By Drew Magary, GQ
This story originally appeared on GQ.com: How to Spend Election Night
How To Plan An Election Night Party
1. Vet your guest list carefully. If you're going for lively political debate, do NOT invite your one graduate assistant friend who gets crazy serious when talking about Palestine. She'll bring the whole party down, yelling at everyone like she's on the set of Real Time. What a bitch. You want everyone to get so drunk that they don't mind hanging out with pro-lifers.
2. If you'd rather have a party that celebrates just one of the candidates, be sure to decorate accordingly. For a Romney party, that means red bunting, perfectly-heighted trees, and Rum-ney and Cokes for all. For an Obama party, that means lots of Al Green on your iPod. DO NOT SERVE SOUL FOOD OR ELSE YOU'LL FEEL LIKE A RACIST.
3. Be sure to have your own electoral college map drawn up on a greaseboard. Once a state falls to either candidate, draw a corresponding red or blue penis inside that state's borders.
4. Have four TVs on simultaneously: One showing FOX, one showing MSNBC, one showing CNN, and one showing Die Hard. Can't go wrong with Die Hard.
5. Drink every time one of the following appears on your screen:
- Hologram Fergie
- John King demonstrating some new CNN technology and fucking it up
- Any time one of those little check marks appears to connote that a state has gone to one candidate. The check lets you know it's for real.
- Field correspondent interviewing Ashton Kutcher for no good reason
- Empty hotel ballroom waiting to be filled
- "We're gonna be watching this part of the country VERY CLOSELY."
- Any time a race is called with less than 2 percent of precincts reporting. How can you know it's over already? That's some shady shit.
6. When party begins to lose momentum around 10 a.m., it's time for drugs. Or, if you're a Mormon, it's time for Uno. Uno is fun.
What to Do When Your Candidate Loses
1. Turn viciously on your own candidate, renouncing him and shitting all over every mistake he made on the campaign trail.
2. Make a snide remark about how horrible the next four years will be. "Hope you like prolonged unemployment, people!"
3. Try and remove your candidate's bumper sticker, only to realize that it's permanently affixed.
4. Vow that your party will come back stronger than ever in the next election. Undermine the winning candidate immediately, at every turn, in hopes that public sentiment will eventually go your way. Because it will. Have you met American voters? All we do is switch majority parties every six years or so. Our discontent is more reliable than a Hanes Beefy-T. Don't fret. You're party will get another chance to fuck everything up somewhere down the road, probably sooner rather than later. Oh goody.