Process

An Insight into Our Process and Progress

To the casual observer, McCarty Party appears to be a Hollywood-style photo opportunity for erstwhile party animals located in the general vicinity of Bellbrook. My, how things have changed.

But hey, don’t blame us. All we did was buy lots of beer once a summer. People just kept showing up. And look what it led to:

• first we added music

• then we added food and T-shirts

• then events

• then prizes

• then…

But you get the picture. The next thing we knew, word began to spread about this “totally awesome” (your term… we don’t talk like that) party in the cornfields of the mid-west every year. Before we realized what we were doing (or sobered up long enough to think about it), we were building a stage and converting a storage shed into a party shack so that (for a single weekend each year) all our friends could drink to excess. Ultimately, Dale had to sell his soul to the IRS to build a party house and an authentic reproduction of an Irish pub.

And now certain things are expected of us, which absolutely ruins any chance we have for a laid back month of June. We must, for example, come up with yet another alcoholically hilarious invitation (not to mention a party theme and logo) each year. Of course, we are professionals (well, at least our bosses think we are). So we have managed to come up with some tried and true methods for feeding your insatiable hunger for witty repartee. For example…

The Traditional Method for Creating an Invitation for McCarty Party

Step 1 Have a beer. Hell, have two.

Step 2 Generate a list of potential party themes. Originality counts at this point of the process.

Step 3 Look over the list of ideas generated in Step 2. Upon realizing that they all suck, proceed to Step 4.

Step 4 Have another beer.

Step 5 After admitting that no original ideas for a theme are forthcoming; look around and see if there is a national, international, or cosmic event which could be used as a theme by passing it off as a witty play on current events. As originality no longer counts, it is okay to turn on the TV at this point.

Step 6 As long as we ’re watching TV anyway, we might as well have another beer.

Step 7 If a theme still hasn’t been conceived, pull out old McCarty Party invitations and rip-off material from a previous year (cleverly disguising it as a new theme by using words and phrases that are currently in vogue).

Step 8 Have a beer to celebrate the annual “Choosing of the Theme” festivities.

Step 9 Promise to get it written up and distributed “next weekend for sure.”

Naturally, some things have changed over the years. We’ve matured (well, as far as you know), and the process of putting together a party has grown in sophistication. In other words, we now have access to electronic devices we never dreamed of a couple decades ago. And being essentially nothing more than technologically-adept versions of the lads we once were, we play with those electronic toys a little more each year.

Of course, some people might say that only means we are able to do a better job of ripping off the creative fruits of others. Well that hurts (maybe not as much as crushing a can of Fosters’ lager against your forehead… but it hurts). So let’s take a brief look at what we’ve been able to accomplish with the arsenal of high-tech party wizardry now at our disposal. We’ll concentrate on the following three areas of party production: beer, invitations, and T-shirts.