 |
MacGyverism #2
Even though he's not much of a drinker himself, MacGyver knows his drink fixins thanks to his chemistry degree. Sure, he could use a drink shaker, but that's both impossible since it's in use and because it would not be interesting in the slightest. He's not MacGyver for nothing. While you're off getting ready, he's employing the turkey baster to mix a precise amount of allspice and cider into a rum base. He quickly cuts a hole in the rubber stopper of the baster using his Swiss Army knife, allowing the drink to drip out the other end into a waiting glass. Drinks? Done and done.
By the time you make your reappearance, most everyone should be enjoying the appetizers, drinking their first glass of wine and standing awkwardly in small groups, not quite knowing what to say to those they don't know well. Arrange introductions by making one of your roommates do it. The rest of this initial hosting phase will pass quickly until the next major event: the presentation of the food. Naturally if you say dinner will be served at eight sharp, have the food ready sometime around nine-ish. That way, the drinkers will have had two or three cocktails, the non-drinkers will have had two or three awkward conversations and a good number of the late arrivals should be walking in the door by the time dinner will be served.
The serving of the food, whatever it may be, from ham to salmon with roe or even Potbelly's sandwiches for that ordered-just-for-you-my-true-friends vibe, should be done with some fanfare. You'll want to assign a photographer – the girlfriend of one of the hosts works well, because we'll need to have her angry for a later alcohol-fueled blowup – so you can remember these precious moments of your friends greedily feeding themselves at your expense. Side note: Make sure to have very little seating available, so everyone will have to mill about, not quite knowing how to wield a beverage, plate and fork simultaneously. This is very important to preserve ambiance.
Once most guests have eaten their fill, you'll see another large influx of (mostly uninvited) people. While the more the merrier, I suppose, these people will be your wild cards, the unpredictable elements of the party that will either preserve or radically screw up the preexisting social balance. If they come with liquor, great. Among these people will be the one person who's at the wrong party, and will say he knows a friend of a friend or somesuch until he realizes his mistake and tries to gracefully bow out without making a fuss. You should, of course, announce the fact that he's in the wrong place to the entire party at large, and while in the middle of this announcement, one of the key early party figures will come up to you with something extremely important that requires your attention in the next room.
Some at your party will know to drink only a reasonable amount, so as to not make fools of themselves by putting on impromptu burlesque shows with lampshades, while others will have problems with this simple party rule and will lose their recently-eaten dinner all over, say, a non-washable family heirloom. This will happen at approximately 10:30 p.m. , long before the socially acceptable time to become gastronomically incontinent.
MacGyverism #3
If nothing says lovin' like a man willing to clean anonymous vomit, then MacGyver is our Jesus. You, the non-physical-science-studying dolt, would have bent down on hand and knee, wiping with paper towels and spraying with Lysol. How very Dark Ages of you. But give Mac a lint brush, a dryer sheet and a vacuum cleaner and you're golden. Crisis averted.
Now all that's left of the situation is to discover the perpetrator. While MacGyver once constructed a lie detector from a piece of wire and a travel alarm clock (analog, not digital – do you think he's a magician?) this might not be the best time to break out that little party favor. Just blame it on the obviously inebriated, obviously underage girl passed out in the corner and save the lie detector bit for later, when you need to discern who tossed the grill off the back porch.
By now, the food portion of the soirée has ended and you're entering the straight-up drinking phase of the party. This is when the drama happens. Your roommate's girlfriend is pissed for some reason or other – she “doesn't feel important” and “doesn't appreciate having to take pictures while you assholes got to eat,” but shit happens – and the uninviteds have been playing chug-the-beer since dinner ended. This is where MacGyver becomes the man of the hour. While he doesn't pull a MacGyverism per se, he'll probably do some other cool tricks, like lighting cigarettes from ten feet away with a homemade blowtorch and picking locks of neighbors' doors with his Swiss Army knife.
Normal party etiquette now applies: Kick out the riffraff if necessary, and work on not giving the neighbors reasons to call the cops.
Remember how I told you to keep that “this is the nicest I've ever seen your apartment look” comment in mind? Here's where it becomes important: On a personal note, I've never seen my apartment look as bad as it did the day after a dinner party. This was not a run-of-the-mill party, because literally every dish, glass and utensil had been used and discarded somewhere on the property, including the front yard. We were out of booze, though we expected this. The recently-mopped hardwood floors had turned black with gunk. And, of course, the 28-pound turkey we had prepared specifically for the dinner party in the hope of having leftovers for the next week had been picked clean to the bone – it was literally a carcass in a foil pan – and was left to drip grease on the kitchen floor. This is where you need MacGyver one last time.
MacGyverism #4
So your apartment's a steaming wreck, and you need some cleaning help, fast. This is where MacGyver, never known for his homemaking skills, pusses out. He jumps into his Jeep, mullet streaming, muttering something about “needing to check on the next Homeland Security alert” and takes off for the next party. He may be a great guy on TV, but man, that MacGyver doesn't like to clean much.
But let's be honest here. You couldn't have hosted a dinner party without MacGyver. Who cooked the food? Who made the drinks? Who stopped the 3 a.m. terrorist invasion with a shoelace and a paper clip? Right. And that's why, if you're thinking of hosting a dinner party without MacGyver, don't. There are some things only he can solve.
|
 |
