Now, That’s Real Entertainment!

My mother always used the word entertaining in that strange way gathering guru Martha Stewart does. Sometimes we would be in a department store, and my mother would hold up a large bowl and say: “This is just perfect for entertaining guests.”

I used to wonder what guests would find so amusing about a bowl. And that concept stayed with me--the idea that you were supposed to entertain guests. I took it literally, in the show biz sense.

I always thought that if I gave a party, it should begin with me sitting in the doorway at my piano in a clown suit singing, “How do ya do, oh how do ya do, Alice and Eddie’s is proud to welcome you. The kids’ rooms are clean. There’s fresh towels in the john. So step right up and let’s tie one on. . . .”

While the guests were still in the doorway, I’d do a little routine: “Hey, Don, you’re lookin’ good. Like your girlfriend. Like the one you had last night, too. Ha ha ha.”

You know, a little stuff like that to make everyone feel at ease.

Perhaps you can tell, I don’t do too much entertaining. It’s something my generation never really got into.

Around the time we were supposed to start entertaining, recreational drug use made its ominous appearance in the culture. Somehow, the idea of hiring a maid to walk around with a silver tray and say, “Joint?” never caught on--east of Hollywood.

Instead, you would have a party and a small group would suddenly disappear into the back yard. Then they would come back, laugh at everything everyone said, take the spoons and eat all the dip out of the dip bowl.

Once, in the late ‘60s, I had an intellectual party with a group of philosophy graduate students to celebrate Plato’s birthday. A woman who had just returned from one of those mysterious outings to the back yard sat down in the middle of the room, threw her toga over her head and started screaming: “This party is an ego trip for weird people.”

That, as they say, was entertainment.

Nobody had parties in the ‘70s. Everyone was too guilty. If you even tried, someone would show up with a Stop the Air War button and start a discussion of the latest body count. You’d stand under a poster of a screaming peasant and eat wheat sprout casserole and try never to smile.

When the Vietnam War finally ended, there was the energy crisis. If people were foolish enough to show up for the party in party dresses, you’d have to provide cardigans rather than be so gauche as to turn on the heat. Other guests walked around like efficiency experts pointing out how you could save on water by not using ice cubes. Once, a man actually came to my house for dinner with material to wrap my water heater--as a house present.

In the ‘80s, things settled down. No one did drugs anymore. No one laughed too loudly or ate too much chocolate cake. Things got civilized.

Maybe a hard-core, frozen-in-the-’60s type would still show up in jeans. But he’d have a neat ponytail and a clean, seafoam-green sport jacket with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows. Instead of “Free Huey,” his lapel button would read “Party Animus.”

By the late ‘80s, these parties had become too predictable. Last year I was at one, standing around the food table eating imported cheese and drinking Fume Blanc. Next to me was a man wearing a “Brie and White Wine Liberal” T-shirt.

By 1990, I finally had the nerve to give a party. Next week, Alice Kahn’s answer to Martha Stewart’s Living: the hot, hot new trend of women’s networking and support parties.

Meanwhile, remember: Always end your parties by going to the piano and singing to departing guests, “Thank you for coming. Hope you liked our stuff. Take the leftover focaccia--enough is enough.”