But really: people dressed in 1940s garb, drinking 40s? It had to be done.
Getting the 40s was easy; we bought every bottle of Old English (about 35 bottles in all) from a nearby liquor store, receiving a ten percent discount for our trouble.
We also bought a few wine coolers, so any willing fool could make himself a "Moe," a poor man's mix drink otherwise known as a "Cash Money" mix.
The costumes were more difficult. However creative the theme sounds, the fact is that there wasn't "typical" forties dress. What with the war and all, most people were wearing clothes from the previous few decades. Or so I'm told. It sounds plausible.
To give the more lazy or stupid Lawrentians a disincentive, we locked the door, only (for a while) letting in people with actual costumes. Jubb appointed himself costume judge for the night.
Here's us. Jonas is a soldier and his wife, joined together bodily either by some mad scientist or, if my catechism is any guide, the sacrament of marriage. I'm "Little Boy," the atom bomb responsible for the worst Monday morning in Hiroshima history. Jubb is a 1940s tennis player, suspiciously excused from the draft.
Several people deserve props for their elaborate costumes; most guests spent about five minutes on theirs. Here are three fine examples of good costume design: Jagger (one Lawrence's most universally beloved sophomores) is the Iron Curtain, Jinx is Cleopatra as seen by Marc Antony in 42 B.C., and Light Spinner (a.k.a. Jubb's girlfriend) is a Jackson Pollock painting.
Here, Jagger explains her costume to The Politician, who came as a bleak vision of 10040 and the horrors to come, while Half-Moon, one of those Trever freshmen, looks on from 1740. Iron? Curtain?
Freshman Matt (size-40), Sockless Pete (the baby boom), and a few other regulars put in some effort, but otherwise I wasn't especially impressed.
Thankfully, our strict costumes-only entry policy kept out quite a bit of rabble, but our lax definition of "an acceptable costume," especially as our bouncer got drunker and drunker, let in a lot of questionable attempts and questionable people.
Just as I'd expected, basically. I decided, even before this party began, that '40s 40s was, philosophically, a Jubb party. Crowds of people, lots of alcohol, a sea of acquaintancehood and anonymity. And so it was.
The general consensus today, even from those who didn't get plastered and throw up, is that our party was a success. But I honestly didn't enjoy myself.
I don't know if that was because I spent most of the night playing photojournalist and not really talking to anyone, or because I'm just tempermentally opposed to such large gatherings (I'm "particular," and I saw almost all the Lawrentians I despise last night).
Probably it's a combination of the two.
The Politician and I ditched the party around 1:00 and met with Miss Bates at Jekyll's. I had drunk almost my entire 40, enough that I didn't feel I needed to spend more money on booze that night.
We exchanged compliments, gossip, and secrets and otherwise sat around enjoying second-hand smoke before returning to the room a half-hour later. The Politician and I rather hastily decided to throw an Elitist party, one more akin to our own temperments, at some point in the future.
Halfway through a discussion, back in the room with Sockless Pete, of our favorite movies, Jubb wandered drunkenly wandered into the room and passed out on Fort Makeout, temporarily disrupting conversation.
I think I prefer not ending up like that at the end of the night, and I am rather fond of my memories, even mediocre ones (which is partially why I'm blogging about the party at all), so I'd rather keep them.
Jubb recalls "very little" and Jonas recalls "almost everything."
I've passed out on our couch before too, but Jubb's drinking/partying style, what the Germans would call eskalieren, is a bit much for me, just as it was apparently too much for him.
All in all, though, it wasn't too bad of night, and even if I didn't really like where the party ended up, I had the sense to make sure that I ended up somewhere else. The intellectual deliciousness of the theme more than makes up for any perceived failures in the party itself.
Oh, but we somehow have four leftover 40s. Ugh.
