Celebrate Good Times

From the age of 10, Markus Taylor has known that he really likes to throw house parties. And his house parties are always of a very high quality. Stranger writer Jeff Kirby covered a party at Taylor’s house for our Party Crasher column, and he came away impressed:

Mark promises the night will get naughty in the wee hours; he promises naked people. After the dance floor has been properly hit and the bar has been merely dented, clothes start coming off. Mark was not exaggerating—he throws a mean party. If following his advice leads to a liquored-up dance party and a hot tub full of naked people, you would be foolish not to take heed.

Now Taylor has decided to share his party-­throwing wisdom with the masses. The resulting book, titled The Best Party Ever, explains in painstaking detail how to throw a successful party, from beginning to end.

Perhaps you do not yet understand how much Taylor likes to throw parties. Interspersed with all the helpful advice are autobiographical fragments of Taylor’s party-­planning life, from that first 10th-birthday sleepover that he planned all by himself to a wake for his grandmother that became a crazy hedonistic nudist bash at a retirement community. The back cover of Best Party Ever is festooned with blurbs from people who love attending his parties, from his mom and dad (“His parties are always fun and stress free”) to his brother (“Everybody has one talent; my brother’s is throwing parties. He was born to entertain”) to people who have attended his parties since high school (“He always finds a way to top the last one”) to more recent devotees (“Markus doesn’t just throw a party, he throws an event. I’ve never been to better parties than his”).

It’s important to emphasize Taylor’s love of throwing a good party so that you can understand why he is qualified to write a book about throwing a good party. Taylor thinks of everything; the book is loaded with good advice. Any good book on entertaining could tell you to send your first invitations at least a month in advance, as Taylor’s does, but only Best Party Ever advises you, for example, to make a plate of food for yourself beforehand and tuck it away in the fridge for that inevitable moment when, after you’ve spent an hour or two fulfilling your hostly duties, your stomach starts begging for food to offset the alcohol and your sandwich platters have already been decimated by your guests. That is the kind of wisdom that only comes from experience.

Best Party Ever is chockablock with lists to make your party planning easy. There are lists to help you set up a minimum bar or a fully stocked (three types of rum) bar, lists to help you do grocery shopping for your party, methods of deep-cleaning before the party, perfect iTunes playlists for your stereo (and the helpful advice to lock your laptop when you start the mix; drunken partyers always try to take over DJing, and that is unacceptable). The last half of the book provides a monthlong list covering every tiny detail of party planning, from who you should BCC in invitation e-mails and why you shouldn’t use services like Evite for your invitations to how long before the party you should take a nap so you can be fully refreshed all night long to what to put in the Bloody Marys you’ll make for your stay-over guests the next morning.

You’ll also learn what it takes to be a good host. A good host, Taylor says, is laid-back; he doesn’t dominate any conversation (“When you are dominating a conversation, that is a lecture and lectures are boring”). He doesn’t get upset if partyers break a glass or two (Taylor doesn’t serve drinks in plastic cups; he says glasses prove that a host trusts his guests), and he doesn’t do any cleaning on the night of the party.

The definition of a good advice book is this: If I follow the advice in this book, will I be better off than if I had never read it? For Best Party Ever, the answer is yes. If you follow the advice in this book, you can be pretty much assured that you’ll throw a mind-­blowingly good party. That’s all you need to know.