If you’re going to throw plates and food at the wall, you can’t be petty about it. You can’t do it like a three-year-old, pounding on your high chair and tearing your bib off. You have to do it like a gorilla, and the meaning behind it can’t be “whaaah….you’re not being loyal to me!” The meaning has to be “I’m throwing plates of food in order to assert my alpha dominance…Huey Long said ‘every man is a king’ and I’m the king around here.”

It also helps if the plate thrower is young and muscular and throbbing with brute sexuality. It isn’t quite the same if he’s fat and jowly and in his mid ’70s.

Incidentally: I’ve never done that “yanking a tablecloth” thing without disturbing the dishes and cups and cutlery atop it. One reason being that I never trusted my ability to pull it off. Nor have I ever seen it performed live.