To Throw the Best Party Ever

Dear Jeepers:I'm having a dinner party tonight and I hope to follow the advice I recently read, which suggested that a hostess should match her dress to her surroundings and even her food. This, the book says, gives an overall impression of harmony and lets the guests know how much careful planning you've done on their behalf. But how does one accomplish this on such short notice?

Hostess with the Mostest

Dear Hostess:
We have read that book too, and once, in slavish adherence to its advice, covered all our furniture in white canvas cloth to match our new white dress. The guests were alarmed, upon entering the apartment, to find themselves in what seemed to be an emergency room, or hazmat lab. It was our worst party ever. Our best party, on the other hand, found us painting the foyer a bright salmon pink hours before guests arrived. We hired a string trio, who arrived in black tie, rented 100 champagne flutes, and stocked up on five cases of wine and champagne. We piled two large platters with Popeye's chicken wings and called it a day. By eight-thirty, our small apartment was filled to the gills with more than 60 guests, who stayed until three in the morning dancing to Louie Prima in our bedroom and giggling and necking in the small kitchen.

If you are serving edible flowers, or glistening heaps of strawberries, please feel free to coordinate your dress accordingly. But, as it's more likely that you plan to serve cooked animal flesh and pureed root vegetables, expend all your efforts instead* in the business of getting guests so happily drunk that they won't remember what you wore, or whether you were even clothed at all.
Yrs,
J

*Ed. note: We have of late been reading Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.