To a very small, very select group, the Academy Awards represent years of toil, bullshit, lunch meetings, getting funding, losing funding, hard work and the climax of a very big and heady dream. To the rest of this city, it is an opportunity to party on someone else’s dime, not unlike celebrating Christmas even if you’re Jewish and you’re just “into the vibe.”
As I stand in line waiting to check in for the Bolthouse/Whitesell Oscar fete I am saddened that I am not allowed to bring my camera in to document the event. The slew of badly pressed, cheap gowns…the overtly sexy cleavage…the bare legs with small bruises. This is where merit and might meet gold-digging irrelevance. The people that actually deserve to celebrate the Oscars are not in line with us, of course. They take the narrow road up Mount Olympus in their own cars and limos. They shuttle the rest of us like they do the party decorations and catering brought in hours earlier. I see Bill Mayer in the parking lot, which I suspect is a fluke as he disappears moments later into a car.
I am not unlike the other people waiting in queue. I have nothing to do with the entertainment industry as of yet. Not in any grand capacity, really. But these things can be fun, and I’m not one to turn down a people watching extravaganza. I never do feel completely comfortable at these things though. I feel like I should wait for things like this until they mean something more than free drinks and a 2 AM breakfast bar (waffles, fresh fruit, turkey bacon, bacon bacon, chorizo frittata, sun dried tomato and feta cheese frittata, the works). I am a shameful mooch.
Recipe for a AA Cocktail:
4 scantily clad ladies
4 opaque black tights
1 Monster Energy Drink
1 forty-five minute valet disaster
1 Diet Coke with Lemon
1 pair of very high Jimmy Choo eel-skin booties
1 pair of sensible black flats (kept in my purse for emergency situations)
1 enormous and tasteless marble mansion
600 party goers
3 different types of hors d’oeuvres
1 DJ living in the past a la 2006
180 degree view of the Los Angeles skyline
Celebrities
We call it a night around 3 in the morning, after realizing that nothing really crazy is going to happen and struggling to remember if it ever does. My friends are buzzed and silly with alcohol. The night is a success. I take off in my car, back to my little duplex and my sleeping boyfriend, wondering how I just ended up under a giant plastic party tent with Javier Bardem and Amy Adams.
JENNY BAHN 