crappest party you've ever attended

Gabba Flamenco Crossover

High Sierra Skullfuck
Probably not the absolute crappiest, but the most memorably crap.

I went to an experimental film party in a house in Hackney about 8 years ago. I'd been invited by my friend Varky who was the only person there that I knew. He'd been briefed on what to expect but had neglected to pass this on to me, so I thought I was going to a normal house party.

When I arrived, there were about 15 people in a darkened room watching each other's homemade films, and introducing them by saying stuff like "This is kind of a road movie, I suppose. About Neasdon." The films pretty much conformed to all the stereotypes of self-consciously arty film making. The host had also distributed a variety of electronic and acoustic instruments among the guests, who were expected to improvise an impromptu soundtrack (ie. make a total racket). Normally I'd be well up for this, but I was being conducted with a serious, somewhat po-faced attitude that took most of the fun out of it.

About half an hour after I arrived the film projector broke down, taking with it the whole purpose of the party, which was to show films. The guests weren't natural conversationalists, and were unprepared for the social demands suddenly placed upon them. The evening was slowly grinding to a halt, which wasn't good for me as I'd come all the way from Croydon.

Varky and I had been drinking liberally from the rum I'd brought with me, and by this point our drunkenness was starting to become apparent against the general backdrop of sobriety. Swinging into action, we commandeered the broken projector (which still functioned as a backlight) and organised an impromptu puppet show using 2D shapes we'd torn out of cereal packets taken from the host's kitchen. The details are hazy, but the show was a vampire story called The Thirst, and was presented in a shlockly, hammer horror fashion, probably with deliberately ironic intent vis-a-vis the party's high-cultural atmosphere. I vividly remember the host's demeanor as we rampaged round his flat preparing this spectacle - somewhere between peevishness at the liberties we were taking with his possessions, apprehension at the embarrassment we might inflict on him, resignation that this might be the only way to save the party from a total washout, and I think some small amount genuine curiousity at what was about to unfold.

I'm biased of course, but in my opinion the show was a roaring success. I narrated, Varky excelled in the role of puppetmaster, and the audience raised thier game to produce a soundtrack of genuine atonal menace. To be fair, everyone lightened up a bit after that and I had some interesting conversations. During the interminable nightbus journey home, though (it took about 3 hours if I recall) Varky and I allowed creative tension to get the better of us and had a massive drunken argument about nothing, which resulted in us not speaking for months. I choose my parties more carefully now, and I haven't had to deploy the spontaneous vampire puppet show icebreaker since.
 

STN

sou'wester
These two guys I used to live with had a houseparty once (while I lived with them) which absolutely no people turned up to, in fact you could argue that it was attended by -1 people, because I didn't bother to turn up either.
 

Lichen

Well-known member
Aged 16, me and a mate heard about a wild all-girl party on the edge of town. we cooked up a clever way of finding out the address from a brother of one of the girls.

We rocked up at 10 or so, unswerved by the fact that the house we were approaching was very quiet; only one light on.

Still, we'd made all the effort so we leant on the door bell. A girl (14/15?) answered in her dressing gown. We announced that we were friends of "marcia" (real name!) and were ushered through to the sitting room where 3 other similarly clad girls were eating sweets and watching a shit video.

We made our excuses and so ended our Animal House style escapade.:mad:
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I've been to a few.

The worst I think was when a bunch of us went to a colleague's birthday party in Southend. It turned out to be just us lot from his work and his family (including his Mum and Dad) and neighbours.

I.e. he had no mates.

The house was unnaturally tidy and we congregated in the kitchen, made polite conversation and left after we drank what we'd brought with us.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
A mate of mine from school went to Manchester Poly so I headed up there to see him.

I was accompanied by his under-age girlfriend who regaled me with stories of her violent dad on the way to the train station. Apparently he had previously chased her and another boyfriend onto a train in a rage. Nice.

She was very boring and it was a long way to Manchester.

My mate and his self-consciously "punk" housemates decided to have a party and did this by hanging a spraypainted sheet out of a first floor window to announce it. I was assured that this would guarantee a wild party.

Only about 3 people turned up. We sat around in the living room in awkward silence when the booze ran out. Someone decided to take it further by finding things to inhale and asked if anyone had a car so he could borrow some petrol to sniff.

If I remember rightly my mate then disappeared with his jailbait, thus dwindling the numbers further. I got the train back on my own the next day, but was seated with a load of people who had been up to an anti-clause 28 march in Manchester.

They were very cool, and things were looking up until I got home to find that my Mum had been on the receiving end of several phone calls from my mate's girlfriend's Dad - apparently she had helpfully given him our number.
 

martin

----
Me and a couple of friends wasted a whole NYE trawling around various flats and houses in SE and SW London, where apparently a load of banging parties were going on. Every single one contained the hosts, looking really relieved to see us, and a couple of people itching to get away. Then someone else would turn up and we'd make some bullshit up about having to go, and move along to the next flat - repeat. It just went on like that until 5.30am - a total blow-out.

I once went to some art student's bash because I thought it was going to be Babylon on stilts, but it was just a load of bored 20-somethings sitting around listening to trip hop and passing the odd spliff, the only interesting thing was some Indian bloke who'd turned up with a pitta bread on his head and was calling himself 'Captain Cunt', but that ended when he self-consciously took it off a few minutes later. Some guy then went into this unfunny rant about marker pens.

Worst of all, ever, was some party I went to full of Christians who didn't even have any alcohol. I'm loathe to go into this, but trust me, I think Denis Nilsen had a more swinging time with his corpses. Still, I got to hear an 18-year old girl's assurances that the homeless should be happy because God still loves them and that homosexuals are going to hell, they all had a go at me when I said I was anti-vivisection. The cunt who set me up was down the pub, laughing his head off.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I went to a barbecue with my then girlfriend, who was a management trainee at Tesco. I was on the dole and this was a source of some tension between us.

The party consisted entirely of couples at least one of whom worked for Tesco. Despite this it was strictly segregated along gender lines, with the men in the garden doing the barbecue and the ladies in the house.

The men talked about their cars and favourite b-roads. I wasn't much use at this as I didn't have a car. Eventually someone engaged me in a very dull discussion about being on the dole. He felt that essentially all unemployment benefits should be removed, "because then they'd have to get a job, wouldn't they?".

I suggested that some people might get a job whilst others may resort to violent crime, perhaps even at Tesco. It would be an understatement to say that this was not met with universal acceptance. I then gravitated towards the ladies (thus reinforcing the general view that I was a weirdo). They were all talking about kids and house prices.

It was pretty bad but what made it remarkably horrendous was that the host had recently got a video camera, so the last 45 minutes of the party were spent watching excruciating videos of ourselves being tedious during the afternoon.
 
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martin

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My mum's 60th birthday party was shit, the devious woman told me I could watch the Paraguay vs Nigeria game undisturbed if I came, then she told me to turn it off because nobody was interested. Plus I had to meet up again with 'wee Karen', some daughter of a brickie my dad used to be mates with, who's the same age as me, who somehow morphed from 'wee' into a ginger baby factory. Fucking hell's bells - AND I had to sort out her sodding cake cos my sister had left it in deep freeze.
 

martin

----
I once went to a party where a Polish soldier fell asleep and pee'd the mattress.

I also once went to a party hosted by the Japanese Shipowners' Association in Oslo, I was the only gaijin there and nobody spoke to me. It was three hours of walking around eating sushi and grabbing free drinks and smoking and trying to engage with a bunch of crooks with dandruff who looked at me like I was a piece of shit. Literally, not a word all night. Weirdly enough, when I got back to the UK, the organiser sent me an email saying "Thank you Mr Martin, it was very nice to talk to you"
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
if party=club, then andy weatherall in whitley bay, 1992/3(ish)

arrived. everyone (and i mean everyone) was sitting round the edges of the room taking poppers.

my friend who had driven up from london suddenly disappeared.

he turned up again shortly after, looking ghostly and mumbling about 'having to go now'.
later he managed to tell us that he had been dragged into a back room by the bouncers and had his pants pulled down in the search for drugs.
 

mms

sometimes
apart from this one from the other crappest thread>

On another note, worst birthday party was my girlfriend's friend's husband, a born again christian accountant, who's wife i think sticks with him as she's EXTREMELY materialistic, the sort of person who sends out special cards to let everyone know that she's moving to a bigger house, and he earns a fair bit, despite being very boring. The only conversation i've ever had with him was about boilers, the highlight of the party was his dad wearing a hilarious scotsman outfit with a plastic ass on the back, that was sort of funny at least. It was in a church hall in Kent.

i went to alot in my teens where people's houses just got absolutely smashed up; like,' hello how are you, i've bought your front door to the party' that sort of tightness, and also ones where very drunk girls got treated horribly by unpleasant boys, generally those parties where teens are sick alot, drunk, exploring their sexuality without any real dignity. Being a teenager is a grotty business, full of stinky fingers, spots and selection, muscled hierarchy and chaotic rumours.
 

STN

sou'wester
University is always a source of extremely unmemorable parties as far as I'm concerned.

I find the worst thing about barbecues is that the blokes always gravitate to the barbecue, then have a conversation about how they've gravitated towards the barbecue 'because it's like fire isn't it?' and then have a vague and extremely stupid conversation about hunting/gathering. Having said that, I went to a barbecue several years back in which my mate Paul gravitated very suddenly towards the floor by way of the table on which all the drinks and side things were kept, it gave way in specatcular style leaving Paul rolling about on the floor mooing in inebriate distress, covered in broken crockery, chipboard, coleslaw and warm Boddingtons. This was a 'favourite b roads' kind of affair so his behaviour was unwelcome to say the least. They didn't even cheer him.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
University is always a source of extremely unmemorable parties as far as I'm concerned.

I find the worst thing about barbecues is that the blokes always gravitate to the barbecue, then have a conversation about how they've gravitated towards the barbecue 'because it's like fire isn't it?' and then have a vague and extremely stupid conversation about hunting/gathering.

Barbecues are quite rubbish, generally. House parties where everyone ends up rammed into the corridor and kitchen are great, tho.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Barbeques are great. What's not to like about naked flames and charred meat? :)
You're right about kitchens, though - in any self-respecting house party, the kitchen always ends up being the most happening room.
 

STN

sou'wester
Well everyone pulls the equivalent of buying a fourpack of Carling to stick in the fridge while they get stuck into the host's Castel Cru* or whatever, i.e. pick up some dreadful sausages from the local garage and hope one of the other guests shops at Waitrose.

*that funny lager made with champagne yeast.
 

STN

sou'wester
I'd like to point out that I am pretty even on the party stakes - I have given, and I have taken away (mostly when I was a teenager). These days I turn up late with a case of booze and get a massive cheer (because I have beer, not because I am popular).
 
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