On Partying.

This is something I wrote a couple of years ago, that I just found again. It's about college parties. Hope you like it.

I think there should be a new benchmark used for describing parties. Instead of saying "It was great, we had three hundred people!" or "We had seven kegs!" or "The Smiths reformed just for the night!" there ought to be some other indicator. Because parties never have fixed start and end times, it can't be something clock-related, like "How long did it take before the toilet seat fell off?" or “The final bottle of Natural Light was finished at (x) a.m.” or “Jamie and Humberto missed work the next morning because they were passed out in a broom cupboard”. Further, because party demographics vary greatly, it can't be something specific, like "Beard Ratio" (one party we stopped by on Friday had an FHC - Facial-Hair Coefficient - of 0.8. This is clearly bad), or "Number of Whoooooos! per person". And though it pains me to say this, there can be no bonus points for broken chair parts deposited in freezers.

No, what I seek is some sort of universal barometer that all parties can be measured upon.

Last night, we were at a birthday party which got broken up by the cops, as most big parties in a college town such as Tallahassee are wont to do. Nothing too outrageous about that, although I always love seeing under-21s panic at the sight of the police, running around freaking out, whilst those of us old enough to not be scared stand around, almost arrogantly, looking at Johnny Law, as if to say "Yeah, what if?".

Clearly, the arrival of the 5-0 isn't particularly noteworthy in itself. But a couple of hours prior, there was another official and unsolicited visit to the house. You see, in the back garden, there was a little firepit set up. Pretty well controlled, bricked in, not harmful to anybody. Just after midnight, we noticed some flashing lights coming down the road, and a few moments later, there were seven members of the Tallahassee Fire Department walking up to the party. Probably not because they want to drink cheap beer and talk about that time they drank cheap beer. They came up, very professional looking, and stared at the fire, which as I've said already, could only be dangerous if you were wearing nylon and had fireworks in your pockets, and were sitting on top of the fire and were also soaked in petrol. The firemen looked at each other, gave a collective shrug and walked off, no words needed to be spoken. Evidently, there had been a tip off about some wild and out-of-control fire, and it was all a big waste of their time.

The more I thought about this today, I realised that having not one but TWO emergency services coming to your party is really fuckin' cool. Now, clearly this measurement only has limited potential in terms of rating shindigs. Obviously, I'm not saying that parties should start having a room where, instead of smoking marijuana, people are recreating the popular film (and less popular novel) Fight Club, so as to necessitate the visit of an ambulance. I mean, it's for the best that ambulances DON'T show up at parties, but do you see what I mean? (Caveat: A possible exception would be the Whiskey Ambulance, but I don’t think that such a thing actually exists). I guess that Cave Rescue arriving would be pretty boss, or maybe the Wildlife Police?

The only other Emergency Service I can think of is the Coastguard, and being as we're a couple of hours from the sea, can you imagine how fucking amazing it would be to have your party broken up by those guys? That'd be the Harlem Globetrotters of all parties. If that happened at somebody's birthday, it'd be incredible but also destructive, since there'd be no way to follow that. What could you do? Even if you had a combination of elephants, strippers, fireworks, Thai food, helium, members of the original Broadway cast of 'Rent', and breakdancers, it wouldn't match "the one where the fuckin' COASTGUARD showed up!"

So, last night's party scored a 2 on my new scale of "Emergency Services in Attendance".

Beat that, party throwers of the world.

[download Los Campesinos! - We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives]