Whose Idea Was This?

Wow, I just remembered this. A long time ago, I don't even think we were married yet, Cranky and I threw a Bad Taste party.

We were into theme parties. There was that party at our new house, built in 1963, and everybody dressed the part and brought atrocious mid-century snacks. Gucci shirts. Swedish meatballs, cheese ball, flaming pupu head. Like that. We also dreamed up a Kennedys party, where you had to dress as your favorite K. This was during the rape trial of William Kennedy Smith, nephew of Teddy, and I thought it would be funny to show up as his accuser, with the huge blue dot TV stations were placing over her face, to protect her privacy. Might have been a little hard walking around. Anyway, we haven't yet had that party (and careful, you're on the guest list).

Well, the Bad Taste party. We spared our guests from having to bring any food, but we ordered them to dress appropriately. Bad. One pal came in a prom dress, with her wrists draped in gross charm bracelets. Cranky managed to find himself a Ban-Lon shirt, very Kramer (here, have a look). And I remember wearing hot pants and white go-go boots. (Yes, there was a shirt!)

A few of our friends were demonstrably worried about the food we'd be serving. One of them, an anorectic I think, decided not to eat anything. Until we brought it out.

We had faked everything with good food that looked bad. There was shaving cheese (you know, the stuff in a squirt can), but we had made our own blend with decent cheese, and dribbled it out of one of those plastic, spouted ketchup bottles. We served wagon wheel pasta (who on earth eats that, and is it even available anymore?) topped with a lovingly concocted spaghetti sauce.

For drinks, well, maybe you weren't so lucky. There was Lancers wine and J. R. Ewing's Private Stock beer. No kidding, that stuff really existed!

Things went south, though. We felt an obligation to present some really awful bad-taste food. Canned fruit cocktail mixed with miniature marshmallows.

Even I couldn't eat that pile of hooey.