It's the holiday party season. Instead of having everyone stand around wearing ironically garish Christmas sweaters, drinking box wine (top note of cardboard, strong finish of Advil) and pretending to know what a butter board is all about (You mean it's dip? Butter is dip? Since when?), why not try something new?
The Decadent Aristocrat Party: elegant balls where sophisticates glide around a ballroom wearing masks that make everyone look like owls, unmasking at midnight at candlelight while the string quintet plays "Grandma Doth Be Runneth Over by a Reindeer." The Countessa batted her fan at the Viscount of Lower Motley? Why, it's an absolute scandal!
The College Throwback Party: sitting around an apartment with six other guys, a case of Special Ex and Foghat on the stereo, then somehow ending up at White Castle and consuming grease pillows and potato nails in the hopes it sops up the beer. In the morning everyone has timpani thumping in their temples because they "partied." No, you drank.
The Farmer Party: No one can do much small talk. For example:
Myron: "Got the crops in, I expect."
Olaf nods.
Myron: "Made your contracts for the fertilizer, to lock in the price for next year, I suppose."
Olaf (nods slightly): "Got a good price."
Myron (nods imperceptibly): "Well, good catching up. Talk to you next year."
Olaf, watching Myron walk away: "How that man does go on and on."
The Old-Style Office Party Office Party: Flirting over pimento-specked canapés while Bob From Accounting runs around with a sprig of mistletoe and forces himself on the gals from the Steno Pool, someone glugs cheap vodka into the punchbowl, and a junior manager ends up Xeroxing his buttocks.
(Note: Any of these might result in an email from HR.)
Whatever you do, please try to have fun. We are not an overly fun metropolitan area, according to the personal finance site WalletHub.com. They released a survey on the most fun cities in America. We did not fare well, but it could have been worse.
Minneapolis is No. 40. St. Paul is No. 92. So you can literally feel the fun drain out of you as you head east on I-94.
Is our low finish on the fun scale a surprise? Shouldn't be. A state settled by dour northern Europeans who ate fish boiled in lye is not noted for ecstatic bacchanalias.
Las Vegas is the most fun city in the country, according to the survey, if you define fun as shoveling coins into a machine that goes bloopy-bleepy for nine hours. North Las Vegas is No. 155 in the list, which suggests it's where they buried all the people who had too much fun in the No. 1 city. The dead don't have fun per se, but they had so much fun while they were alive that they're like a battery that still has some charge, so North L.V. gets on the list.
Duluth doesn't even make the list, and I've had fun in Duluth. (I think.) Fargo makes the list at No. 112, which means they could have an ad campaign that says Fargo is more fun than (North) Las Vegas!
Anyway, if your holiday party is just an ordinary affair this year — the same people and the same chats and the same canapés — don't feel bad. It's not your fault. If you're in Minneapolis, maybe everyone was standing in the room of the house that was closer to St. Paul. Next year put everyone in the kitchen.
