Party Like It’s 1978

Last year as a joke my friends and I decided to have a formal dinner while we were vacationing near the banks of Lake Huron in the decidedly unformal Lexington Heights, MI. My family’s cottage there is on a dirt road. The place is on a septic tank system, so you can only shower every other day. But we fondly remembered the formal dinners from the other decidedly unformal place we’d all met: the interdisciplinary studies program at the ultrahippie Western College at Miami University (an excellent preparation for my later life in Venice Beach, California, I might add). So we dressed up for dinner and then someone had the idea that everybody also had to wear a hat. We had a bag of hats on vacation (doesn’t everyone?) because Sarah, the pro photog friend among us, had this idea to take a bunch of staged, yet candid, shots of us while we were there. All dressed up, with hats on, sitting in the backyard in lawn chairs at the faded picnic table–well, it all seemed rather hilar. We had crawfish etouffee, since Dina and Ben were all hopped up on N’awlins food after having just returned from their place there. (Yes, I now have friends who own multiple properties. I’m still working on my first. I digress.) I can pretty much say with confidence that that is the first time crawfish etouffee has ever been consumed in Lexington Heights. A grand time had by all–in fact, we all agreed, it was the FUNNEST YEAR AT THE COTTAGE EVER.

So we decided to do it again this year. Last year, Dina put on this brown terrycloth romper from Victoria’s Secret for Dance Party USA (don’t ask me why we call it that other than that it’s supremely nerdy on purpose). Her daughters were absolutely MORTIFIED over her outfit and pretty much begged her to take it off. Of course, this goaded her on further and utterly cracked the rest of us up. I got a hot pink one for New Year’s and the legend of the romper lived on. So for this year’s formal dinner, I suggested 1978 to fit in with the romper aesthetic. Little did I realize how much everyone would embrace it! We had a 1978-esque mostly fondue dinner–cheese fondue with bread and mushrooms and cornichons to start, pasta primavera for our main and chocolate fondue with bananas and strawberries for dessert. Yay, retro food!The highest hilarity, though, came with the costumes, which were in even fuller full effect during this year’s Dance Party USA, featuring hits from yesterday on Ben’s hot hot hot 1978 dance mix. Could this year’s festivities have topped even last year’s? I daresay so.

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