1 With, maybe, one raspberry in it.
1 Note to people with little kids or babies: You are forgiven the occasional restaurant brunch, as your evenings are typically consumed with feeding and bedtime drama, leaving brunch as the ideal (and perhaps only) time to drink and commiserate with fellow parents about little Rafael’s penchant for peeing on iPads and/or daughter Zoe’s Fig Newman–induced rages.
2 There is also the power of napping, but we’ll cover that in our forthcoming audiobook/sleep aid entitled Boyfriends Talking About Their Favorite Records.
3 Except in states with lax marijuana laws, where we admit that brunch is therefore way more fun.
4 He means “grotesque” metaphorically. You still have to clean your toilet before a dinner party (see chapter three).
5 Yes, an arid heart and a crushing sense of emptiness are consequences, but of a very different sort than, say, having no income or watching your daughter mistake a stranger for her father.
6 In fact, friends’ll help you move into a home, if you buy them a six-pack.
7 You guys do this too, right? Right?
8 Full of heavily annotated “evidence” that CNN is spying on him with robot fruit bats.
9 Katherine W. Phillips, “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter,” Scientific American, Oct. 1, 2014.
10 RIP Uncle Jeffrey “Diabetes Fats” Newnam (1939–1995).
11 Not true.
12 Actually true.
13 The Brothers Karamazov, chapter forty-one.
14 Jefferson—a notorious Francophile—very likely served his guests French cuisine. Ironic, considering the “Freedom fries” thing that swept DC in the aughties.
15 Crackling fire optional. Also, make sure you invite someone who can translate German.
1 Exception: If Monday is a day off due to a minor holiday (e.g., President’s Day), Sunday can be treated as a “bonus Saturday” and therefore fair game for a dinner party.
2 True, that party had, like, a thousand guests, in clear violation of the four-to-twelve rule (see part one, subsection “Attendees”). But when you’re among the greatest filmmakers of all time, you can file for an exception.
3 True fact.
4 False fact.
1 You can pronounce it “Meow-i,” but be prepared for someone to strangle you with a lei.
2 Your secret2a Seis safe with us, Front.
2a (he killed a guy)
3 Chef Bobby Flay once told us the ex-president “thinks of himself as a pretty good baker—he makes a good banana cream pie, apparently.” So, should the Obamas accept your invite, make them bring a banana cream pie.
4 Actually, senior producer Jackson Musker books many of our guests. He’s a sweet and brilliant trivia genius, pie baker, and pickup basketball junkie whose dad directed The Little Mermaid. Seriously: look it up.
5 GET IT?!!!
6 There’s a reason comedians are used on sitcom sets to keep the live audience engaged during three solid hours of hearing the same lame jokes over and over.
7 What, you don’t know what that is?
8 Wait a minute. Where were you?
9 Sleeping babies exempted.
1 Our publisher’s marketing department asked us not to say that, but it’s true, and anyway we seriously doubt they’ve read this far.
2 These can double for headgear later.
3 A 1950s Fodor’s is neat, and a current Fodor’s means you just went, or are going, to Malta. But one from ten years back is kind of like proudly showing off an unwashed dish—a soiled and useless remnant of a good time had by others long ago.
4 Except the one we used to partly justify this entire book in the prologue.
5 To reinforce the “Keep out” concept, kill all overhead hallway lights in the back of your home so that the only illumination is coming from the open bathroom. One cannot snoop in a bedroom one cannot find.
6 He also said “God is Dead”—a clear reference to his love for a certain pioneering California jam band.
7 For a cheap party-friendly vinyl starter set, take five bucks to Goodwill and get the following for a dollar each: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s Whipped Cream and Other Delights, Tracy Chapman’s Tracy Chapman, ELO’s A New World Record, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and anything by Nat King Cole. Trust us: they’ll all be there.
8 To guarantee this happens, sprinkle your collection liberally with deluxe reissues of obscure albums from the record labels Light in the Attic and 4 Men with Beards.
Among the exceptions: most veteran musicians over fifty years of age. Elvis Costello readily admitted to us that as a young punk, the moment a journalist approached him, “that’s when [I] put on the act”—i.e., he became a surly monosyllabic jerk. Whereas in his sixties, as he is now, he was happy to regale us with tales about the time he taped a TV lemonade jingle with his dad, or the time Joe Strummer tried on his glasses.
10 The first: a cocktail (see next chapter).
Optional: Celery and carrot sticks to clean off your tongue between bites of various garlicky things. Note that at the end of the evening there will always be a handful of graying baby carrots left on the plate.
12 This is actually a classic host move; see chapter four, part one: “Conscript into Service.”
13 This is a purely show-off aesthetic move. Green peppers are fine if that’s what you’ve got.
1 Of course, if you’ve got literally everything ready for your party, exactly on time, you are totally free to treat this as easygoing shootin’-the-breeze time. But we must say we’ve never met any host who was totally ready exactly on time, so you may be a robot.
2 Let them know it’s a test run. Make them feel they’re involved in the process. Use words like “let’s” and “we”—“Should we give this cocktail recipe a dry run?” Best part: If they’re aware that you’re still in experimenting mode, the drink doesn’t even have to be good.
3 Professional stand-up comedians disdainfully call them “street jokes.” That’s how low an opinion they have of them—like, gutter-level low.
4 Three barks is the joke. The bark after that is them going “BADUMP-BUMP.”
5 Another smooth move: Tailor the joke to the guest. Precede this by saying, “Hey, I think you’ll appreciate this one.” When Brendan was a teen he had an uncle who’d always pull him aside at parties and do this. The ensuing joke was often vaguely dirty. It made Brendan feel like a grown-up.
6 One more tempting phrase: “Did you hear about [insert Trump’s latest executive order here]?” AVOID. The resulting monologue will dominate all conversation for the rest of the party. We’ll get to the political talk later.
7 BTW, here’s an alcohol-free “mocktail” invented for our show by Pamela Vaughn at Clara’s on the River in Battle Creek, Michigan, and inspired by the teetotaling Seventh-day Adventist John Harvey Kellogg—the coinventor of cornflakes. In a blender, place 1 cup milk, 5 dried dates, 3 tablespoons cornflakes, 1 tablespoon honey, 1 scoop ice. Blend. Garnish with more flakes. We admit that it sounds brunchy, but we figure that’s trumped by the conversational value of handing a Seventh-day Adventist the only Seventh-day-Adventist-themed drink ever.
8 Remember Brendan’s cooking sensei Jolynn? She had this move down.
9 And if you are, buy and store as many examples of midcentury furniture as you can; in a few decades it’ll be worth a fortune.
10 Exception: When it happens at brunch. Fuck that noise.
11 Note: New Orleans exists in a state of perpetual 24-7 dinner party. Therefore, you will encounter cocktails there at all hours. We mean that literally: in New Orleans there is never an hour during which you will not be encountering cocktails.
12 We prefer this term to the popular “mixologist.” “Mixologist” seems a more appropriate descriptor of an organic chemist, or a dub reggae DJ. Whereas “cocktailian” not only has the word “cocktail” right in it, it also kind of has the word “alien.” Which, if you’ve ever seen a cocktailian in full steampunk gear, trying and failing to hold a conversation with a normal earthling during daylight hours, is entirely apt.
13 Yes, there is (or at least was—it’s impossible to find on sale online anymore) a real thing called Peenie Wallie. It’s Jamaican peanut cream liqueur. Blend with wine13a and you have a liquid PBJ.
13a Do not actually do this.
14 Except where noted, classic cocktail recipes kindly provided by award-winning cocktailian superhero Cari Hah, of Alcove Big Bar in Los Angeles.
15 One type of whiskey, we mean. If the choice is between whiskey and health care, go for the health care.
16 Note: A Sazerac also calls for a tiny bit of absinthe. Long unavailable in the U.S., absinthe became briefly hip when it reappeared a few years ago, until people realized you have to shell out over a hundred bucks to get one that tastes good. A midpriced bottle is all you need for Sazeracs, though. It should last you the rest of your life, unless you are a painter in France.
17 Source: The 2017 On-Premise Consumer Survey by Nielsen CGA. Yes, Nielsen collects data on what TV we watch and what cocktails we order. They know all about our preferred means of sloth.
18 Don’t get overseas much? Not to worry, there’s plenty of weird booze to be found right here in America. Example: Malört. Beloved in Chicago, this is a bitter, Swedish-style wormwood liqueur that even the label once admitted is “unrelenting (even brutal) to the palate.”
19 Rumor has it these five people never travel on planes together, lest a crash cause the recipe to be lost to the ages. Seriously.
20 Of course, you can buy simple syrup for, like, twelve dollars a bottle at Sur La Table. That makes the name more appropriate, but may also mean you’re way too rich. Consider making homemade syrup and donating that money to charity instead.
21 Even so, have gin, dry vermouth, and olives available in case we come over. It’s the public radio equivalent of keeping an empty chair at the Passover table for Elijah.
22 Some A-level drinkers skip cocktails altogether and begin with champagne or sparkling wine. Sparklers are festive, lower alcohol, and the bubbles are a natural deterrent to overguzzling.
23 This might also be the time, if you’re a beer drinker, to shift to beer. A crisp, blond pilsner is probably your most versatile choice, although there are a zillion beers out there now, and we’re sure there’s a book near where you bought this one, written by a dude with a full beard who can explain the differences.
24 To add an element of spectacle, and to make the proceedings that much more festive, consider a magnum or even a jeroboam of wine. These oversize bottles are sometimes a good value, always a good prop for Instagram, and you get to shout “JEROBOAM” all night.
25 Not 100 percent true but we just wanted to say that phrase in print.
26 Not to be confused with Rhetorical Juicy JuiceTM, which contains only 10 percent real rhetoric.
27 For the record, classical music relaxed cats the most, whereas AC/DC got them pumped up and ready to play defensive tackle in a kitty football game.
28 Note: Since “core” has become such a go-to suffix for modern portmanteaus (e.g., “normcore,” “nerdcore”), we now declare the English language “core”-core.
29 We suspect that this tendency toward lazy, sloppy attire is partially grounded in America’s growing addiction to another portmanteau: brunch.
30 Probably something like the stuff they make hot dogs out of.
31 Frequently.
32 Wait, you don’t? Oh, us neither. Yeah, we were just joking around.
33 Note: Because these cocktails were concocted by fancy professionals, they all require spirits in addition to the ones we listed previously. If you have neither the booze nor the cash to make them, just pair the histories with a martini.
34 This really is trademarked. We can technically sue you into poverty if you even say it aloud without paying a licensing fee. But as thanks for buying this book, we’ll give you a pass.
1 Including, often, actual gravy. Gravyless chicken, for instance, is fine.
2 Does not exist. Working on it.
3 For instance, Alain Ducasse’s aptly titled, thousand-page, twelve-pound Grand Livre de Cuisine, available on Amazon for a mere $500.
4 Actually, we’re not total jerks: for novices we’ve scattered recipes for a foolproof dinner party menu throughout this section. Sorry if we were brusque just then. We were hangry.
Also, the classic shorthand phrase for “dinner party” is “breaking bread.” What would we call it if we rid dinner parties of bread? “Breaking seaweed sheets”?
For a discussion of American joints, see chapter seven.
7 Note: Try not to skimp on the meat! Not only for environmental, ethical, and health reasons, but because bourgeois chickens straight-up taste better.
8 See peperonata recipe, chapter three.
9 Or “Brussel.” In conversation no one can hear the difference.
10 You don’t have to finish them, because another grown-up thing for guests to do is not comment on whether another guest has cleaned their plate.
11 Exception: If you suspect the food may be actually dangerous. The chicken is cold and raw inside? Gently suggest it could use a few more minutes in the oven. Your right to life trumps the host’s right to gratitude.
1 Not being UN representatives ourselves, though, we can’t say with certainty that this doesn’t happen at summits, like, all the time.
2 Which is too bad, since, according to a 2015 article in the Washington Post, kids who dine with their families have better vocabularies, get higher scores on achievement tests, and are less prone to smoking or teen pregnancy. Seriously. Also, we heard they are more likely to be able to levitate and to turn pollution into delicious cookies.
3 To our fourth-grade teachers: See? We CAN talk incessantly and still be productive members of society! Also, it was Brendan who put peanut butter in Stefanie Sewell’s social studies book. But she started it.
4 We have also, as noted in an earlier chapter, made careers out of eating weird things. Which Rico’s mom finds particularly amusing given that she spent most of his childhood trying to convince him to eat something other than spaghetti and fried chicken. No, not together.
5 They are also a natural resource being strip-mined by media outlets like the Moth and countless podcasts. A recent report from the National Story Defense Council claims we’ve reached “peak story,” and that at this rate the story supply will be exhausted by 2027. Actually, that’d make a great story.
6 RIP David, 1940–2014.
7 Next time you listen to one of the great public radio storytelling shows, like This American Life, keep an ear out for some variation on the phrase “And that’s when I realized…” What follows is the “Why” part of the story. It’s always there.
8 Unless their question is something along the lines of “WHY ARE YOU BADGERING ME???” Then you’re doing it wrong.
9 Also a good descriptor of our personalities at home versus at work.
10 Except the Velvet Underground part. Play as much Velvet Underground at your party as possible. Except “Sister Ray.” And “All Tomorrow’s Parties”—too obvious.
11 Also good practice for relationships.
12 Actual results may vary.
13 “Ladylike broad” here is gender-neutral.
14 EXCEPTION: Shouting racist epithets, a.k.a. the Michael Richards Rule.
15 Stop short of further details: the ladylike broad is clever, not vulgar. Innuendo is your friend.
16 Actually, as previously noted, the most common emails we get come from foreign countries offering Viagra for just $9.99. But the political question is a close second.
17 Attacking each other on Twitter doesn’t count. See strategy number two, this section.
18 And also use turn signals. It’s the rod with the arrows on it sticking out of your steering column.
19 By the way, and it’s amazing we have to even mention this in the twenty-first century, but you don’t have to hear out actual Nazis/white supremacists. Most of the planet fought a world war so we wouldn’t have to tolerate hate speech at the table, thanks.
20 Having second thoughts about buying this book doesn’t count. Anyway, you can’t return it now; the spine is damaged from when you threw it across the room.
21 For better or worse, there will, from now on, always be a new Star Wars.
22 Or, conversely, say that they are a condescending terrorist-hugging libtard snowflake Communist whiner who never did an honest day’s work for a living and hates America.
23 Example: Being the butt of constant personal derision arguably helped Italian right-winger Silvio Berlusconi consolidate power. According to University of Chicago professor Luigi Zingales, the effect of the attacks “was to increase Mr. Berlusconi’s popularity. His secret was an ability to set off a Pavlovian reaction among his leftist opponents, which engendered instantaneous sympathy in most moderate voters.”
24 For examples thereof, see the 2010 Boston Globe article tellingly titled “How Facts Backfire.”
25 Wrote Lisa Miller in a 2016 New York magazine article, “Even a little compassionate contact with what social scientists call ‘out group’ members—that is, people who aren’t like you—can have an enduring impact.”
26 For an especially cool example of this occurring, Google “Swift J1644+57.” But not at the dinner table, for risk of encouraging others to fish out their own smartphones, ironically creating a conversational black hole.
27 We’re not going to bother using gender-neutral pronouns in this section: the Music Snob is always male.
28 Admittedly yet.
1 Or they’ll completely bail into the kitchen so they can continue their conversation without you and your dance partner’s butt wiggling in their faces. Should this occur, give up, slowly turn down the music, and revert to path one.
2 Way back in chapter one, we noted that game nights are not dinner parties, as they give the party a purpose beyond dining and partying. But at this point, you’re deploying games to extend the partying; they’re just a spice to zing up the main dish, which has been lying out too long and is threatening to spoil.
3 Poetry readings are also a good fit for this post-dinner path. But the poems must make sense to the average person. So in practice this never happens.
4 If they insist on helping anyway, wonderful. But assume they won’t. Most guests proffer help knowing you’re supposed to refuse it, thereby freeing them to pound down more cheese cubes before hitting the road. No worries: This means you’re allowed to pull the same move when they invite you to their dinner party.
5 This person can also be enlisted to help you move furniture before and after the party if necessary, or to pry open jelly jars. Just constantly praise their strength and ask where they work out—they love that.
6 WARNING: Some guests will attempt the reverse maneuver, by “accidentally” leaving behind food and dishes they brought to the party, which they don’t want to transport home or clean. Be vigilant! As they leave, present them with a grocery bag full of all their things. Perhaps with some stuff you want to get rid of hidden in there as well.
7 Exception: If you want your relationship to end.
8 Unless, flirty guest, you are at the party with your significant other, but you and the host have been flirting all night anyway. In which case the conspicuous goodbye handshake is actually an indication that the host is hot for you but doesn’t want to hug you in front of your dude/lady. Ooh, the sexual tension: isn’t it delicious??