Academy Awards Parties

This year, for the first time in a while, we are hosting an Academy Awards party. Our Academy Awards party began, as so much about homekeeping does, as the result of finding ourselves in a home: in this case, a first home's evocation of the desire to provide hospitality. Among clusters of friends, home gatherings begin spontaneously -- who can forget all of those nights of spaghetti and garlic bread and eye-squint wine? -- and progress to cyclical engagements.

We banded together because it was cheaper and more fun, and it seemed that each of us gravitated towards their own event. Our friend Lissa organized birthday extravaganzas and Christmas parties that anyone who attended still talks about: climbing the catwalks at Grand Central Station, a punk rock band setting up to play in a tiny living room. Our friends Kat and Douglas host wonderful Kentucky Derby parties, complete with burgoo, juleps, Derby pie and horse memorabilia. At first under the wing of, and eventually in co-sponsorship with, our great, influential Mama Diva, I took on the mantle of hosting Thanksgiving, a tradition we are still honoring, and honoring the memories of, today.

The first Academy Awards party was hosted by our friend Bridget, who at that time lived in the neighborhood we would ourselves eventually call home. Bridget made sushi (still among the best I've ever eaten) and we drank sake and filled out ballots and hollered out loud when John Travolta didn't win an award for Pulp Fiction. Would that we had thought, as we stood on a then-unfamiliar train trestle for the long ride home, to look at apartments in the neighborhood then!

As we know, life happens, and that hostess moved out of the city. We decided to continue the tradition of the Academy Awards party. The Academy Awards fall at the perfect time for a party. In the northeast it's the beginning of spring, when even the most diehard of yankees is sick of snow and blustery wind and more than ready for flowers and fresh breezes. We decided that for each party, we would choose a film to be the theme for the evening. Everything would proceed from there: the food, the drinks, the decor, even, frequently, the costumes. We printed ballots peppered with original categories for such awards as "Best Plastic Surgery" and bought cheesy prizes for the contest winners: a box of doughnuts, a vulgar statue of a rabbit, a baby doll.

For our first party, the theme was Pink Flamingos. We had a white trash smorgasbord including Frito Pie, Pimiento Cheese and Jello molds. Alma, who was in cooking school at the time, brought bologna-cheese sandwiches on a platter with a presentation of lunch meat rosettes. Jenn made a heap-big banana pudding. One guest brought as his guest someone who had once worked as Divine's personal assistant, who pronounced on behalf of no less an authority than that that the affair was a success.

Highlights from other years included a party where the theme was Picnic. We cleared the living room of furniture and laid down picnic blankets. I cooked picnic food for three days: fried chicken, cole slaw, potato salad, pie. For The Naked Kiss party, we decorated our apartment as if it was the brothel where some of the action of the film occurs. We offered hors d'oeuvres and well drinks, and party hats to echo those worn during a key scene in the film. For our Wizard of Oz party, attendees dressed in character (we had a tin man and umpteen Dorothys), and partook of Kansas State Fair fare including barbeque and layer cake. For our Blue Velvet party, the menu and decor theme were Dinner at the Slow Club. This gave me the chance to indulge my love of sixties swank by offering make it yourself stations of fondue and negimaki (Ann rolled skewers for two hours without complaint), pitchers of Harvey Wallbangers, and a case of "PABST BLUE RIBBON" that Carrie had to cross state lines to find.

This year, to honor the passing of John Hughes, the theme film is Sixteen Candles. It will be poignant as we all came of age during this era, but to honor John we intend to create a memorable, fun evening. We will decorate our apartment for a well-mannered Sweet Sixteen party that becomes the catastrophe of an 80's teen flick house party. There will be a tower of pizzas, a big gooey pink birthday cake, pretzels and cheese puffs and nachos and trashcan punch. I have already printed this year's ballots, in requisite 80's neon, and tonight I will assemble birthday party goody bags of 80's high school memorabilia.

The guests are encouraged to dress in volcanic ensembles from their high school days. I am looking forward to an apartment full of dweebs, freakazoids, nerds, phobics, geeks, richies, brains, athletes, princesses, criminals, basket cases, dreamboats, righteous dudes, gaseous grandfathers, grandmothers fussy or fancy, distracted parents, foreign exchange students, droning teachers (AP track), era-jumping vintage clothing store addicts and duckmen. None of us went to the same high school but we all went during the same era, and we inhabited the same headspace. After all these years together, recognizing ourselves as we were will only enrich who we are. And that, to me, is the true barometer of an Academy Awards party's success: that everyone has fun, and that everyone remembers that everyone is a star.