Chung-chung

After a pleasant weekend of playing tour guide to two of the most down-to-earth people on the face of the planet, I found myself Sunday evening suiting up to spend a long sober evening surrounded by the entire cast of every Law & Order ever made. Yes, folks, it was time once again for the Entertainment Weekly Oscar viewing party at Elaine's. (For those of you unaware of this shindig, it's one of the big New York parties during the Oscars.)

Would this year's event produce a sketching Tony Bennett or a ranting and raving Joan Collins? In a word, no.

There were no surprise fireworks this year. Sorry. But the number of celebrities seems to increase exponentially. And Elaine's is going to have to build an extra room just for the Law & Order people if they expect to continue hosting this thing.

So I arrive. I walk up the red carpet. Oddly enough, flashbulbs don't start going off and microphones aren't shoved into my face. Imagine that. If only these people knew my potential. As I reach the table to sign in, the flashes start going off and there is a bit of noise behind me. Mariska Hargitay. Go figure. So it begins. I sign in, make my way into the room and do a walk around.

Interestingly, the first celeb I see inside is Katie Holmes. This throws me off for two reasons. One, she's tall. She always looks tiny on TV and in movies. But she's tall. Second, she's never had a part on Law & Order.

I walk by my table to see who I'll be sitting with. I'd been tipped off by a source deep inside EW that I'd be sharing a table with Donnie Wahlberg, Kurt Loder, and John Norris. If you think about it, John and Kurt represent the glory days of MTV and Donnie (via NKOTB) can be seen as the first sign of the downfall. Or not. At any rate, I wanted to see if there were any surprises at my table. And lo and behold, Carol Alt would be dining with us. There were other folks at the table, but since you people are only interested in celebrities and celebrities only, I won't sully your experience with names that don't usually warrant bold-facing.

At this point, it was 6:30. Dinner was supposed to start at 7, I knew no one there, and the place was starting to fill up. Elaine's is small. It fills up quickly. The tables for this event are jammed on top of one another. There are many, many elbows and serving trays flying about.

And I was sober.

So I went to the bar and grabbed a glass of cranberry juice. I swear that after a weekend of staying sober while staying out past two, I've had so much cranberry juice I'll never have to worry about a urinary tract infection.

After securing my cranberry juice, I walked toward open space near the back of the restaurant and noticed Carol Alt and her friend Melanie Bonvicino already seated. I was bumped again by a passing someone--not even a celebrity, mind you--so decided to sit. And there I was. Melanie, a publicist, was up and down throughout the early going, perhaps working the room. Carol didn't budge much. She was extremely pleasant. Despite my behavior in such venues, I'm still at a point where celebrity still has some sway over me and I expect certain behavior, especially from model/actresses. You know ... bitchiness, snobbery, hitting people in the face with cell phones. That sort of thing. But Carol turns out be a fireman's daughter from Queen's county and about as down to earth as one could expect. She even told me to switch place settings with someone who hadn't arrived yet so we could hear one another better.

At this point, Kurt Loder and John Norris and their people were standing around our table, not quite ready to sit. But that changed as people started pouring in. Liza Minelli. Christopher Meloni. Regis. Diane Neal. Joan Collins. Ice T. Seeing the pattern here? I swear at one point, I saw the ghost of Jerry Orbach ordering a scotch at the bar.

There were pounds and pounds, possibly tons, of celebs in the place, but I can't be bothered to name them all. Oh, for you people who like guys who play creeps, Sam Rockwell was there. For the musically minded, we had Mya. (And I swear Meg White was there, but as evidenced by other posts, I'm not the best person to be asking about musicians who are currently producing music.) And Alan Cumming. And who else? Oh, I can't remember. That's the problem with being sober at an event. Your mind is aware of everything, takes it all in and, eventually gets overloaded and starts to shed things. It's sort of like being drunk, but without the buzz, the false courage, the enhanced wit and the hangover.

At the table immediately behind me, were sitting: Meloni, Richard Belzar, Joey Pants, and Chazz Palmienteri. Across the way was what I'd call the kid's table, including Vanessa Carlton and Anne Hathaway, tall, beautiful and very shy looking. She was with someone I'd imagine to be her boyfriend. I bet he's a jerk.

Throughout the event, my table remained mostly sober and subdued (with one exception). Donnie and his publicist were drinking soda and water (Mr. Wahlberg apparently had to be up at 5 a.m. to shoot a pilot). Kurt and John were across the table and obscured by a flower arrangement (a lovely flower arrangement, if I may say so). The goomba table behind me, though? Those guys were living it up. Almost made me want to drink.

And the exception? A slightly drunk writer for MTV news who let me in on the secret that writing for TV anchors sucks, because you do all the god damn work and they get all the credit.

The woman was obviously in a mood to rant, but I didn't help things at all. Even when I'm sober I can manage to make boneheaded comments. This went down after dinner, after the crowd started thinning. Carol Alt and Melanie had left. As had Donnie and his publicist. And the EW reporter (who shall remain nameless because we journalists protect our own... heh) who had been sitting to my left was off somewhere doing her job. So the MTV writer and I start chatting and she asks me where my friend had run off to. I replied that I actually didn't have a friend with me, as journalists didn't rate a Plus One.

"Well, I'm a journalist," she said. "Really?" I asked. "Who do you work for?" She replied, "MTV." At which point, I found myself saying, "Yeah, but that's MTV," which of course pissed her off. "What's that supposed to mean. You don't think I'm a."

"No, no, no," I countered, saving myself. "I mean, MTV has better street cred. Trade magazines don't rate a Plus One."

"Well, we got Plus Ones," she said, daring me to point out the fact that if this was the case, she was Kurt Loder's Plus One as she didn't have anyone else with her. But I kept my pie-hole shut on that account. Besides, she wanted to vent and talk shop, obviously mistaking me for someone who gets passionate about getting scoops and breaking news and other such journalistic silliness. It was a weird moment, because in her I could see a drunken Ken on one of his rants about his work life. So I didn't judge her harshly. She seemed, underneath it all, nice enough.

As far as the show itself? Chris Rock went over well with the audience. They enjoyed his actor bashing and, especially, his Bush bashing, even if it was based on the fantasy film Farenheit 9/11. They even enjoyed the "man on the street" interviews Rock conducted at the Magic Johnson Theater--you know, the interviews that seem to have confounded all the critics, the old, white, clueless critics. Everyone thought that having an entire category of nominees on stage or giving awards out in the audience was stupid. But unlike some of the critics who think technical guys and little guys should get their due, the crew at Elaine's, being mostly actors, gave the impression that they wouldn't mind seeing those awards go away entirely--because movies are written, funded, directed and edited by magic and it is the actors who make it so.

I think the biggest criticism of the night was for Hillary Swank's overly long speech. I personally wondered why all this trailer park mythology hadn't come up the last time around, but hey, that's just me. I ran into Joey Pants in the men's room shortly after her speech and he commented, "Jesus, who was she going to thank next? Her realtor." Funny guy.

And that was about it. Things simmered down. My friend Sarah, who'd been slaving away for days on this event for EW and had, like the other EW events and PR staff, been on her feet in high heels for hours, managed to sit down for a bit. And after it was over, I headed over to Rathbone's across the street with the EW staff. There, they apparently forgot that a) they had a gossip columnist in their midst and b) he was sober. And because they were cool enough to ignore that, I'm not giving up any details. (In truth, nothing of any interest happened, except drunk people giving me a hard time about being sober.)

I got home shortly after 3 and tore into the gift bag. The gift bag? No comment. All I'm going to say is that people who throw these parties seriously need to hire some straight guys to help fill these damn things. I can be metrosexual up to a point, but girl's jeans and fingernail polish are of no use to me. And what a cruel, cruel joke to put a little bottle of vodka in there.

And that's it. Not nearly as exciting as the first year. A little better than last year. One thing I did learn, though, is that at the current rate, by next year every citizen in the U.S. is going to be a cast member on a Law & Order show.