On Celebrity Parties and Mysterious Puddles

We like to think we live in an ordered, beneficent universe, where physical laws and inalienable truths hold sway. But this morning, after last night’s little Times Halloween party, I feel like I’ve been hurled back to some before-time when chaos reigned and lumpy proto-gods ambled around in the murk, eating their offspring. Which, I think I can state authoritatively right now, they probably just mistook for Advil.

I swear all I had last night were a few sips of Irish creme and a couple of spilled ginger ales, but it is taking an incredible effort of will right now to not just type like this d % kjrad d3”40-ae!rf ae;ewQewidcn, ‘OUythFVC$() a+%7h for a couple of hours. It looks pretty good to me, and it feels a whole lot better.

When writers report on big society bashes, it is always from the midst of the event, with tidbits like: “In full-length ocelot crepe gown, lithe, high-profile power-monger Damille Schlevnagan and swain delicately nipped at toast points heaped with beluga caviar.” It might be a more accurate gauge of an event’s party-down character if they were to include a little morning-after update: “Ms. Schlevnagan sported a coat on her tongue thick enough to frost a cake. Servants were sent to Diva’s freight entrance to search for her gown.”

Looking at the morning-after--hey, how did these Cocoa Puffs get in my hair?--I’d have to say we hard-workin’, hard-livin’ Times folk had a far finer soiree than was held recently for the grand opening of Planet Hollywood.

The Planetoid bash may have been the exclusive party of the year, and hundreds of persons without invitations hunkered on bleachers or milled outside the glitzy building in hopes of just catching sight of the radiant few who were admitted, movie stars and the moneyed movers and shakers of Orange County. Inside, it was through this be-powered crowd that the Times’ society writer waded over to me, because she had a question which I alone among this fine company could answer.

“How did you ever get in here?” she asked, in a bemused tone one might use to address a dead bee in the butter compartment of the fridge.

It was a good question since I had about as much business being there as my cat, who had better things to do. He did, however--through the miracle of pockets--get more of the shrimp and other vittles there than folks arriving later ever saw.

I’d gone down to the party because I’d learned some friends of mine were going to be Bruce Willis’ backing band, and I hadn’t heard them for a while. There was, they said, a very slim chance they might sneak me in as a roadie. I presented myself as such at Planet Hollywood’s back door and was let in, only to find my friends hadn’t even arrived yet. This was a couple of hours before the opening, so I profitably spent the time slipping my girlfriend’s name onto a guest list.

In years as a rock critic--where you sometimes have to get backstage to find the spelling of a bass-player’s name or similar crucial facts--I’ve learned there’s a Zen to party-crashing. The trick is to have absolutely no desire to get into a place. Security people can sense that indifference, and figure if you don’t want to go in, that’s right where they’re going to send you, so there.

This indifference isn’t a hard thing to cultivate, once you’ve been “in” a few times. Maybe people outside thought we’d all be in there yucking it up with Willis, Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenmpferger (whatever), shooting skeet with them, doing the twist and enchanting them with our great sequel plot ideas, like one I’ve been nurturing called “Die Real Hard This Time, OK? We Mean It!”

It never happens like that. In this case, the people watching the entrance outside saw more of the stars than the folks inside ever did, since the celebs immediately repaired to the real exclusive party upstairs, where they probably climbed into lawn bags for the really exclusive party. Meanwhile, everyone downstairs was stuck looking at each other, barely concealing his or her disgust that you weren’t someone famous. Willis did eventually come down to perform some blues tunes on vocals and harmonica and wasn’t bad at all.

Have you ever seen how pushy “entertainment news” video crews are, not the least bit apologetic about shoving to the front of crowds to get their precious shots? It’s a good thing they have cameras, because otherwise you’d never have told them apart from the affluent jerks who--with probably the same go-getter spirit that put them where they are--elbowed past the less shark-like persons who actually had waited to see Willis perform (there’s nothing quite like crashing a party to start one finding fault with others). I saw one of these well-heeled folks ushering in a new era of bootlegging by jostling to the front, dialing a cellular phone and holding its mouthpiece up towards the stage.

As we were leaving the club, there were still hundreds of people in the bleachers, some of whom waved our way.

My girlfriend knows me well enough that she hid her face in embarrassment even before I started waving back and shouting, “Love ya! Look for me next season on ‘Eight Is Enough’!” I thought I handled stardom pretty well.

While Planet Hollywood is decorated with life-sized Terminator and Alien mock-ups, a simulated spaceport and the like, the Elks Lodge where we had our Times bash was decorated with an elk head. We had M&Ms; and bulk-packed tortilla chips. Since everyone was dressed as dogs, fairies or unimaginative journalists, you didn’t have to be worried about what the Segerstroms would be wearing.

And, as I was in the band, I can say for a fact that we sure didn’t see rude people shoving up to the stage there. They did to the bar at the back of the hall maybe, but they gave us a wide berth. Our band was a little too magnificent to behold, perhaps, performing with such precision, passion and fire that you’d never suspect that we’re the same humble scribes who are writing and editing this critique.

We’d rehearsed for months, learning songs slowly and painstakingly in sessions that my girlfriend said sounded like editions of “The Wheel of Fortune”: “Uh, is there an F? Is there a B then?”

But somehow we pulled it all together, even if “Woolly Bully” did sound like it was rendered in phonetic Etruscan. People danced. They threw M&Ms; at each other. It was a kinder , antlered nation than was seen at the Planet Hollywood party.

There, I had asked a waitress the journalistically balanced question, “Say, are these rich %+”%! tipping tonight?”

“No, not a one of them,” she matter-of-factly replied.

Compare that to the response of an Elkette waitress when I asked her how the tips were coming at our party: “Oh, it’s all right, I suppose.”

See? Proof positive that the average-Joe throw-your-own parties are not only a better time than the rich and powerful have, but they’re also more giving and compassionate, with human warmth spreading out like that large and mysterious puddle we had to cross on the dance floor at the end of the night.