By all means call friends and check your Facebook invites for last-minute parties. But failing that, here is a fail-proof guide to doing Amateur Night like a pro.

No one talks. Throbbing chanting moves slowly around the room. Outside, through pane glass windows, boats rock in the harbor, birds fly over the bay. Old, drawn-out Latin words run through coils of copper wire and flow out of forty speakers arranged in a circle around the room. Walking up