Went to a Charity Gala, Interviewed Miss USA

right now i am standing on the sidewalk outside the IAC building which is an office building on the West Side Highway in Manhattan that was designed by Frank Gehry and it is white and grey and made of glass and it looks like it is rippling in the wind. the companies that have offices inside this building are internet companies like Match.com and CitySearch, and tonight the building is hosting a gala for a charity called God’s Love We Deliver and joan rivers is coming to accept an award and i am going to try to ask her some questions

i am waiting outside the IAC building for my friend Mike who works for a magazine and he is reporting on this event and he invited me to tag along, he is already inside, and i BBMed him to come get me, i said “hey i’m outside come scoop me” and he comes outside and we both look at an old woman in a really ornate bronze-sequined coat who is getting out of a Lincoln Towncar and stepping onto the curb and we are trying to determine if she is an important person but we don’t think she is

a few feet away from her, an older man in a gray suit is standing on the red carpet getting photographed, i think he is a business executive and/or somebody who donated a lot to this charity, and he gives one of the photographers a high-five and it’s like one of the high-fives that old people give where their hand is vertical and their fingers are pressed together and it looks like they are punching the air with their palm, i hope this description makes sense

mike walks up to the press table and i am standing behind him and he says he has a +1 to the woman behind the press table and she runs her finger down the list and sees his name on the list and nods and then we walk to the entrance. sometimes when i go to events like this with Mike they are less formal and i wear jeans and maybe a hoodie but tonight the event is a formal gala for a reputable charity so i wore slacks and a suit jacket and my nice shirt so i don’t stick out

now we are inside the lobby of the building where cocktail hour is taking place and then they will usher us into the dining room for dinner. people are streaming in: men in suits who look like Dick Cheney and/or CEOs of companies that are blamed for the recession whose pictures i always see in the newspaper, their wives in gowns and shiny dresses with sparkly earrings and necklaces. everyone looks like they are of good breeding and many of the women have plastic surgery that, even though you logically understand that a woman with really wrinkly and veiny hands should probably have at least one wrinkle on her face, looks pretty much natural. a waiter comes around with white wines on a tray and i snatch one

the lobby of the IAC building is made for entertaining i think, the space is very open and the ceilings are probably like 30 feet high and the walls are actually floor-to-ceiling windows so you can see outside to the cars flying by on the West Side Highway. looking out the window reminds me of the Juelz Santana verse about the West Side Highway in the Cam’Ron song Hey Ma where [he is addressing a girl he met at a club and] he says: “get in the car and don’t touch nothin’, sit in the car / let’s discuss somethin’: either we lovin’ or i’ll see you tomorrow” and then i guess she agrees to his proposal because he says, “now we speedin’ up the West Side[Highway], hand creepin’ up her left side, i’m ready to do it / ready to bone / ready for dome (oral sex), 55th exit? damn, already we home / let’s get it on”. a waiter walks past us with hors d’oeuvres, tiny grilled cheese sandwiches made with truffle oil. they are really greasy so i wipe my hands on my pants because i didn’t take a napkin. i hope nobody saw

we get some more drinks and stand around looking at people and trying to determine if any of the people who we want to talk to have showed up yet: Barry Diller (who owns this building and the companies inside it), Diane von Furstenberg, Joan Rivers, Anna Wintour. mike tells me that Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg are married even though it’s an open secret that Barry Diller is gay. then mike spots a socialite, points her out to me, finishes almost a whole glass of wine in a few gulps, and says “okay i’m gonna go ask her about her divorce”

mike goes off to interview the socialite about her divorce and i see Miss USA standing in the middle of the room and i go up to her and say “hi my name is david and i write a blog about music, can i ask you some questions about music please?”

Miss USA says “okay…” and then another woman, who was standing next to Miss USA and looks like she is in her late 20s and is dressed smartly in a blazer that is cuffed to the middle of her forearm, steps in between us and says “I’M FROM THE MISS USA ORGANIZATION — ARE YOU A REPORTER?” and i think about the question for a second and mumble “umm yes i guess so” because this Miss USA handler is like barking at me and it is intimidating and she goes “WHO ARE YOU WITH” and i say “i write a tumblr blog about music, it’s called Pitchfork Reviews Reviews” and she looks puzzled, and then she says “okay… just making sure” and i almost want to say “making sure of what?” because i think i could have told her i was a reporter from The Onion and she would have let me keep going, but i hold my tongue, i guess she was just trying to ascertain that i am not a random dude trying to spit game to Miss USA

so anyway, Miss USA is, ummmm, not as beautiful as i expected Miss USA to be. she’s not not beautiful but like i can’t imagine that when she was younger, people who knew her thought she was gonna be winning beauty pageants. i wonder if Miss America is the more beautiful pageant winner and Miss USA is cooler or smarter? also Miss USA is wearing her sash over her dress and i wonder if she has to wear the sash everywhere, if she has multiple sashes so if one gets dirty or stained she has another one at the ready, if the handler keeps the second sash in her own bag, and if the handler sometimes tries the second sash on in the mirror when she gets home and plays out a girlhood fantasy in her mind

anyway i ask Miss USA what kind of music she listens to and she says “i like 103.1, 97.1, 100.3…” which are Top 40 and rap radio stations in new york, and i say, “no, like, what artists?” and she says “oh! well, i’m in love with Drake” and she looks up and her lips curl into a little smile like she is thinking about Drake, and then she says “i also like, ummm, Rihanna and Lady Gaga…” and i realize that asking Miss USA about music is sort of a dead end and her handler will probably step in if i try to ask her any questions that will get her off-message like “what’s your position on the ‘ground zero mosque?’”, so i thank Miss USA and her handler and go to the bar and order a Jameson on the rocks

the girl standing next to me at the bar works for The Daily News and we have been introduced probably like seven times at events like this, and she looks right at my face and so i raise my hand to wave to her, but then she doesn’t acknowledge me even though we have been introduced a bunch of times, so i use the hand that i was raising to wave to her to adjust my glasses and try to keep the speed of the hand-raising constant to make it look like i was moving the hand towards the glasses the whole time. i wish i could pat myself on the back for this smooth move but that would be weird to do in public, and also i have put on a couple lbs. since i bought this suit and i am concerned if i reach my arm too far back it might tear the suit. i get my drink and walk towards the center of the room and stand against a column. it is weird to describe what i am doing right now in that tense but right now i am standing against a column

mike finishes interviewing the socialite and comes over to me and then i tell him that i talked to Miss USA but it was not a good conversation and mike says that he has interviewed her before and he asked something about the sash and she joked that she found it five minutes ago in the garbage and just put it on, which i think is a pretty clever thing for Miss USA to say. i tell mike that the Daily News reporter didn’t acknowledge me and he says he can reintroduce me if i want

then people start filing into the dining room and we follow them. neither of us has been able to interview anyone notable because they are not here yet. we wonder if they are ever going to show up. we find our assigned table, Table 34, and there is only one other person sitting at the table when we get there and it is the Daily News reporter!! mike says hi to her and introduces us, she is actually very friendly to me beside the fact that she has no recollection of all the times that we have met and i am thinking that the next time we meet she will have no recollection of this time. i wish i could do something crazy like moon her so that she wouldn’t forget me and she wouldn’t forget that we had met before again, but i don’t do anything like that

after we chat with her for a second, me and mike go to the opposite side of the table as the Daily News reporter because that’s where our seating assignment name cards are. about a minute later a girl comes and sits down next to the Daily News reporter and starts talking to her and then smiles at me and mike and we introduce ourselves. at the table next to us there is an elderly woman who is looking at the menu through a magnifying glass that has a little light attached to it, she looks like she’s investigating a crime scene with that gadget

me and mike eat our salads and the personal-size quiches that sit next to the salads and after a few minutes it becomes clear that the four of us will be the only guests at Table 34 so mike takes the personal quiche off the salad plate next to him and eats it, but then about a minute after that a couple comes over to the table and the man sits down next to mike, in front of the salad that Mike took the quiche off, but we don’t think he noticed that his quiche was missing

then the emcee of the gala comes on and says some stuff about God’s Love We Deliver. she is the host of a nightly gossip TV show and the gala’s program boasts that her show has “viewership of just under five million nightly” but i think it would have sounded like more if they had written “viewership of well over four and a half million nightly”. she has bags under her eyes and sometimes gets words wrong but generally does a good job, and after she speaks for a while they play a video of Jon Stewart saying something about this God’s Love We Deliver gala in which he refers to the building that we are inside as Barry Diller’s Fortress of Solitude, and then the emcee introduces an old dude that looks like Dick Cheney

the Dick Cheney tells everyone to donate for a while, why it’s important to donate, and then people start getting restless because dinner is about to be served and we are hungry, and he notices that and then he says, “You see here, it says,” and he’s reading off the dinner menu, “curry and orange braised short ribs of beef on soft polenta with seared baby leeks and carrots?” and you can hear people say “yeah…” and “uh huh” and he says “you don’t get shit until i finish!!!” and everyone laughs because he is being frank and brazen, which is welcome in contrast to the emcee who seems pretty scripted and is trying to be heart-wrenching to get people to donate to the charity. i think the crowd appreciates his directness

then he says some other stuff and finishes talking and dinner is served. we get up and walk around to interview people and mike sees the CEO of Viacom and asks him some questions. then mike is talking to the publicist for the event and she is explaining something to him. he comes over to me and tells me that none of the celebrities who were slated to show up actually came! he says “joan rivers isn’t showing up even though she’s being honored at this thing!” and i say “what should we do then?” and he says “let’s go eat”

so we sit back down and eat dinner, which is pieces of meat on bones. the meat is very tender and i would have taken the piece of meat off the plate in front of the empty seat next to me if it wouldn’t have made me look like an out-of-control overeater. there are publicists darting around the room wearing headsets and carrying clipboards and they look frantic. they didn’t deliver the goods! which means that this event will get less press which means that the organization will not have a higher profile than it did before and most of these dinners are wasted and now God’s Love We Deliver has nothing to show for this huge dinner except a few hundred thousand dollars in donations and this blog entry and maybe some tiny items in some magazines, which is okay but not all they expected. i bet Joan Rivers’ people have gotten some angry phone calls today

a few minutes later i ask one of the publicists if Jerry Bruckheimer wound up coming, i want to ask him if he prefers Aerosmith or Bon Jovi, and the publicist looks deflated and says that he isn’t here but that the president of MAC cosmetics is here and i thank him anyway and go back to my table to finish my dinner. after dinner, Joan Rivers gives a videotaped acceptance speech for her award (meaning the publicists knew she wasn’t gonna show up for hours and didn’t tell people) and it becomes final that pretty much none of the advertised “persons of interest” will be attending this gala because it is too late for them to show up now anyway

then dinner is over and the Daily News reporter comes and sits next to us because her friend left and the only people left at the table are me and mike and a man she doesn’t know and his date. she is very friendly again. she tells us about bad dates that she has gone on and how difficult it is to not look at someone’s lazy eye when you are on a date with them, how her brother is currently sending her cryptic BBMs about hanging out with Khloe Kardashian’s boyfriend, and about how it’s disappointing that nobody showed up to this event. i tell her about my conversation with Miss USA and she says the reason Miss USA has such an attentive handler is that she is an idiot and she always says embarrassing stuff

and then we leave and now i am on the subway home, and i wanted to mention that that gala reminded me of how sometimes i really want to throw a party but then i am afraid that nobody will come and i will look like a big loser to the couple people that do come, so i just never throw parties, and to all the frantic publicists who my social nightmare just came true for sort of, if you are reading this i want to say that i am sorry and i understand!! my dad says “don’t trust anyone because everyone will just disappoint you” and sometimes stuff just doesn’t work out the way you planned and it doesn’t mean you are a failure, and also the meat was really good. okay that’s it bye!

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