Nevermore again for the first time...

Google the term "geek party" and you get something like eight and a half million results. That’s a lotta geeks partying, and a lot of different kinds of geek parties. Some seem to be gatherings of RPGers or LAN gamers; some are just folks who call themselves geeks getting together. I have several friends who regularly host parties at which everyone plays board games. My pal Bonnie, a consummate hostess, is constitutionally unable to throw a party that does not have some deliciously geeky (usually literary or mythological) theme to it.

This past Saturday, it was a celebration of the anniversary of the death of Edgar Allan Poe. (You thought I just pulled the theme of last week’s Geek/Dork/Nerd out of thin air?). Because, frankly, any excuse for a party, and, what? You’re gonna celebrate Poe’s birth? I don’t think so. In addition to much general drunken bacchanalia, we had a group performance of "The Raven," and I did a dramatic reading of "The Tell-Tale Heart"... though I was not wearing the raven hat at the time. Yes, that’s yours truly, quite late in the evening and after imbibing waaay too much Vampire Merlot.

In December, we do a Saint Lucia’s Day party, during which I, in my guise as the incarnation of Lucia (one of those pagan witch-goddesses who got demoted to sainthood when the Christians moved in), get my hair set on fire. It’s awesome. Come January it’s a Robert Burns Day blowout, featuring, among many other exciting earthy customs, a flaming haggis. (Burning stuff is big with us -- it’s very pagan.) Last year I threw a Leap Day party, for which I invented all the "traditional" festivities and foods and such, many of which had to do with the frog prince who rules the day and how he must be appeased in order to assure your own good luck for the coming four years until he appears again.

Perhaps I need to write a book about this stuff: The Geek’s Guide to Throwing Geeky Parties. But of course, the fun of these parties -- the really geeky aspect of them -- is the inventiveness and the creativity that goes into putting them together. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as much fun, at least for me, if someone told me what to do...