Sarah Hart’s M*A*S*H Birthday Party:
March 9th, 2007

Before we begin, decide whether the statements below are true or false.

1. Sarah is a sucker for a party with good food and a good theme.
2. Sarah goes all out for everyone else’s birthdays year-round.
3. Sarah is one of the three biggest M*A*S*H addicts I know.

ANSWERS:

1. True: she is. She absolutely is, whether it’s Chris’s Famous Smiley-Faced Party, or Suzi’s Mardi Gras N’awlins Bash, or Debbie’s “Everyone’s an Addict” Party, or Meg’s Hello Kitty Famous Blank Face Party (wait, that last one hasn’t actually happened yet. . . ). Themes, decorations, and food--thematic food, of course--are the keys to Sarah’s party happiness.
   
2. True: she does. See the above-mentioned parties. Sarah’s an incredibly generous, considerate person all the time, but with extra spurts of generosity and consideration that go into trying to make her friends’ birthdays everything they always wanted but couldn’t quite articulate.
   
3. True: she is. Before her DVD player broke, she would watch a couple episodes virtually every morning and night, while getting ready for work or for bed, cycling through the DVDs perpetually.
   
   (Sidenote: Who are the other two biggest M*A*S*H addicts I know? They would be me, who obsessively catalogued every episode (except two, annoyingly, which Fox kept refusing to air) on videotape in high school, editing out the commercials, and Robert’s grandma Helena, who lives for the nights “that good show” is rerun for a few hours solid in the evening and who speaks about the characters as though they live next door to her.)

Given all of this, of course, a M*A*S*H-themed birthday party seemed like a natural idea for Sarah's birthday.

Food and Drink

• Army-meets-Korea spam kim bap (spam maki with Korean daikon pickles)

• “It’s Movie Night” popcorn (No, The Moon is Not Blue)

• Straight from Chicago. . . Adam’s Rib Ribs (with homemade Coca-Cola barbeque sauce) (thanks to Klinger's uncle)
• Chef Igor’s famous mashed potatoes
• Chef Igor’s famous pork and veal meatloaf with brown gravy
• Army classic baked beans
• Army classic tuna noodle casserole
• Korean-seasoned romaine salad with bean sprouts, scallion, and cucumber
• Assorted homemade cookies by Mrs. Hunnicut (chocolate-oatmeal-cherry cookies, peanut butter chocolate cookies, and decorated vanilla sugar cookies--they make BJ homesick!)

• Colonel Potter’s Mortgage-Burning Cake Sarah Hart’s Birthday Cake: triple layer red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting

• Officer’s Club spiked tropical punch

• Radar’s Favorite: Grape, peach, and orange Nehi soda, in real glass bottles, imported from the wilds of the South and Midwest for the occasion (thanks to Klinger's uncle the Internet)
• Swamp-Special martinis

Decorations

• M*A*S*H 4077th banners
• bandage streamers and bandage-wrapped chairs
• assorted sizes of US flags
• "Swamp," "Officers' Club," "Mess Tent," "Officers' Latrine," "Nurses' Tent," "Nurses' Showers," "Col. Potter's Office" signs
• the picket fence banner the gang made for Potter's mortgage-burning party
• army helmets and surgical masks for quick and dirty costume accessories
• a "Who's your favorite M*A*S*H character?" bathroom poll
• camouflage sheets and pillowcases used as slipcovers in the living room

Entertainment

View or download a Word file with a M*A*S*H trivia test--complete with matching columns, multiple choice, short-answer questions, and an open-ended essay question--which we took that evening. Sarah won the prize (the original M*A*S*H book which inspired the movie which inspired the TV show) with a score in the 80s (out of a possible total of 100%), with second- and third-place finishers tied at 55 points, Robert--who claims he's absorbed this minimal amount of M*A*S*H knowledge by osmosis from living with me--in fourth place with a score in the 40s, and everyone else dismally below that. No, there was no curve: Sarah won fair and square. And no, I'm not posting the answers--you can look them up one by one yourself if you still don't know!

Guests

Sarah and Sean: you can't really see it, but she's wearing a M*A*S*H shirt, and her camouflage helmet blends right into the bean bag chair. That's a mostly-gone bottle of grape Nehi in front of her, too.

Tim and Christine, in full military gear:he's a costume freak, and we love him for it, but it got a little too hard to eat the popcorn and mashed potatoes with his gloves and gas mask on.

Debbie and Meg: doesn't she look cute in scrubs? Nurse "Hot Lips" Flanagan lent them for the occasion, since she was unfortunately not feeling well.

Karen, John, Debbie, Karen, Candace and friend, and Ren watch Sarah open her presents later in the evening.

Thanks to:

• Karen "Lil Karen" B., with her inside contacts at an elementary school, for borrowing and delivering a few dozen institutional lunch trays--perfect for the occasion--and for helping decorate.
• Suzi, for making up a fabulous Evite, coordinating Sarah's attire, and bringing ice, after Debbie, Chris, and Ben S. all previously had ice-delivery debacles and now refuse to ever bring it again, and after Miriam (sorry--couldn't keep it a secret!) volunteered to bring ice and then cancelled.
• Meg, for bringing a supply of our thousand-pack of sporks from the library downtown.
• Chris and Laurie, for supplying alcohol as well as--a given, what with Laurie's everyday status as Nurse "Hot Lips" Flanagan--surgical masks and bandages for decorations.
• Debbie, for bringing the borrowed Hawaiian leis that scream "it's a party in 1950s Korea." (For those not in the know, festivities at the 4077th always involve leis and Hawaiian shirts.)

Go back to web essays or over to links.
robertandchristina.com was made with a Mac.
© 2007 C&R Enterprises
Email christina@robertandchristina.com or robert@robertandchristina.com
Created: 3/14/07. Last Modified: 3/14/07.