Angeleno 7th Anniversary Event

A shadowy PR agent from the bowels of cyberspace solicited Losanjealous to provide ‘coverage’ of Angeleno Magazine’s 7th anniversary celebration. With the promise of corporate-flavored martinis, I took the lead.

Friday night. We arrive to the fashionable Helms Bakery district of tony Culver City, if by fashionable you mean cavernous. It’s a furniture store. HD Buttercup. We’re not on the guest list in spite of numerous e-mailed reassurances. “It’s fine” says the party girl with the clipboard who gives us each a plastic drink bracelet. I am no longer favorably disposed toward this happening.

We walk, the initiated, down a hallway with posterboard Angeleno magazine covers flanking us on easels. They do a similar thing at the Church of Scientology, but no way are you getting free martinis there. We walk surprisingly far. What is this the Tom Bradley terminal? A drink kiosk! Now we’re talking. Good-looking waitstaff dressed in slim corporate T-shirts mix drinks while referring to a printed recipe. What’s it going to be, a martini, a pomartini, a white cosmotini, a frankenstini? The tip jar overflows with pre-stuffed 5s. I get a lemondropini and insert a buck.

We take it all in, my stenographer and I. This place is gihugic as a childhood friend used to say. There’s stained teak Chinese chiffarobes as far as the eye can see. One expects sectioned Apollo rockets. I think I can make out Orson Welles on his deathbed in the distance, someone better clean up that snow-globe. Another sip of my martini variant. Lots of space. Lots of furniture.

cougar.jpgWe were promised ‘a marvelous medley of celeb attendees’ by the invoice. Past participants have included Morgan Fairchild and um. . .some sexy kickboxing teachers. Really sexy. But I don’t see anything like celebrity here. I see lines of people looking for the least crowded martini kiosk. All of them are well-dressed and rich-looking but not famous. Salt and pepper hair. Suits. Mature babes in stevedore chic: wifebeaters, slim cargos, jewelry, heels. They should rename it Cougar City. (Cougars are out there, wake up) And the men who orbit them. But no ‘names.’

People don’t know what to do. This place is still cavernous. Where are the celebrities? We gravitate to the dance floor. A sliver of a celebrity DJ spins ‘80’s music. I can’t remember which ones, Cyndi Lauper, something like that. ‘HD Buttercup’ is projected on the dropcloth behind her. Folks are sitting on settees. No one’s dancing. This is a problem. My stenographer and I grab another drink and lead an assault on the dance floor. The DJ gets into it, the party girls get into it, the golden-haired dudes in the corporate shirts get into it. Cellphone pictures are taken, alcohol is spilled, sweat is sweated. Then they pull the plug. It’s 12:03. Go home.

My editor told me, you know what, you don’t have to write about this if it’s a big snore. Yes it was a big snore, but big snores have their place. Marketing voices invite you to market yourself at an event where you drink in advertising. Some Z-listers were contacted but didn’t show up. You are not even a Z-lister. But you paid a dollar tip, you found afterhours metered parking, and when the DJ played Shannon’s “Let the Music Play” those childhood memories effervesced and you stopped waiting to exhale. Fuck it, Losanjealousians. It’s on the house. By all means freeload.

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