Parties - Classic Or Dud?

Even a room full of friends is terrifying when I am sober. Even a room full of complete strangers is GRATE when I'm pissed.

number of guests must surely be in direct parallel to available space.

Parties - mine are usually crap but I do enjoy them. Spontaneous large group gatherings though are the best form of social interaction. Kids parties are fantastic but I don't get invited to them anymore.

My real love/hate relationship is with giving parties.

Parties = dud if in your house as people will wreck it (was once woken on the morning after a party thus - 'Emma, your kitchen's flooded'. Some fools had leant too hard on a radiator and it bust. Spent the rest of the day eating takeaway pizza and throwing newspaper at the flood to soak it up); you have to provide bedding for reluctant-to-leave guests and also make them breakfast next day; people can snoop round and criticise your taste in everything from music and books to bed linen.

1) If you can't get someone to DJ with, like, decks and stuff, make tapes or minidiscs in advance. Seems a bit sad, but it's brutally effective. Nobody sits on the floor at my parties - in fact few people sit down, even on the sofa. Also this avoids the nightmare scenario of guests DJing informally on your stereo with your CDs or - even worse - somebody bringing "Hardest Ever Trance Anthems Vol. 6533254" and deciding that this is really what everyone should be listening to.

2) With the aid of your failsafe disco-dancerama compilations, the party should go on until 4 or 5am - almost long enough for the tubes to start running again, so people can push off home. If they don't, it's important that you go to bed, leaving any remaining guests to their own devices. Do not emerge until 2pm the next day. Most if not all of them will have left, and some may even have cleared up.

3) Never put a note through your neighbours' door saying "We are having a party - sorry for any noise, but do pop down and have a drink with us!" They won't want to do this, and may come down just before the party starts to announce that their dying mother is in the room directly above and cannot be disturbed. Wait until they hammer on your door at 2am, in tears. Then drunkenly assure them that you will personally lower the noise levels, in a tone which implies that in fact this is not your fault. Some helpless shrugging and "yes, I know, I know"ing helps.

4) Don't have carpets. At the end of my parties there is always a mysterious black, viscous substance on the floor tiles, which scientists have never fully explained. But at least I can just mop it up.

5) Invite absolutely everyone you know. Only 30-40% of them are likely to turn up. There is no maximum figure for attendance at parties.

Kate: Remind me not to meet you. I fear you may hate me for being a person.

Whenever I go to a party it's bare matresses on puke-soaked student carpet, invariably. Swimming pools would be so grate.

It looked ace but every single person who walked in said "god you're going to set fire to the carpet, shouldn't you at least've put plates under them?" to which Lucy replied "no it'll be fine, they're ultra- safe nightlight candles."

At about 11pm they set fire to the carpet.

hey MB, *I'd* invite you to any party i ever had just for saying that.

Hey, why should I have to defend my prejudices? I hate people. I am an equal opportunity misanthrope. I do not hate anyone of a particular colour, sex, class, creed, sexual orientation or age, I just hate EVERYONE. It's far more convenient.

Except floppy indie boys with fringes. I still hate them, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to sleep with them.

Parties rock the booty as long as the person throwing it knows what he/she is doing. Boozy potluck = Supremely wonderful time.

any house party I've ever been involved in organising has been a dismal faliure. Much better to try and get invited to turn up with a stack of tunes to somebody elses. Then you can be the king of the party for a couple of hours get given beer and not have to worry about scum or mysterious stains. Sorry to be a party cynic but vile smelling floor sludge is not the way I like to deal with a sunday morning hangover

Why, when I am already on the shy side, should I put myself in the position of having to SHOUT OVER other people's conversations? Just so I can potentially meet a lot of people? It's not worth it to me.

Parties where I can spend almost the whole time dancing, and not feel guilty about not mingling, are fun. Anything else is a burden.

By now I should know what I like and do what I like.

The best thing about the party I went to tonight is that I got to dance some, I remembered part of a move that I had forgotten, I heard some Lauryn Hill that I liked but probably hadn't heard before, and I realized that I want to do what I want to do, which does not include going to parties, even ones where dancing is present, but only as a marginal activity.

I put on one Ahmed Adaweia song, but nobody even seemed to notice.

I want to go out dancing more. No parties.

I would love to go dancing, though.

There's one thing I've always wondered about. Those of you who give parties, what exactly drives you to do it?
Is it just some inexplicable "Hey, I feel like throwing a party" feeling, or is there more to it?

" The last part, “59 Lyndhurst Grove”, was inspired by a party I’d been to the weekend before. We were thrown out by an architect but I got my own back by writing a song about the event. It was a really crap ‘right on’ party – there were children there. You don’t take your children to a party in my book. "

There's a picture by his first wife on the wall
Stripped floor - boards in the kitchen and the hall
A stain from last week's party on the stairs
No one knows who made it or how it ever got there
They were dancing with children round their legs
Talking business, books and records, art and sex
All things being considered you'd call it a success
You wore your black dress oh - oh oh - oh...
He's an architect and such a lovely guy and he'll stay with you until
the day you die
And he'll give you everything you could desire
Oh well almost everything everything that he can buy
So you sometimes go out in the afternoon
Spend an hour with your lover in his bedroom hear old women rolling
rolleys down the road
Back to Lyndhurst Grove Lyndhurst Grove Oh.

He shouldn't have waited to get thrown out.

I've kind of changed my mind on parties. I don't enjoy parties unless I'm sober. Alcohol only exacerbates socially difficult situations. If I'm not comfortable enough around people to enjoy their company sober, then being drunk will only make me more uncomfortable.

My view on people has changed somewhat. "I have a little black book full of telephone numbers I never call, now I know it's my friends I hate and not myself at all." Heh. ;-)

(spot on about the normal and extroverted thing. In some circles in which I hang out, like Sinister and (to a lesser extent) ILX, I'm quite extroverted, so I tend to have a good time at dos. If I go to a party full of genuinely normal and extroverted people, I'm the creepy weirdo loser with no mates*.)

*shut it, Hopkins/DC/Gee etc. etc.

(I should really say, I enjoy parties if I *could* be sober at them and have a good time.)

Ah, the memories!

Any parties I have been to in the last 2 years involve getting there at 3 or 4 in the morning after a club. Then sometimes there is a search for beer or hash or other substances, basically anything to stay awake and dancing. Then there is wall to wall techno for a few hours and massive queues for someones bathroom/sink.

Finally the evening ends with a long walk into Dublin city centre because the buses haven't started running yet, occasionally a bracing walk along the North Dublin coast as I wake up 2 miles from my bus stop with my discman still playing.

I want a normal party. I remember I used to like them.

someone told me it's because i'm a gemini, but i think i'm just weird!

Actually the only time they're good is when it's in my house or a mate who lives nearby's house and there are 9 or 10 people I know and we control the music.

And getting back home in London at night :(

the last party I went to, someone brought along the new wedding present album, "george best". I hate fun. But not as much as I hated "george best".

I think I hate them, but then after a while I think I may have misjudged them, since everyone else seems to be enjoying themselves so much. So I go, and I hate it, and resolve to never torture myself again. And repeat ad infinitum.

In the last week I have been to five. Most of my best records are still at my friend Martin's from a Singles (7" vinyl) and Doubles (shots) party about three weeks ago. If I had any money I would be Tara Palmer Tompkinson.

Well, any money and considerably less looks!

(I also have tooth brushes in three different locations around London, due to my habit of falling asleep on the sofa. I used to keep one in my handbag, but people would always find it and laugh in a smirking way. Then I'd have to say things like "I'm not a slapper, I just drink too much.")

-- Markelby

I'm not a slapper, I just drink too much.

(no not the T-shirt, but the list of all the different kinds of parties)

House parties are tricky bastards though. They either go off or they don't. The last one I went to didn't - it was merely average - and it was hours before I got to DJ.

The formal 18ths and 21sts etc my friends have thrown are usually classic, though. The drinks are so on the house they're on the mansion instead, and the potential for stupid chat is outrageous. They're a great way for me to drunkenly mock people I despise too, without much in the way of retribution.

surely beer or hash will have the opposite effect?

Parties = Dud. Unless there are pirates at the party.

regards,

REB

PS - Sorry if someone's already posted this sentiment, couldn't be ar5ed reading the thread.

r