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. Written by Matt Stevenson, it is 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!
Office Parties
First, get the fuck out of your office. You’re going to have an office party in your fucking office? In your actual fucking office? Where you keep your staplers and the copy ma- chine? Are you a fucking savage? Why would you do that? The very existence of offices is a human wrong. Have you read Bartleby the Scrivener? You have? You have? You fucking liar. Read that fucking book. Read it and you will know the existence of offices is a transgression against our rights to personal fulfillment and the possibility of joy. Offices will eventually be banned. We know this. They will be thought of as we now think of slave markets and human abattoirs. But for now offices exist and it is a blight upon our collective dignity. They are located on frontage roads. They have landscaping. They have parking spaces. Some of the parking spaces are designated for certain people. There are sprinklers. There are files and folders. There are supply closets. There are mail bins. There are acoustic tiles. There are desks where you can stand up while you work. There are immigrants who take out the garbage and wipe down tables and chairs. All of these things will eventually be outlawed as we outlawed human trafficking and cannibalism. In the meantime, though, you cannot have the office party, which is meant to take your employees temporarily away from the despair that the office embodies and contains, in the very same fucking office where their bones go brittle and their minds desiccate. Have it at Chuck E. Cheese. Have it at a pool hall. Think. Do some fucking thinking for once. The fucking place where you make pottery while drinking wine. The fucking place where you make your own pizza. Any fucking thing. Anything is better than bringing booze into the same office where you all waste your brief and unjustifiable lives.
Surprise Parties
One in seven hundred works. Researchers have proven this. Swiss researchers. They are the fucking best. If you want research done right, get the Swiss. They work hard. They make no jokes while they work. They eat no snacks while they work. They just do the research and present it neatly, on sturdy paper stock. And for years a team of Swiss researchers neglected their spouses and children so they could provide humanity with this research, which found that only 1 in 700 surprise parties are any fucking good. The other 699 are an affront to dignity and God and the guest of honor spends the night barely suppressing volcanic rage. Just invite people over. And this way the guest of honor can have a say in who the fuck comes. He doesn’t want Gary there.
Kids’ Birthday Parties
Do yourself a thought experiment. Try to remember a birthday party you had as a child. Can you? Okay, you remember that one. One fucking birthday party you remember, the one where you hid under the kitchen sink for an hour. Now do this. Try to remember a party you went to as a kid. Another kid’s party. Can you? Can you? Didn’t think so. So why the fuck are you doing worrying about your kid’s party? They won’t remember it, no other kids will remember it, and you won’t remember it. No one will or can. It will evaporate in the ocean of lived experience as if it never happened. It will be gone. Gone. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give your kid a party. You’re not a fucking animal. Have a party. Just have it. Have it, and don’t spend more than an hour planning it, and don’t spend more than $50 on it. One hour and $50, and the party will happen and no one will remember it. Send the kids into the backyard with some hammers and rocks. The kids have no fucking idea about how much effort you put into it. They don’t know the difference between food you made or food you bought. They don’t fucking care. They don’t. They don’t care where the party is. They don’t care what you spent. If you have boys, they will not fucking remember the party the next day. Boys remember nothing; this is why we have wars and graffiti. Boys do not fucking care. If you have girls they will remember for one year. No more, no less. One year. So for girls, put in ninety minutes and $65. That’s it.