Monday, June 28, 2004
The Social Event of the Season
I hate to steal the thunder of Chicago’s fine society reporters and gossip columnists (they’ll have to go back to picking at the political corpse of “avant garde” clubbing enthusiast Jack Ryan and obsessing minutely over the whereabouts of the various Cusacks), but I feel I have a moral and ethical duty to report the scintillating details of Saturday night’s highly exclusive roof party at the J-spot. The Boone’s Farm Wine Product and Fla-Vor-Ice ran freely, my friends, and the conversation hit every imaginable high note, from a frank examination of the subtle mind-control tactics employed by Hillary Duff to a fascinating dissection of where the girl from my undergrad who always wore brand-new-looking ‘80s clothes (including white denim and Keds styled with baseball-type stitching) might ever have acquired them. It was a veritable Algonquin Round Table, although I’m pretty sure Dorothy Parker never gave away door prizes. Which means those poor fools never even had a chance of winning Jumbo Calypso Braids and self-help books on tape entitled Hug the Monster. History is filled with sadness.
Of course, I’ve reached a point where the many irritations of coordinating such a festive occasion almost outweigh the benefits. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why people for whom I provide hundreds of dollars of free food and alcohol feel free to randomly ransack my cabinets and, yes, even dresser drawers, in search of whatever long-sleeve pullover or Little Debbie Snack Cake happens to strike their whim. Clearly, short of burying my belongings in the yard there is no way to be safe from these marauders. I also, frankly, don’t see the humor in the many creative attempts of my party guests to create ashtrays and urinals where in fact none exist. I support art as much as the next person, but peeing in a bottle on my back porch is frankly too avant garde. And for me, nothing beats the morning-after cleanup, when my kitchen and bathroom floors have apparently been replaced with the stickum-encrusted floors from a movie theater, possibly pornographic, last cleaned in the mid 1970s. It’s not easy being the center of the social universe.
I hate to steal the thunder of Chicago’s fine society reporters and gossip columnists (they’ll have to go back to picking at the political corpse of “avant garde” clubbing enthusiast Jack Ryan and obsessing minutely over the whereabouts of the various Cusacks), but I feel I have a moral and ethical duty to report the scintillating details of Saturday night’s highly exclusive roof party at the J-spot. The Boone’s Farm Wine Product and Fla-Vor-Ice ran freely, my friends, and the conversation hit every imaginable high note, from a frank examination of the subtle mind-control tactics employed by Hillary Duff to a fascinating dissection of where the girl from my undergrad who always wore brand-new-looking ‘80s clothes (including white denim and Keds styled with baseball-type stitching) might ever have acquired them. It was a veritable Algonquin Round Table, although I’m pretty sure Dorothy Parker never gave away door prizes. Which means those poor fools never even had a chance of winning Jumbo Calypso Braids and self-help books on tape entitled Hug the Monster. History is filled with sadness.
Of course, I’ve reached a point where the many irritations of coordinating such a festive occasion almost outweigh the benefits. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why people for whom I provide hundreds of dollars of free food and alcohol feel free to randomly ransack my cabinets and, yes, even dresser drawers, in search of whatever long-sleeve pullover or Little Debbie Snack Cake happens to strike their whim. Clearly, short of burying my belongings in the yard there is no way to be safe from these marauders. I also, frankly, don’t see the humor in the many creative attempts of my party guests to create ashtrays and urinals where in fact none exist. I support art as much as the next person, but peeing in a bottle on my back porch is frankly too avant garde. And for me, nothing beats the morning-after cleanup, when my kitchen and bathroom floors have apparently been replaced with the stickum-encrusted floors from a movie theater, possibly pornographic, last cleaned in the mid 1970s. It’s not easy being the center of the social universe.
