Contents:
April Fools’ Day
Let’s Hate Our Bosses!
Easter
Fat Tuesday
Mothers’ Day
The Founding Fathers
March Madness
Beat the Heat
Safari
St. Patrick’s Day
The Ides of March
Tax Day
No, this doesn’t mean pretending that you’re going to throw a big ol’ shindig and then forcing all your friends who show up to watch your new bootleg of “Knowing.” Because crap like that doesn’t make you funny, it just makes you a shitty human being. (The idea of Nicolas Cage as a sex symbol IS an April Fools’ Day prank upon society, right?? Right?!)
A genuine April Fools’ Day Party takes trickery as its theme in more gentle ways. Use your food and drink to fool your guests — you know, like how at a Halloween party you might pretend peeled grapes are eyeballs? Do weird shit like that. Go nuts. You can be disgusting (this wilted spinach is barf!), but if you’re not a twelve-year-old boy, a little more sophistication is in order: make “coleslaw” with jicama instead of cabbage and a dash of soy sauce and rice vinegar instead of mayonnaise, then throw it on top of some seared tuna steaks cut to resemble pork chops; shabam! Witty and delicious, all in one.
There are myriad directions to take this party in, some crueler than others. You could serve a salad with fake plastic berries on it and see how many people choke to death, or fill the ketchup with hot sauce; alternately, spread hand cream instead of mayonnaise on a hamburger, give people glasses of white wine vinegar instead of water (or vodka!), or, if you’re having a dinner party, just put a damn whoopie cushion on all the seats. Trust me, that never gets old. (OK, I guess this party is the time to embrace your inner twelve-year-old boy after all. Just not in the creepy, Catholic priest kind of way.)
Another great way to get into the April Fools’ Day spirit is to invent ridiculous themes, invite your friends to dress up, and then point and laugh when they arrive. Tell somebody that it’s a “Full House” event, and they should dress up like Uncle Jessie; tell another one it’s a circus party, and you want them looking like a clown. The photographic memories will make excellent bribes for years to come. April is, after all, the cruelest month.
This is going to be tough for me to write, because my boss(es) are awesome. Because my entire job is absurdly badass. But that’s neither here or there; it’s just me boasting. And nobody likes that. Ahem. Anyway.This week includes amongst is festivities not only 4/20 — which I trust my readership can figure out how to celebrate all by themselves — but also Assistants’ Day, formerly and less politically correctly known as Secretaries’ Day, and more appropriately known as The One Day A Year Where Somebody In The Office Pretends To Care About The Person Whose Job Is Almost Certainly The Shittiest And Most Underpaid Of Them All. There almost certainly won’t be a party at work, so I advocate throwing your own. I hope that development is not too shocking for everyone to bear.
What might a delightful “I Hate My Boss” party entail? Well, you can always throw in some DVDs of “The Office” (or, head on over to the NBC website for the same) and be glad that you at least don’t work at Dunder Mifflin. More interactively, you can print out a picture of your loathed boss’s face, stick it on a pinata, and have at it in an incredibly unsubtle, but highly therapeutic, regress to childhood. And what’s more fun than that, truly?
If you get along well enough with your coworkers — and, most crucially, know that they share your attitude towards the (Wo)Man In Charge — then they’ll be a solid bet for invitees. Otherwise, call up your regular crowd, and invite them to share their own stories of hatred and pain. If you’ve got a dart board, you can go with a rotating cast of everybody’s douchey bosses at the bulls-eye. Just be sure to have plenty of booze on hand; not just because that’s a good strategy for life in general (which it is), but because nothing makes people want to drink themselves under the table like the thought of their jobs.
Jesus is resurrectin’ this Sunday, y’all! Or, if you’re Jewish/Hindu/Buddhist/aetheist/Shinto/as lapsed as I am… half-price chocolate candy next week! Woohoo!
Easter is still a fun holiday to celebrate, even if your religious credibility is about equal to that of the Archbishop of Boston circa 2002. (Catholic Church sex scandal references — always topical!) Because, let’s face it, the secular trappings of Easter are completely effing ludicrous. At least when the fat man with reindeer drops presents down the chimney, it’s a dude who has been mythologized — you know, a confabulated creature at least possessing human intelligence. But the Easter Bunny? What the fuck is that shit, and how badly was somebody tripping when they came up with it?
If you want to dress up in a bunny suit for the occasion, you’re more than welcome to it, but fear not: the festivities don’t actually demand such elaborate costuming. It’s much more fun to invite your friends over for brunch and an Easter egg hunt. Get the plastic eggs that open up to hold random crap, and stuff them with the kind of random crap your friends might be psyched to find — whether that’s Cheetos or some touching homemade crafts or fun photos of all y’all together or some dimebags, well, that’s up to you and the crowd with whom you have elected to run. But if you’re even a little bit thoughtful, it’s a superfun activity, especially if you’ve done it right and gotten good and soused beforehand. Who doesn’t love a drunken scavenger hunt, seriously?
Another totally rad Easter tradition is that of egg ticking, which any Germans amongst my readership might recognize immediately as a serious piece of awesome. Hard-boil a dozen eggs and then color them with some of those Easter egg-coloring kits; keep them in the fridge until your party. When the time for ticking arises, everybody selects an egg from the bunch as their very own weapon of choice. Then: warfare! Chaos! Brutality! (It is, after all, a German tradition.) The eggs are ‘ticked’ against each other, one by one — hit fat end to fat end and skinny end to skinny end. Whoever possesses the egg that emerges from such contest unscathed is the winner. There should be money involved, but if not, booze or food will suffice nicely.
And what kind of booze and food does such a shindig merit? Mimosas are always great for brunch, as are bloody marys; personally, I like vodka tonics alongside my asparagus soup, and you better believe that any self-respecting Easter brunch should prominently feature more eggs than a fertility clinic. (Zing! And, ew.) Or, if you really want to fuck with people’s heads, invite them over for an Easter feast and serve some roast rabbit. Because there’s no better way to celebrate a holiday than to turn its childhood symbol into the main course.
If you want to do a formal Easter dinner, you can go ahead and hit up a traditional lamb; usually it’s done up with a mint sauce and served with various spring vegetables, such as asparagus (I recommend a nice asparagus soup, garnished with a little creme fraiche). You can also do a ham or, if you want to be religiously inclusive, throw down a traditional seder. Do not combine a seder with a ham, though — it is not kosher in both the literal AND the figurative sense.
Easter’s also a good holiday for a brunch; it’s been a recent family tradition in the Midwestern branch of my people (yes, we have branches, and yes, we are large enough to qualify as a “people”) to serve Grand Marnier French toast, which I highly recommend — anytime alcohol, starches, and maple syrup are combined, goodness must ensue. Ham works well for a brunch as well. Whether it’s an evening soiree or an earlier event, though, the decor is ready-made: get yourself an Easter basket, fill it up with jelly beans and chocolate rabbits and brightly-colored fake grass, and put it in the middle of the table; decorations and dessert, done in one fell swoop. Straightforward and seasonally appropriate! And then you can finish off the night doing crazy shit to Peeps.
It is Mardi Gras time, motherfuckers.
Now, before female readers just start showing off their chests willy-nilly, let’s discuss what a more civilized precursor to Lenten repentance might entail. My own personal philosophy is that if you’re gonna be atoning anyway, you might as well make it for something good… which is exactly the same motivation behind the infamous debauchery of Mardi Gras, so, really, there is no way to make this shit civilized.But if you, like me, are outside of New Orleans — perhaps in a locale where excessive public drunkenness and nudity is frowned upon (I’ll be honest; I’m not in New Orleans but I do live in San Francisco, so, that doesn’t actually really apply to me at all) — you might need to tone down a few categories of your deadly sinning. Being lustful is all well and good, but if one of the five fingers of lechery (which, for the record, is an official phrase from the Catholic doctrine on the matter; I am not making this shit up) is chicks baring their tits on the street, well, maybe your festivities will just have to make do with some four-fingered lechery.(I would say “insert your own joke here,” because it’s too easy, but even using the word “insert” seems too obvious…)
Food-wise, it’s crucial to have lots of meat — and I mean some fatty, bloody stuff, the kind of shit that raises your cholesterol just looking at it; that’s the stuff that merits a little gluttony here and there. Also, Fat Tuesday originated as a kind of last-chance meat fiesta (and I don’t mean that in the “last night at theater camp” sense of the phrase “meat fiesta”) before the fasting and abstinence of Lent — and, much as not eating meat on Ash Wednesday and Fridays can be tough to remember, it’s worth noting that the old-school rules of Lent demanded abstinence throughout the entire forty days, and straight-up bread-and-water fasting on those same days when we are now just supposed to forego dead cow. So, the impetus to meat it up has faded quite a bit, but I always like to endorse a little authenticity in my partying, so I say: keep it real, and down as many types of dead animal as you can muster.
(Vegetarians, of course, can ignore this piece of advice. You’re all going to hell already anyway. Leftist freaks.)
But enough channeling of Pope Benedict — let’s talk booze! If you want to give things a good New Orleans flavor, well, there’s options for that which we’ll be discussing on Thursday (just in time for a party on Tuesday!), but really, quantity is way more important here. Get bombed. Get blitzed like London in 1941. Reduce your life to rubble and ash. Then, hey, you’re all set for Wednesday! Everybody wins. Especially Jesus.
Ah, moms. They birth us, they raise us, they love us, they send us lengthy letters discussing all the ways in which we’ve failed… okay, maybe only my mom does that. Regardless of their flaws, though, moms do a tough job, and there is but one day of the year on which we are obligated to forgive them their humanity and celebrate their sacrifice. That day is this Sunday, better known to all as Mothers’ Day.
If, like me, you live thousands of miles away from your mother, then a card and a phone call is perfectly sufficient. If, however, you’re within local range of your maternal unit, a bit more effort is required — you can take her out to dinner, alongside the hordes of others taking advantage of the occasion to dine out (apparently it’s the most popular day to dine out in the US), or you could actually use your brain for five seconds and come up with something vastly more awesome. Below are a few suggestions:
- Make her some dinner. Or, better yet, make her some breakfast! Remember when you were a little kid and making your parents breakfast in bed was, like, the hippest shit you could pull? It’s still pretty kicky, and moms also love anything that reminds them of your (vastly cuter) youth years. How about an omelette with bacon, gorgonzola cheese, avocado, a drizzle of white wine, and a sprinkling of parsley? Perhaps some sweet potato hash browns, or maybe some totally kickass ham and egg cups. It’s a totally sweet and fairly simple concept (the link goes to a recipe that takes a bit more of a highbrow approach, but you can simplify as needed) wherein you saute some button mushrooms with shallot, then spread some thin ham slices in a cupcake pan, fill them with the mushrooms (or, if you and/or your mom hate mushrooms, you could use cheese, onions, roasted peppers, tomatoes — pretty much whatever the fuck you want), crack an egg on top of each ham cup, and then bake that shit up good. They look super-cute once you pop them out of the cupcake pan, when they’re nice and crispy and stand upright on the plate, and they’re also delicious, as are all of the other suggestions above. I would never lead you astray, folks.
- Don’t just get her a bouquet of flowers — bring some plant life that’ll last a little longer into her life. If Mom likes to garden, throw down for some nice bulbs at the local nursery (that’s plant nursery, not kid nursery; it’s much more peaceful at the plant kind); if Mom likes to cook, set her up with a mini herb garden — you can buy one at a nursery or Restoration Hardware or some other yuppie store, or if you’re crafty, you can make that shit. If she’s not really into gardening or cooking, a houseplant is always a good time, right?
- Spa Day! Yeah, it’s practically a cliche by now, but a day devoted to relaxation and self-indulgence still sounds pretty good, am I right? (The answer is yes, unless you are an idiot.) If you’re far too short on cash to ever fund the actual transport to and consumption of a real spa experience, you can set one up at home (by which I mean Mom’s Home, where you presumably no longer live) for much less coin. Buy some whole milk and lavender oil; heat up that shit and turn it into a sassy and super-cheap foot bath. And for the record, I am not making up the restorative powers of the milk bath. Buy some face masks at Walgreen’s or Long’s or Duane Reade or wherever the fuck you get your cheap shampoo, make some nice smoothies, get matching robes for yourself and your mom and then sit with your faces slathered in green shit and your feet submerged in floral-fragranced milk while you suck down that smoothie. I’d rather just get her a houseplant, but then, all I’ve gotta do is pick up the phone and my obligation is fulfilled.
We are BACK, bitches! And better than ever. But while a couple things around both TKP Central and America in general may have changed in the last few months, we’re gonna kick things off with a saucy throwback to the days of yore: pull on your best pair of pantaloons and powder that wig up good, because it’s the perfect time of year to rock out with a Founding Fathers Party!
These mofos knew how to get down with their bad selves, y’all.
See, it’s President’s Day today in the good ol’ U.S. of A., which sits squarely in between the birthdays of both Lincoln and Washington. These guys were history-makers! And we’ve got a history-maker sitting in the White House again, so, just roll with it. Of course, the activities at a Founding Fathers party can stand in stark contradiction to the promise of the Obama administration, in large part because an authentic Founding Fathers party will only include white males. (White females can titter in the corner, and everyone else can serve drinks.) But I’m no historical stick-in-the-mud, nor do I generally have the patience for accuracy beyond checking Wikipedia, so I say, let’s get everyone in on such eighteenth-century fun as bobbing for apples, arguing for new forms of governance, and smoking opium! Put that shit together and your shindig is guaranteed to be hot, y’all. I promise you that much, and I, like George Washington, cannot tell a lie. (That’s not true. I lie like a rug.)
But, whether you’re a history buff, brocade fan, or devotee of classical debate, a Founding Fathers party is a sassy and unexpected form of midwinter fun… educational fun, no less! And isn’t that always the best kind?
It’s that time of year once again: the great springtime infection known as college hoops has befallen us all. Except that this year Georgetown didn’t make the tournament, and so the whole thing is essentially a meaningless exercise. But that’s OK. I’ll walk you through a good March Madness party anyway.
A solid shindig of this particular variety requires a couple essential ingredients: first off, a game in which your guests have a remote investment; second of all, snacks; and thirdly, booze. Now, if your fellow revelers have been good little boys and girls and filled out their brackets like the rest of America, any game will do — but if you and your buddies are, say, Xavier alums, then I don’t even need to tell you how to plan accordingly. And if somebody shows up who doesn’t really give a shit about basketball and has no bracket of their own, just give them Obama’s and tell them to roll with it.
Snack-wise, I recommend an array of chips and dip-like condiments, plus pizza. What better way to evoke collegiate experience than a bunch of pizza? (I guess you could go ramen, but pizza is way tastier.) Just make your own — it’s cheaper, it’s more fun, and it is just about as easy as picking up the phone and ordering. Seriously. Chips and pizza are pretty much all you need, food-wise; anything else is going to be more involved to eat, and you and your guests should be focusing on the game, not on your damn dinner. Also, there is nothing more fun to wave around whilst cheering or booing than a piece of pizza. That is a FACT.
And of course, you best have some booze. Trader Joe’s and a few other places have delightful mini-kegs, perfect for occasions such as these — it will recall the best of your boozy college years, without someone well past his or her prime attempting a keg stand and vomiting all over your couch. The mini-keg: perfect for the college grad desperate to recapture his glory days, but with less cirrhosis this time around!
So grab yourself a mini-keg, fire up some pizza in the oven, grab your Kettle Chips (don’t go throwing around Doritos when there’s so many tastier options available!), hope your picks are doing better than the president’s, and huddle around the television to watch some team that I don’t care about because they’re not Georgetown and therefore meaningless claim the title. It’s a good time, kids. Even for me.
No, that’s not a basketball cheer. We are BACK, bitches, and since it is the middle of summer, well, the first party that is in order is one to beat the motherfucking heat. I myself recently traded the undying gaze of the Southern California sun for temporary respite in the mosquito-ridden, humid Midwest, and I honestly cannot discern which is worse: getting a sunburn while walking two blocks to one’s car, or being covered in a fine sheen of humidity-induced perspiration within two minutes of stepping outside. Let’s face it: summer has a lot going for it, but this shit ain’t perfect, y’all. It’s up to each one of us to find ways to cope with uncomfortably high temperatures, and for my money, there is no better solution than a party.(This is my approach to much of life, and it also probably helps to explain why I failed math my freshman year of college. Kids: don’t be like me.)
Anyway, a beat-the-heat party is a fairly simple undertaking. If you have access to, say, a pool, it becomes even simpler — just regress to your childhood days and go for it. If you don’t have a pool but do have a lawn, you could always bust out a sprinkler and a Slip-N-Slide (Do those things even exist anymore? God, I feel old…) and become the neighborhood freakshow. If, however, you are limited in your array of aquatic activities, but you still want to throw down a chill and chill-inducing soiree as the dog days of August bear down, well, you’ve come to the right place.
Fortunately, nature provides much of the antidote to summertime sloth readily: fruits and vegetables! Any menu for a beat-the-heat party should err heavily on the lighter side; if you live in a place of high humidity (DC in August, I’m looking at you!), your food should be lighter than the air. Literally, because that air is gross. Salads and cold soups — cucumber soup or delightful gazpacho — are always solid bets. Protein-wise, seafood and poultry go down easier than red meats; a beat-the-heat party is not a barbecue, so don’t go getting them confused. Centralizing your gathering around an open flame is no way to intelligently combat the summer temperatures. A nice cold soup, a salad with chicken or salmon, and a light pasta full of fresh vegetables would be a delicious dinner party spread, capped off with watermelon, peaches, or fresh berries for dessert. God, I feel refreshed just thinking about it.
Drinks-wise, you also want to keep things light, which means no red wine and Guinness. Deal with it. Instead, keep things fresh and fun with southern-originating cocktails like the mojito, margarita, daquiri, or anything else with a remotely fruity or minty bent (no, that is not an entendre… too easy). Lighter beers go over well, particularly if served with a wedge of lemon, lime, or orange; nothing freshens up some booze like a little squeeze of citrus. Alternately, get all your guests bombed on mimosas, which are always tasty.
Now, when it comes to the decor, it’s worth noting that a good beat-the-heat party will occur outside, in aforementioned heat; how else is it to be beaten if all your guests are bunkered down in air conditioning? Besides, people tend to throw aside their inhibitions more readily when it’s hot out, and that is good news for your party, unless you are the one doing the throwing and some Facebook-active friend gets excessively camera-happy, in which case you might wind up fired. But, back to the party! I like to do summer parties up a little bit old-school: picnic tables with cheap tablecloths, citronella candles and lightning bugs the main light sources, and all the guests slowly getting shitfaced in shorts, sundresses, and flip-flops. Some poor drunk bastard who had the foresight to bring water balloons, but forget them in the earlier, hotter part of the festivities will start chucking them blindly at people once it’s dark out, and then, finally, your guests will become downright chilly. The heat? Oh, it’s totally beaten, y’all.
I decided on today’s topic well in advance of the freakish weather patterns that have left a good bit of the South covered in snow, and long before I sat down at my computer to be serenaded by the howling cold winds outside my window. But, y’all, this shit was prescient, because this week’s theme is derived from ye olde phrase about “March comes in like a lion…” (and goes out like a lamb, which, we’ll just have to wait and see on that one), which has proven itself to be especially true in this first day of the third month of 2009.
But enough self-important and overlong introductions: let’s get to the party! What does a safari party entail, exactly? Well, the answer is two simple — and simply awesome — words: tiki torches. If you do not like tiki torches, then I don’t even want to know you. They are the ultimate in kitschy fun; they could turn a funeral into a fiesta. (And yes, for the record, I do want tiki torches at my funeral. Tiki torches, and lots of booze.)
What else do you need? Well, how does a kicky dress code sound to you? Instruct your guests to doll themselves up with some safari vests, an explorer hat and binoculars, maybe an animal print or two. (If you want to be as backwards and nineteenth-century as the very concept of colonialism itself, you can gender-segregate your sartorial edicts: the men dressed up like Livingstone, while the distaff side swans about like zebras or cheetahs or another completely misogynist game animal of your choosing. There’s no such thing as illegal poaching at this shindig!) Any recommendation towards animal print, however, will guarantee the presence of your super-crazy fun friends, whose closets are bursting with clothing that has never before been requested in polite company. Everybody wins!
Food-wise, you can go for ostrich steaks, emu eggs, cassava, chilis, bananas, mangoes, coconuts, and a whole smorgasbord of other tropical fruits. If you can get your hands on some warthog or antelope, that’s pretty authentic too, but I’d be careful about getting too exotic in your animal products; steer clear of elephant, tiger, or baboon steaks, as PETA tends to get pretty upset about that shit. Trust me.
So there you go: tiki torches, drunk people dressed up like wild animals, and some delicious and fruity food to go around. What better way to beat the depressingly lingering winter that just will not go away, goddamnit?
Well, the heading pretty much says it all. Tomorrow brings us to that annual event of awesome known as March 17, or, as we call it in the biz, “St. Paddy’s Day.” Even if you’re disproportionately non-Irish (my own ethnic heritage can best be characterized as “McSpic,” so, I am allowed to speak on matters of general Irishness) (Note from 2019: …nah), you are, of course, more than welcome to suit up for the occasion and down Guinness with the best of them.
A good St. Patrick’s Day party has at its core a few key traditions — namely, excessive amounts of green clothing, corned beef and cabbage on the table, and more beer than God himself could handle in a keg stand. (I’m guessing God would be pretty badass in a keg stand. Being non-corporeal and all.) There’s also Irish whiskey, particularly Jameson’s, and Bailey’s — good to have on hand to round out your bar selection for the lame-os unwilling to drown themselves in the hoppy goodness of a fine Emerald Isle brewski. I’d also encourage a wide potato selection; the tubers are better at soaking up booze than cabbage, and more people are also willing to eat them.
For a dose of adventure in your party, recall Ireland’s Catholic identity and invite your guests to dress up in priestly or even papal garments — whoever shows up wearing the most elaborate hat wins a bottle of Bailey’s! (Just remember, no drinking and driving the Popemobile.) St. Patrick also made his fame driving snakes out of Ireland, and you’re welcome to use that piece of inspiration however you might like; personally, since I find snakes to be loathsome, vile creatures whose leglessness disturbs at an existential level, I’d recommend taking the opportunity to destroy any of the fuckers that you encounter. But that’s just me.
The truth is, St. Patrick’s Day is pretty damn solid all on its own, without much added to the party infrastructure already in existence. Dig out the greenest thing you own (not an issue here, as green is my favorite color to wear and random old men on public transportation have occasionally pointed out to me that I dress like a leprechaun), grab a few friends and some classic Irish cuisine, and start chugging Guinness like it is your moral duty. Because, once a year, it kind of is.
This coming Sunday, March 15, marks the infamous Ides of March — but rather than beware, why not celebrate? (That’s my whole approach to life in a nutshell.) Commemorate the slaying of Caesar at the hands of his friends with the ultimate in Romanesque bacchanalia: the toga party!
Drinks at a toga party are simple — wine, wine, and more wine. This shit should be downright Dionysian, and if anybody knew his vino, it was that sick fuck. Keep some white wine on hand for the lamer of your cohorts, but red wine brings out the real debauchery. Food-wise, there is, of course, the Caesar salad; however, you can also get gluttonously Italiano with some pizza and pasta. Red wine and tomato sauce at a toga party might seem like a recipe for some epic laundry battles the next day, but on the upside, you’ll be able to spend the whole party walking up to your friends, pointing to the blood-like stain on your clothing, and melodramatically gasping “Et tu, Brutus?!” It’s a shtick that never gets old! (Just think: if you’re ever brutally assassinated by those whom you trusted most, you, too, could have a limp pile of lettuce that has become a culinary joke named in your honor!)
(Word to the wise: if you’re going to get full-on Roman and chug red wine like a centurion on shore leave, take a hint from those crazy aqueduct-builders and make sure your party has a well-marked vomitorium. Enough red wine and it doesn’t matter how many carbs you have on hand to help soak up the booze; you will need it.)
Decor-wise, the aforementioned aqueducts are good. Similarly, I recommend arches, domes, and coliseums. If none of those are on hand, just try to talk one of your friends into living out his Russell Crowe fantasies and dressing up like a gladiator* for the amusement of all attendees. People are entertained, and your buddy gets to pretend to be a famously assholish Australian megastar — everybody wins! Except, of course, for Caesar. That motherfucker is dead no matter what.
*Necessary ingredients for costume: fur, armor, all-consuming arrogance.
April 15 is rapidly approaching, which to all working people means but one thing: the tax man cometh! Of course, to some of us, the tax man is equivalent to a bureaucratic and slightly less jolly Santa Claus, tossing out refund checks like candy at a parade; to others, the tax man is a looming specter of doom, a financial Grim Reaper. Why not throw yourself and your nearest and dearest a party that aims to cover both ends of the spectrum?
You pick whether you get the fun kind or the less-fun kind.
HOW, you may ask, could such a thing be possible — covering such opposite impulses in the same party? Well, it turns out celebration and desperation have a couple things in common, the most significant of which is booze. (Think about it!) Whether you’re celebrating a fat refund or giving yourself one last hurrah before shoving off a portion of your net worth to the IRS, some fine drinks are clearly in order. And, for some odd American reasons, people of all political stripes always seem to react to the very concept of the IRS by wanting to go out and get blitzed. It’s an easy enough impulse to harness here.
So get some top-class liquor, bust out the Monopoly board, throw down some leafy greens (because either you are broke from paying taxes, in which case they are cheap and symptomatic of your financial distress, or because you’re flush with refund cash and have leafy greens bursting out of your pockets), and get ready to get down with your bad self. At the very least you can be satisfied that dealing with w-2s and 1040s and whatever the fuck else kind of forms exist in this crazy mixed-up world is over for another twelve months, which, to my mind, is definitely worth celebrating.
Unless you’re an accountant, in which case that shit is never over, and you should be drinking up for so many reasons.