yeow, what a hangover

last night was the museum's annual gala, where semi-rich and semi-famous people pay $1000 a head to go to the waldorf and tribute a very rich and very famous celebrity. this time it was tom brokaw, and dan rather and peter jennings (who is a womanizer--who knew?) gave heartwarming and noncontroversially funny speeches. conan o'brien hosted. the idea is that well fed, emotionally primed people in a room with charming celebrities, lots of booze, and swelling music accompanied by nostalgic tv images will start to feel like they are part of something important and larger than themselves and, because they have nowhere in particular to spend their money because they are not famous and don't know it's all a load of crap anyway, they siphon it into the museum.

most museum employees go, and we check the rich people in, give them table cards, etc, but then we sit down too and see the whole thing. not really worth $1000, but i filled up on steak and wine, both of which were very red. the special events chicks had a room to stay the night, so we grabbed as many of the leftover wine bottles as we could carry and went up there in our fancy clothes and smoked in the bathroom. it was so very prom, except for the hours of gossip and dramatizations of catty situations at work, which are pretty threadbare to begin with. and, of course, there was the loud, drunken conversation about who at the museum you'd fuck if you had to pick someone, and frankly people's answers were very revealing. i was surprised--no one picked anybody our age, not even the chuck-taylors-and-a-tie kid, and instead it was a pretty even split between the tall white-haired vp (firm handshake) and the tall black maintenance guy who smiles at everyone.