inconsequentially, and this bartender wants to be taken aback when a guest reaches for a bottle of beer to numb the limitless pain of existence? Well, fuck him, and fuck you for hiring him. Don’t let the bartender take over the distribution of all beverages. Don’t give him that. Don’t you fucking give him that. The bar- tender has no territory to defend. Tell him to fucking give people beers, or let people take fucking beers. Better yet: Have him set up a row of pre-poured drinks, wine and whatever the fuck else. Give him the radical information that his job is to make sure people get drinks, not to preside over some fucking drink fiefdom. Not to make people wait so he can use his own ingenious propriety method for getting a bottle of beer from a cooler and handing it to someone.
Tipping the Bartender
This is so fucking offensive and barbaric it destroys all reason and diminishes the species. Your guests, who drove thirty miles and hired their babysitters, all that shit we al- ready established, now have to worry about having singles or fives or whatever the fuck to give to some groveling hamster-human you hired? Fuck you. Fuck the bartender and his little tip glass. Fuck them both. Fuck all tipping. It makes humans into needy rodents. It ruins every minute of every day. It’s bad enough in public, at every fucking business, this disgusting passive-aggressive weasel-driven horror, but now there’s tipping in your home? Now your guests have to pay for their fucking drinks at your party, only they have to do it in this indirect and far more sickening way? They have to ask other people at the party for change? They have to avoid getting a drink at all because there’s a fucking gatekeeping invertebrate who expects a tip for handing you a bottle. Who the fuck brings small bills to a fucking house party? Fix this, you idiot. No tipping. Tipping is a black cloud covering all nations who practice it. But you can keep it from your home and from the fucking party your guests assumed would be free of this wretched fuck- ing groveling abomination. You can stop this before it begins. You can kill Hitler before he’s born.
Drinks with Umbrellas
Those are good. People like those.
Hors D’oeuvres
These are fine. Whatever.
People Serving Hors D’oeuvres
So maybe you hire some people to help serve food. That’s thoughtful of you. It is. But have you been to a party where every eleven seconds there’s some motherfucker offering you the same fucking hors d’oeuvres? Was that a delightful experience, to be interrupted every eleven seconds by the same three mother- fuckers in vests offering you the same fuck- ing ridiculous tiny food items? Little colorful shits on a cracker? Who are these people in vests? Why do they keep coming? When do they rest? Are they fucking nuts? They’ve offered you the same tomato-cracker thing nine times in one hour. Isn’t that self-evidently delusional and obsessive behavior? Do they have a problem with short-term memory? They came by eleven seconds ago and now they’re back. That’s not a party. Your guests are dreading the next visit from the fucking hors d’oeurve lady. If you must have the motherfuckers in the vests walking around with their little tray, then fix it. Tell them not to be obsessive lunatics. Strike a fucking balance.