This past Saturday I had my birthday at my house.  For the past few years, I've been hosting my own birthday party because 1) I'm the only one that knows all of my friends and 2) if I don't, there's no guarantee someone will do it for me :P.

For the past couple of years, the idea of having a "James Bond" themed party had been percolating in the back of my head.  I loved the Bond series when I was growing up (my favorite was "Moonraker" - it was over-the-top hokey, but had the kind of action that kids love :)), and when I'd heard of this idea, I wanted to do it myself.  About a year ago I started collecting the things needed for one - an e-book entitled "James Bond Theme Party Secrets," knick knacks like authentic poker table cloth, etc. The hardest thing to get was a decent stone-grey Nehru jacket - the kind of jacket that Dr. No and Ernst Stavro Blofeld wore in the 60's Bond movies, and which was famously worn by Dr. Evil in the "Austin Powers" series. You'd think that given the popularity of Austin Powers that it'd be easy to find a "Dr. Evil" jacket...but surprisingly, the only ones out there were the cheap ones found in Halloween costume supply stores.  I spent a couple of months searching, and eventually found an eBay storefront for a clothing shop in England that actually still made "real" Nehru jackets - and I picked one up last October.

Now then, the only thing left was having a proper excuse to throw the party. And as my birthday was coming up this year, I figured, why not?

In the past, I conceptually had a hard time with the idea of spending a lot of money on my own birthday party.  After all, isn't the idea that you should be coming out ahead (with presents) rather than behind on your birthday :)?  And in the past, I've also had birthday parties where I didn't know half of the people there (it's one thing when a friend brings one of his/her friends, but when they start inviting entire tables of people you don't know :(?) and the party ends up becoming a random mixer, and you feel badly asking people to pay up their fair share of the restaurant bill.

This year, I figured, what the heck, I'll go all out and splurge - I went out and bought a bunch of appetizers (like shrimp and scallop brioches, yakitori, and mochi :)) and the alcohol to make martinis, including the ingredients for a Vesper martini as seen in "Casino Royale" - interestingly, the actual ingredients no longer exist, but the closest analogy involves Tanqueray gin, 100 proof Stolichnaya vodka, Lillet Blanc and a little bit of quinine to restore some bitterness to the drink.  Admittedly, buying booze at Costco and BevMo was a new experience for me :).  The quinine I ordered online from an herbs store - I figured that I could use the leftover quinine in the future to experiment with making "real" tonic water :); either that, or as a treatment for malaria and leg cramps :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_water
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinine

Part of the fun of a "James Bond" party is that people dress up - not as rare an event on the East Coast, but quite rare (unless it's a formal banquet) on the West Coast.  But to reinforce the "spy" theme, I wanted people to try their hand at "spy" type things - which gave me an excuse to make puzzles for people to solve.  There's a part of me that delights in games and puzzles - not just playing them, but making them as well off the top of my head.  You can see the puzzles I made and picked in a separate Xanga entry.  Did I make them too hard?

Some classic Bond activities (e.g. car chase scenes) couldn't be replicated, but thanks to the great Nyko Perfect Shot attachment for the Wii (and "Ghost Squad" loaded up), we could do a reasonable facsimile of shooting :).

http://www.nyko.com/Nyko/Products/?i=124

And I felt that we needed door prizes for the winners, so I got a bunch of nifty gifts (including edible notepaper, rear-view sunglasses, invisible ink pens, and a bug detector) from the International Spy Museum store and ThinkGeek:

http://www.spymuseumstore.org/
http://www.thinkgeek.com

Admittedly, I have a tendency to over-produce my own parties - i.e., I tend to set up too many things, which end up not getting used.  No thanks to procrastination on my part, I was still setting up the party during the first 90 minutes of the party itself, and the following items I set up got left out:

• Several selections of cheese. I was planning on setting out a wide array of cheeses and crackers for appetizers, but didn't get around to it.  I'll likely serve the cheeses at the next NAAAP volunteer function.
• 4 CD's worth of spy music (basically: all of the James Bond movie theme songs in order, and a series of 60's spy TV show theme songs) and jazz that I burned the night before - I played the first CD, but forgot to queue up the rest :(.
• A playing card version of the "Assassin" game - I figured that people were busy enough with the puzzles and just eating/drinking that I didn't bother trotting this out.
• Unused puzzle ideas - some of the more technically elaborate ideas I had (including an underwater puzzle, a puzzle involving a searchlight, a puzzle involving a remote camera, and asking people to lockpick a simple lock) I ended up discarding - but they would've been cool :).

Since I was splurging (alcohol and decent party gifts don't come cheap), it was a reason for me to limit the party guest list this year.  That way, I could think of the birthday party as a "thank you" of sorts - to my better friends and acting classmates from this past year, to people that needed to be thanked for their help this year or in past years, etc.

Even though the party was hectic at the beginning (since I wasn't really ready on time :() and quite a number of people no showed (some things about Los Angeles never change :(), it was fun for me to host.  I believe people had a good time, which is what makes me happiest as the party host. Thank you especially to Rob Lee and Billy Wing for bartending throughout the night, and sticking around to help clean up.  Rob was right in guessing that people would be much more interested in apple martinis than the more classic martinis. Since it was a dress up party, I let everyone wear their shoes inside the house, which meant I spent hours the next day mopping, Swiffering and vacuuming to clean up the footprints :(.

I've uploaded the pictures onto Facebook already; when I get a chance, I'll upload it onto a photo-sharing site for those of you who aren't college aged (or pretending to be college aged :)).

Tomorrow never dies,

Jhemon