Five Tips For Hosting Your Oscar Party

It’s never easy to host an Oscar party, particularly if you live on the East Coast. Most working folks aren’t amenable to going to a party to watch a show that goes into the wee hours when they have to experience the horrors of Monday a mere nine hours after the telecast has ended. This is why I’m only friends with hobos. They’re much more flexible in their scheduling.

Just because hosting a solid Oscar party is hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Get it right, and you’ll spend an evening drunk with friends. And who can argue with that? There are only a few things you need to do to ensure your party is a somewhat adequate success that won’t have your friends badmouthing you on their way back to their cars. Let’s run them down quickly.

1. Involve Gambling. You must have an Oscar pool ready to go for all your invitees. And that pool MUST include all the horrible, boring categories like Documentary Short. Some people make Oscar pools that involve just the major categories. Huge mistake. Putting the smaller categories in your pool means you have a mild interest when those awards are presented. You’d be surprised how quickly you become emotionally invested in costume designer Monique Prudhomme’s chancing of winning when you have five bucks on the line. GO MONIQUE! WE LOVE YOU! And there’s no reason you can’t involve prop bets as well. Why not bet on who will wear the ugliest dress? Or who will show up to the podium clearly high? Which minor award winner will have clearly been dressed by his mother? It’s all fair game.

2. Stock Up On Various Trader Joe’s Products. Especially the wine. Beer is for Super Bowl parties. The Oscars are for quaffing wine by the gallon and gettin’ all gabby with the galpals. Be sure to have plenty of red on hand. And white. And rose. And blush. And sparkling white wine. You can buy 17 bottles of lovely wine at Trader Joe’s for roughly $4. And get lots of those frozen appetizers, too. The Spanakopita is a delight. And those little tiny mushroom pockets. They’re like very small empanadas. Those are cool too. Just buy them by the truckload and fire up the oven. You’ll be stuffed full of shrimp shumai within mere minutes.

3. Don't Invite Anyone Who is "In The Industry." If they had any real connections to Hollywood, they'd be at the show, not gorging on chips in your living room. Anyone who begins a sentence with, "Well, I've actually worked with ..." must be forcefully ejected from your party. They don't know any more than anyone else, and if they're lucky enough to make a prediction that comes true, your other guests might throw a blanket over them and pummel them senseless.

4. Buy Five Extra Flat Screen TV’s, Have All Five Best Pic Nominees Currently On DVD Playing Around The Ceremony. Yes, this is a pricey thing to do. But think of how much more cinematic it’ll make the ceremony for you. Every year, I watch the Oscars, and all it makes me want to do is watch movies. So you may as well have movies ready to fire up. Plus, if some no-name winner starts prattling on forever, you can mute it and go right over to “The Hurt Locker”. “DROP THE PHONE!!!!!!!” That movie is awesome.

5. Have Many Fluffy Cushions On Hand. For no one is allowed to watch the Oscars without sitting in the mandatory Oscar watching position: On the couch, glass of wine in hand, kinda doing that semi-kneeling thing on the couch that ladies do. That’s the key Oscar-watching pose.

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