Are you having a party? Can I come? I love parties, even parties that other people might not think sound like much fun: office retirement parties, friends’ toddler’s nursery school graduations, bar and bat mitzvah parties, book parties, dogs’ birthday parties, brises. Well, not the bris itself, but the brunch after the bris. I like seeing people, and usually there’s cake, and I love cake. Even commercial sheet cake, with that icing that has no flavor except sugar. I used to pooh-pooh sheet cake, but now I like it, for some reason. I always ask for a corner piece so I can get more icing.
I also like other gatherings and events, so please invite me to those too. If I’m in town, I’ll come. I like seders, readings of your new play, school fairs, and benefits, although if you are inviting me to one of those benefits with expensive tickets, you will have to pay for my seat at your table. Thank you so much for doing that.
Some events, however, I just cannot do. I don’t want to get anyone’s nose out of joint, so I thought I would offer them here, prophylactically, in case you are planning to invite me to one of them. Not to be rude, but so you can invite someone else who will enjoy it and be a better guest.
Thank you for not inviting me to a professional basketball game, even if your tickets are for the really good seats where the movie stars sit. In fact, please don’t invite me to any sports game. I wish I could see what other people see in watching sports—the human body at its most templelike, the balletic beauty of teamwork, the thrill of competition. That metaphysical, practically mystical experience people seem to have while watching baseball. Whatever the game may be, I just cannot keep my mind on it. After the first five minutes or so, my mind wanders and wanders. Where’s the hot-dog guy? Hunh, here’s a cloud in the shape of George Washington’s head. I went to Mount Vernon once. No, that was Monticello.
Also, I always end up cheering for both teams, so the losing one won’t feel bad. You wouldn’t want me there anyway.
Forgive me for sounding coldhearted, but please don’t invite me to a two-hour funeral or memorial service. Two hours is too long, no matter how accomplished and fabulous the dead person was. Also, please don’t invite me to a service where all of the eulogists are famous. Famous eulogists talk about themselves rather than the dead person, and one per funeral is more than enough. Also, they usually didn’t know the dead person that well, so they just tell some old story about the supposedly hilarious thing the dead person said while holding forth drunkenly at Elaine’s in 1973 while his spouse and children, no doubt, waited for him to come home for dinner.
Please don’t invite me to one of those art openings where there is no food whatsoever except a small bowl of salted peanuts at the bar. That’s just rude.
Speaking of not getting enough to eat, please don’t invite me to dinner at a macrobiotic restaurant. I wish I liked this sort of food, but I just can’t. I feel like I’m being punished for something I didn’t do. Although once I had the best German chocolate cake I have ever tasted at a raw food restaurant in San Francisco. Sometimes I think about calling the restaurant and asking how they made it taste so delicious without using butter or sugar or eggs or flour or German chocolate, but I’m not sure I want to know.
Thank you for not inviting me to any event that would involve my driving in the state of New Jersey. I like New Jersey; it’s the impenetrable highway “system” that I hate. As far as I’m concerned, the Pulaski Skyway is the portal to hell. I have wept, lost, on roadsides all over New Jersey. Even with a GPS, I will get to your event two hours late and in a terrible mood, as if you yourself had invented the tangled strands of spaghetti that are the roads of your state.
Is it just me, or is Fashion Week every other week now? In any case, thank you for thinking of me, but please don’t invite me. I just don’t care about Fashion Week. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. Also, it bothers me that people you would never think would go to Fashion Week show up there. I once saw a photo of Lou Reed, may he rest in peace, at Fashion Week. Brilliant Lou Reed! Why was he at Fashion Week when he could have been at home with his wife, the pixie genius Laurie Anderson?
I also don’t want to know about my future, so please don’t invite me to any gathering where you think it would be fun to have a fortune-teller, astrologer, or tarot-card or tea-leaf reader tell my fortune. Particularly if they are good at what they do. I just don’t want to know. Too many things have happened to me already. Unless my fortune is “Congratulations, the rest of your life will be uneventful,” I would rather be in the dark.
Please don’t invite me to a movie that I think will include a car chase but is actually just one long car chase. I love some chasing in a movie, but it has to come in between the parts where the characters talk to each other, so I can care about why they are being chased or are chasing. To me, the wonderful Catch Me If You Can is the perfect example of this kind of movie, so please invite me to a movie like that.
To finish up: Please don’t invite me to rock climb, even a modest peak or boulder, even a fake one with ledges designed for easy gripping; to the opera (I’m sorry, I know it’s my loss); or to watch you do your stand-up comedy routine on the night you have decided not to do your act but to read something from your memoir-writing class instead. I like magic shows, though, and bingo nights, and bowling parties, and I hardly ever get asked to those, so please count me in. I would particularly love to be invited to do that kind of bowling you do in the dark, with glow-in-the-dark bowling balls. It sounds like everyone could be equally bad at it, which would be right up my alley (alley! ha!) and would involve a lot of potato chips and other delicious salty snack foods. And nothing says fun like those crazy bowling shoes, which crack me up. So invite me. I am so there.