Dan Potacke's Party Planning Tips

Guest Blog by: Dan Potacke

Hi, I’m Dan Potacke. You might remember me as Dan Potacke of Dan Potacke Travel. Or perhaps you know me as Dan Potacke of Dan Potacke-bay. Or maybe you’ve never heard of me until right now, which is great, it’s always nice to make new friends. Hi, new blog buddy.

But today I’m here as Dan Potacke, guest blogger, and I’m going to give you some tips to throw a holiday party. Now, I was going to put this up a couple weeks ago, back before most people had their X-Mas shindigs, but I wasn’t able to get on the internet on account of my 56k being on the fritz. Anywho, this guide should still be helpful for those who are still going to throw a holiday party in the next two days and the rest of you can just save this in your bookmarks until next December. There this blog entry will sit, safe and dependable, just like me.

Anywho, here are some helpful tips so you can have a successful holiday party, Dan Potacke-style!

1. Invite People
He he, of course, silly, you need to invite people to share your party with. Otherwise you’ll just end up setting at home by yourself with an empty table with placemats set out for 12. And trust me, that gets less fun after you do that every day for a few months.

I’d suggest inviting at least 4 to 5 times as many people than you can hold in your apartment, even if they all say they are coming, you should still invite more. The reason you should invite so many is that some people are sure to get sick as December is the heart of sniffles season. Last year, a lot of my guests had to drop out on the night of the party due to a variety of illnesses: cold, flu, even smallpox! I thought that disease had been eradicated so I was surprised it didn’t make the news when my brother, his wife and 4 children all came down with smallpox in the same afternoon. But what can you expect from the mainstream media?

2. Plan a menu
Yum yum yum! This is one of the funnest and most stressful parts of throwing the party, getting the grub. You don’t want to get anything too complicated, like the one year my ex-wife planned a really elaborate menu and I spent the entire party in the kitchen and never even saw my guests. Though Tom, my former employee from the short-lived Dan Potacke Dry Cleaning, said that the year where I was away the whole time was the best holiday party I ever had, he must have really appreciated the extra work I put into the food.

You also need to plan for any kind of guest, as you could have someone from any culture or walk of life thanks to the great melting pot that is America. Don’t get caught off-guard and plan something for any vegetarian guests. One time when my cousin brought her boyfriend over who was something called a vegan and I tried to wrap a leaf of romaine lettuce around a hot dog, that didn’t turn out so well. But I did get compliments for my nice plating.

3. Have a leisure activity
After the meal, you don’t want people getting up and leaving. That’s why you need a fun activity to keep everyone happy. Some people love to gather around the piano and sing. Though, for me this has a few drawbacks because I’m still getting over my divorce. I tear up when I hear any song from our wedding, or any song from our honeymoon to beautiful Peoria, Illinois, or any song sung by a female singer as it reminds me of my ex-wife’s voice. So I usually don’t go for the piano.

Instead, I bust out the old game of Life. At my parties, I used to say, “I don’t know why they call them ‘bored’ games, they are always fun for me. I think they should call them ‘excitement’ games.” At least until the time when one of my guests told me that they are called board games because they are played on a game board but I think my statement is still valid… and funny to boot!

4. Cocktail hour
At this point, your guests might be getting a little wiped out from the fun of the ‘excitement’ games so you need something to perk them up, so I serve up some cocktails. I usually serve up non-alcoholic drinks, you can serve up some ‘spirits’ if you want but I’d advise against it if you are still married. If your wife is anything like mine, she will get a little loopy and start berating you for all of your faults. As your family and friends sit there, she will go into incredible detail about your inadequacies in bed, you know, the usual drunk talk.

If you still have wives, you should try to prevent this from happening.

God, I still miss her so.

5. Clean up
Finally, once the guests leave, it’s time to clean up. I don’t have many tips for this one. One of my relatives keeps on stealing all of my forks and spoons which makes clean-up a breeze for me!

But once clean up is done, sit back and reflect on another successful holiday party. Those recollections will be invaluable if you are like me and spend Christmas alone. But you are never alone if you can hang out with your friends… in your memories!


Happy Holidays,
Dan Potacke

Helping people out on WikiAnswers

In the spirit of the holiday season, my good friend Jon and I wanted to show goodwill towards those who are less fortunate. But instead of ringing some bell like suckers, we decided to help out our fellow man by answering questions on WikiAnswers. WikiAnswers, in case you haven't stumbled upon it, is a wiki where people can ask any question and have the collective wisdom of the online community provide them with an answer. That's right, when you are too lazy to read through an entire Wikipedia article in order to solve your middle school homework, ask the internet to do it for you.

It started off pretty innocent.

It got worse.

Mr. Smith wouldn't get elected today without support from the religious right.

Oh Jon.

I think they could have figured this one out themselves.
Happy Hanukkah, everyone!

This is why I miss having Jon around.

My feelings on carp are well known.

Good grammar.

*Insert funny caption 10*

I hope this display of holiday giving has inspired you. Hopefully, you can continue where we left off and show your own kindness on WikiAnswers during this most special of seasons.

Have you heard about my novel?

Guest Blog by: That Guy You Know Who Always Talks About His Novel

Hi!

How have you been?

Happy holidays, of course.

As for me, I’ve been working the 9-5 but it’s been more like the 8-7 lately. Am I right? Of course, it just pays the bills so I can keep up on my writing. Yeah, I don’t know if anyone has told you, have you run into Sally yet, but I’ve been writing a novel. I showed Sally a little of what I’ve been working on, she didn’t really ‘get’ it, but you know Sally.

So I’ve been working on the novel, more like the novel’s been working on me. Am I right? By that, I mean that writing has made me a bit more introspective, that I’ve had to reevaluate myself in order to be able to evaluate characters. It’s not like the novel is literally working on me, some anthropomorphized book rebuilding me from the bottom up. Though that would be a good literary device. Maybe I can use that in the dream sequence in chapter 5, that would really help my protagonist deal with his ennui, you see, he’s a writer too.

The novel’s been coming along, chapter 3 is just about finished, at least I hope so! You know artists like myself, we always want to put on one more brush stroke. In chapter 3, I was really struggling to find a proper metaphor to match my protagonist’s dissatisfaction with his day job. I mean, I could have just played it literally and had him say, “I don’t like my job,” but I don’t do literally, I do literature-ally. If I just went literal, my novel wouldn’t be much better than a mere screenplay, like the people in my writer's circle are working on! We meet every Thursday at Barriques, usually their critiques are terrible but it's nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

But getting back to my novel, I found my perfect metaphor when I decided to have my protagonist look into a fish tank. See, he looks into the eye of one of the fish and, for a brief moment, they identify with each other. They are both trapped but should be free, one in a glass tank filled with water, the other in a glass tank filled with cubicles. I even wrote that in the margins so publishers will understand, you know how dumb suits are.

So what are your plans for the holidays? Going to visit the family?

Ooh, sorry to hear about your sister. I know what you are going through, I’m writing about how one of my secondary characters has to deal with her mother going to Alzheimer’s. No, I know that it’s a different terminal illness than what your family is dealing with but I just wanted to tell you, I’m there for you. And the topic of terminal illness just made me think of the old novel.

Speaking of the novel, I hope to spend my vacation week hammering down on chapter 1. It’s my first impression to the reader and I only get one shot at it! Originally, I was going to open with a flashback to ’96 when my protagonist briefly meets his romantic interest at a college kegger but he’s too shy to make a move, then we’d come to the present where they would meet again for the first time in 12 years. But my writer’s circle felt that I was a bit cliched so instead I’m going to flashback even further and have them run into each other on the subway at the age of 8, when my protagonist’s family is on a vacation to New York City. The hustle and bustle of Gotham through the eyes of a young Midwestern boy should give me some strong prose.

But I’m so glad I ran into you. Most of the conversations I have during the day are just with my co-workers. All they can talk about is their babies. God, you can’t believe how annoying it is to deal with people who keep bringing up the same inane topic, shoehorning it into every conversation so they can talk about their little creation. Though, it does make for a humorous interlude in chapter 4, when my protagonist is trapped on an elevator with his boss and he has to hear his boss talk about his kids.

Satan Testifies Before Congress, Seeks Emergency Bailout For Hell

WASHINGTON – Satan, the Prince of Darkness and CEO of Hell, came before the Senate today to again ask for a 43 billion-dollar bridge loan for his struggling underworld domain. For his second attempt to get a bailout for Hell, Satan arrived on Capitol Hill in a humble Prius after his previous mode of transport, bursting forth in a cloud of sulfur from the belly of a stillborn pig, was criticized as being too flashy.

Satan immediately spoke with an uncharacteristically dire tone, “Without sufficient liquid capital to keep the Inferno running, all Hell operations may be forced to shut down by the beginning of 2009.”

The Prince of Darkness blames a variety of factors for Hell’s current cash crunch. The deceiver blamed the economic recession for turning people away from decadence and greed, two of Hell’s financial pillars. Satan also blamed the staggering legacy costs of eternally tormenting the billions of souls that make up Hell’s ever increasing population, stating that it costs millions “just to bulk buy all of the maggots needed to feed on the sinners’ flesh.” Satan himself admitted that he did not think about the ongoing costs of torturing all of these souls when he signed the contracts to buy millons of baby boomers' souls during the 1980’s.

Several Senators quickly spoke up for the troubled netherworld, saying that as one of the big 3 afterlives, along with Limbo and privately owned Heaven, Hell was “too big to fail.” Other Senators brought up the hundreds of thousands of jobs in Hell-related industries that would be threatened by the Hell’s closure.

“If the Dark Lord’s temptations to gamble, drink, and commit adultery go away,” said Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada), “The job losses to my constituents in Las Vegas and Reno will be staggering.”

Other Senators were quick to pounce on the devil, saying that Hell’s crisis was it’s own fault and that it was undeserving of a federal bailout. Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Florida) brought up Satan’s well-known reputation as “a man of wealth and taste," as Martinez blamed Satan’s extravagant excesses for Hell’s financial troubles. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) then listed off a number of Satan’s business failures including his loss of a 3.7 million-dollar gold fiddle in a fiddling contest that turned into a PR-damaging fiasco.

“It says here that the boy you challenged was carrying a fiddle at the time, shouldn’t you have figured out that he probably practiced fiddling and might be a challenge?” asked Boxer, “He was from the great state of Georgia, why didn’t you challenge him to something he was going to suck at, like reading?”

Boxer went on to add, “What does Hell get out of owning any of these souls anyway?”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) shows several examples of Hell's multi-million dollar campaigns to promote evil that she critiques as, "wasteful and needless spending."

Satan meanwhile tried to point out bright spots in Hell’s investment portfolio, such as Hell’s rights to 15 percent of the syndication revenue of popular television sitcom Two and a Half Men. The CEO uncomfortably shifted on his cloven hooves as he proposed drastic steps he was willing to take to keep his dark domain afloat with the help of a Federal loan. Satan presented plans to sell off one of the outer-levels for Hell for condo development and pending sponsorship deals on the seven deadly sins such as “Wrath: Powered By Google” or “KFC’s Gluttony.”

The Prince of Darkness began to win over a few skeptical Democratic leaders in the Senate as he argued that the continued existence of Hell as vital for getting American consumers to make eco-friendly choices.

“Have you seen how proud people are when they carry around their reusable green grocery tote bags? Let us not forget that Pride is one of the seven deadly sins,” said Satan, “Hell will play a crucial role in restructuring the American economy for green-collar jobs.”

Even with his environmental plea, the bailout for Hades still looked like it was set to fail until Satan reminded Evangelical Senators that without Hell there would be no Anti-Christ, a prerequisite for the End Times.

“As you can see here, in our long-term financial forecast, I will impregnate an unclean jackal and my brood, the anti-Christ, shall be born. It shall bring about the End of Days,” said Lucifer. Satan went on to apologize for forgetting to mention that earlier. He said he was used to his previous Congressional testimonies, where former-Senator Bill Frist would bring up the need for the coming Apocalypse before Satan even had a chance to get to it.

With Democrats convinced that Satan had a feasible green business plan and Republicans eager to bring about the glorious return of Jesus Christ, the bailout of Hell overwhelmingly passed the Senate.

“It is now clear that the taxpayers need to help out Satan,” said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), “After all, it’s not like he is as bad as Citigroup.”

The cards show me you've got a bright future and by cards, I mean greeting cards!

Guest Blog by: Scott DeLillo

Alright, I know things have been tough recently in America but let’s get the energy back up.

I know the economy is terrible…
banks and the big 3 auto collapsin’…
your 401k is so far into the crapper it’s cloging the drain…
but I’ve got the solution for your problems… say it with me…

Greeting Cards!


That’s right, I’m Scott DeLillo and 3 years ago, I was just like you. I was living on the streets, getting by on nothing but ramen noodles and a little hope. But that's when I found my calling and became a freelance greeting card writer. Now I’m renting a house that my landlord tells me is valued at 120 thousand dollars. That’s thousand with a t. And now I’m going help some of you get a slice of the delicious pie that’s writing greeting cards. Like you. And you, sir. Yes, ma'am, you too. Not you. But you.

For thousands of years, greeting cards have served an important purpose for every holiday and occasion that we kinda care about. Cards express the feelings we don’t feel enough to express ourselves but are willing to pay to have someone else express them for us. And that someone else is you.

Now, starting off the biz, you are going to be a freelance writer, if you want a staff writing gig at one of the big card companies you better be prepared to do a lot of sexual favors. I know a guy who orally pleasured the entire board of directors at American Greetings and all he got was Flag Day cards, that’s the Detroit Lions of greeting card accounts. You don’t want to know what you’ve got to do to make it into the ornament racket.

I won’t lie, this ain’t an easy business. In the last 8 years, there’s been in a bit of a downturn in the G.C.B. (Greeting Card Business, that’s industry speak) as young people have moved to sending out their greetings over the Facebook.. Are you happy when somebody writess you a happy birthday message on your Facebook wall that cost them nothing at all to send? Well, you shouldn’t be. In the G.C.B. we have a saying, “If they aren’t willing to spend, they aren’t really your friend.”

Let me throw some stats at ya. Since Facebook came to the UW in 2004, armed robberies in the downtown Madison area have gone up 7%. Coincidence? Of course not.

But thanks to the now-officialp recession, greeting cards are poised to make the biggest comeback since Jesus Christ (fyi, inspirational cards are huge this year. Throw in a Bible Verse and you are moving mondo card stock. I call it, Paul amongst the Cashrithians).

Cha-ching!

But because of the economy, the average person can’t afford to go home so they are sending cards instead. Sure, you’d like to spend some quality time with dear old Dad but it’s just as good to mail him a card that says, “Dads are like a large pizza. They are the big cheese.”. In fact, it’s even better because that great pizza-dad copy(mine) is better than anything Sally Q. Envelope Licker is going to say around the table and she won’t have to deal with the awkward situation when her brother gets too drunk off of the egg nog and has a PTSD episode from his time in Iraq. WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO OUR BOYS?

In fact, this Christmas, I’m still sending my Grandma a present along with her card. But that present, just a big empty box with another card inside. That’s right, two cards, that’s double the commission.

Nobody buys this artsy crap anymore.

Now what kind of cards should you write, well, pretty much any kind imaginable: weddings, divorces, got a job, got laid off, cards that look like they are going to be erotic but then you open them up and it’s really a picture of a really fat women, and retirements. But what you have to remember is that most cards are bought by women. It makes sense, cards are emotional and they are the ones who feel emotions. So for us guys, we’ve got to put ourselves into the mind of a woman.

Women love pugs.

Now to write for the female audience your card has to include one of the two following fields that are universal for all women, at least according to the best data the G.C.B. has to offer. First of all, all women love shopping. They live for the accumulation of expensive flashy material goods, they are like rappers with vaginas. When you are backed into a hard card topic like cancer, pet dying or pet dying of cancer, you can always throw in a punch line about buying more shoes. It’s not rocket science here folks. Secondly, all women are constantly trying to lose weight. They are fighting an ever-present battle with their mortal nemesis and secret lover, chocolate. I swear the only reason Eve ate that apple is because the serpent musta coated it in chocolate. Hot crap, that’s a good greeting card. None of you can use that, it’s mine. I see that on an Shoebox card and I will sue your ass.

Alright, so those are some basic tips to get you started. I’ll be seeing you all later… on the greeting card racks!

My Top 10 Worst Video Game-Related X-mas Presents

Video games have been a mainstay on my Christmas lists for most of my life. As a kid, they were on my list because they were something too expensive for me to buy on my own. As a kinda-adult, I put games on my list because I still can't afford them as I normally spend my own money on bare necessities like gas for my car and Milwaukee's Best. So over the years, I've gotten a lot of video-games and accessories as Christmas presents and most of been very awesome. But then there are the other ones. Things bought by well-meaning relatives or things young Alan wanted because he had been suckered in by a slick marketing campaigns. Here are the 10 worst video-game related presents I have ever received.

10. Super Scope (Super Nintendo)
“Whoa! It’s a bazooka, that’s way cooler than a Zapper.” – 10 year old Alan Talaga, idiot.

I really thought this successor to the NES Zapper (The Duck Hunt Gun) was going to be the coolest thing ever because I was 10 and believed that bigger = badass. Upon taking it out of the box, I soon learned that bigger also equaled heavier. The thing was too heavy to use and burned through 6 AA batteries in less than a few hours. Worst of all, it didn’t have any sort of feature that turned the Super Scope off if left idle for X number of minutes. That meant that whenever a family or friend came over to play it, they would leave the behemoth on and, by the morning when I would check on it, another 6 AA batteries would have been eaten up.

AA Batteries view this thing the same way we view Hitler.

9. Back to the Future II and III (NES)

Remember that part of Back to the Future II where Marty has to fight a jumping hamburger? Back to the Future II and III is just one of many bad NES platforming games to be based on movies. In the game, Biff has stolen a bunch of ‘historical artifacts’ and hidden them around 1955, 1985, and 2015 and you have to find all of them to fix the timeline. At least that’s what the game intro said, the gameplay itself consists of just wondering around randomly trying to find these artifacts only to die before you can collect more than 2 or 3 of them. So while it’s just another crappy licensed game that’s way too hard, this one annoyed me more than any other because of two things: 1) I loved the Back to the Future trilogy and bad games based on those sacred movies were offensive to everything kid-me stood for. 2) There is a whole second half of the game based on Back to the Future III which I could never reach because I could never get past the II part.

It irks me that this is STILL hiding somewhere in that game, unreachable to me.

8. Konami Laserscope (NES)

This guy looks bad but I looked even lamer.

Were you worried that you didn’t look enough like an idiot while playing Duck Hunt? I didn’t because someone got me the Konami Laserscope for Christmas. This helmet fit (un)comfortably over my head and fired in the direction my head was pointing whenever I said “Fire” into the microphone. To add in some challenge, the aiming reticule on the side is horribly inaccurate so you just guess where you think the target is! The only fun my friends and I had with this was when we realized the helmet-gun will fire when you say anything into the microphone, not just “Fire.” So we had tons of fun yelling “Booby” and “Poop” in order to kill ducks.

7. Street Fighter II – Street Fighter II Turbo – Super Street Fighter II (Super Nintendo)
None of these is a bad game but together they were a huge waste of money. Every year, I convinced family members to buy me the new version of Street Fighter II for 60-70 dollars a pop when the only differences were usually a few new characters. In the end, this one game ended up costing about 200 bucks, X-Mas list money that could have been put to far better use. Sadly, millions fall prey to phenomena every year when they pick up this year’s version of Madden.

6. Action Max VHS Video Game
This “system” played VHS cassettes while you shot targets on the screen. For the first five minutes, it was awesome, I was actually interacting with a real movie. But then I realized that nothing changed in the game, you couldn’t actually win or lose. All you could do is shoot at the screen and the gun would count how many targets you hit. The only VHS we had for it was a horrible ghost shooter called The Rescue of Pops Ghostly and I doubt I played through it more than twice.


But I will admit, Pops Ghostly is a sweet name as far as ghost names go. Should I die and end up haunting some place, I’m seriously considering using Pops Ghostly as my supernatural pseudonym.

5. Wayne’s World (Super Nintendo)

So terrible.
I always excited when I would receive a wrapped box of a certain size. I had figured out the dimensions of Super Nintendo boxes and could immediately tell when someone had gotten me a SNES game. But as I opened one present, my hope turned to horror. My aunt had given me Wayne’s World. The Game. She knew I liked Wayne’s World the movie and that I had a Super Nintendo so she thought this was a perfect fit. But I had read the review in Nintendo Power (Nintendo’s own magazine that told you to buy more Nintendo games) and they said it was horrible. Nintendo’s own propaganda rag said you shouldn’t buy this thing, that’s like Soviet-era Pravda endorsing the free-market. I knew this game was going to be bad. But I wanted to be nice and even played the game in front of her to make her happy. But, God, did that game suck.

4. Acclaim Wireless NES Controller

This one seemed like a no-brainer. Back when my mom owned the fabulous Falls Motel, we had a massive living room where the couches were set back from the TV several feet further than the miserly NES controller cord would allow. I was tired of sitting on the carpet and it seemed that a wireless controller would finally allow me to intermingle my love of Zelda and cushioned seating. Unfortunately, as opposed to today’s now-standard wireless controllers that work on a combination of bluetooth and magic, in the 80’s, wireless controllers worked on a combination of TV remote-style infrared beams and hatred for all that is good in the world.

Upon testing out the controller, I quickly figured out that the controller only responded to my button pressing about half the time and, even when it did respond, that there was such a horrible lag that I ended up getting killed by the first Goomba in Mario 1-1. Within 15 minutes, the thing was boxed up and I convinced my mom to take me to Wal-Mart where I tried to return it. On that day, little Alan learned a dark lesson about the futility of retail returns on open items. So thanks, Acclaim Wireless NES Controller for killing a little bit of my soul!

3. South Park (Nintendo 64)

Never forget.

I swore I’d never forget… But just like hippies who protested Vietnam turned into the Baby Boomers who supported the build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I put another crappy licensed game on my Christmas list. Somehow I felt that a first-person shooter based on South Park could actually be good due to voiceover work by Trey Parker and Matt Stone but, oh, was I was so wrong. While it’s not as horrible as other licensed games on this list, it has a higher ranking because I was older at this point and I should have known better. But I had to live with my mistakes, just like Baby Boomers have to live with the fact that the war helped build up an economy-crushing deficit that decimated their 401k retirement accounts, South Park for the N64 decimated any good times I would have for the rest of Christmas vacation.

2. Tricks of the DOOM Gurus
By the early-to-mid 90’s, I thought I was an elite little hacker, with my sweet hacks of Duke Nukem 3D that made his foot attack super powerful (i.e. I changed one number in the files that made of the game, it’s about on the same technical level as changing a value in an Excel Spreadsheet). After those awesome mods, I was ready to move up to the next level with the book Tricks of the DOOM Gurus. This book was going to give me the tools to make my own DOOM levels and they were going to be awesome. In actually, level creation was much harder than the back cover of the book made it look and I struggled to make levels consisting of anything more than square rooms before giving up and going back to playing games as opposed to trying to make them. This one makes it so high on the list because it's the first time I had a Christmas Present make me feel like an idiot. Though I think my levels were still better than those in the South Park game.

1. U-Force (NES)

What the Hell do I do with This?

What if you could play Mike Tyson’s Punch Out by actually punching at the boxers on the screen? Long before Wii Boxing, this controller used infrared beams to judge where your hands were. Moving your hand would cross one of the beams and make your character punch on the screen. Or it made your character dodge. Or it made your character stand there and do absolutely nothing. The actions of this controller were so random and annoying it makes Dane Cook jealous.

Still, I look back in fondness on the U-Force. My dad had spent a lot of money on the U-Force and valiantly worked for days trying to get it to work. After one last attempt of getting it to work with Mario 2, he started making jokes about how horrible it was and I joined him, as he and the U-Force started off my life-long love of making fun of things that annoy me. When I think about my dad during Christmas-time, I remember the joy we had in hating the U-Force. My worst present ever ended up giving me some of my most treasured memories.

Thanks for the memories, you terrible piece of technology.