Mmm-Bop!

Photo by Jack GouldSo Lou Correa, Jim Silva and Cynthia Coad walk into a bar. . . .

In this case, it was the bar at Chapman University's American Celebration on Nov. 18, they didn't walk in together, and there's really no punch line for the joke. I could take the Steve Lowery Easy Way Out and simply tell you to insert your own joke here, but I'm of the opinion that Steve should work a bit harder, so I'm certainly not going to encourage him by plagiarizing from him. Not today.

Lou Correa is the jovial Assembly member some of our unkinder brethren have accused of kneeling before The Reverend Lou Sheldon and the right-wing, homophobic Traditional Values Coalition. Huh-huh. I said, “Member.” County Supe Cynthia Coad? I don't know much about her, aside from having once watched her lick Dianne Feinstein's wide, white ass like it was a strawberry gelato. Supervisor Silva is the man behind such laudable sentiments—printed onto note cards for him by his staff before each meeting—as “Karl Marx, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden all yelled, 'Free speech,' yet they were trying to use their free speech to take away our speech.” He got to sit at 2000 Lifetime Achievement honoree Nell “Gimme a Break!” Carter's table. I hope he didn't try to talk at her.

Oh. Right. So the occasion was a big fat fund-raiser Chapman U. held for itself, bringing in the unmeasly sum of $700,000. Outside the fairy-lit tent, grandmas in minks discussed the finer points of Corona del Mar geography. (Cameo Highlands is hilly or something. Sorry. Apparently, I wasn't listening.) Just imagine if some terrible act of God had befallen the assembled! Just think of all that money going orphaned! Mad props go to the folks at the Mall of Orange for inviting my date/OC Democratic Central Committee blackballee/ Loretta Sanchez blackballee/Richard Thomas stunt-double Mike Kaspar (who even borrowed a friend's gleaming red Mazda RX-7 so we would look appropriately rich, which turned out to be a lot more fun than I'd realized) to join their $1,000-per-plate table! The butternut-squash bisque with gorgonzola and roasted red-pepper crostini was just about worth the price of admission on its own. That was some goddamn soup! In fact, the whole evening was delightful, most especially the gifts (from Tiffany) and spit-soaked suckjob laid on Chapman prez Jim Doti by his friends at the spread-eagled LA Times. No, really: you should have seen this article they mocked up, in which Doti and his amazing feat of turning around the highly ranked (at least in terms of tuition) school were cited in more than 20 paragraphs. Also, there was a lavender rose on the passenger seat after the valet fetched us our hot-shit car. I think someone liked me!

Unfortunately, we left before honoree Carter got up to speak, reportedly starting out by saying that she had to say something about the presidential election, greeted by an audible gasp from the audience. But not to worry! She followed that up with something like, “Just because I'm a black woman that doesn't mean that I'm a Democrat,” sending the crowd into a foot-stomping, cheering frenzy and an extended ovation. Then she tore into Gore and his evil minions for trying to steal an election. God damn them!

From there, Kaspar and I crashed a wedding party at the members-only Balboa Bay Club on our way to crashing a party—”Pharmacology“—for a buncha UCLA biologists and chemists. Cool. Having some vestige of manners left, though, we didn't stay once we spotted the lovely bride. There are some boundaries I just won't cross—not even for you, my beloved readers. Besides, as we were waiting for our badass car later that night, we spotted her in the foyer. I was about to tell her how beautiful she looked when she looked past me and sneered at her assembled guests. She was one testy bitch, and I got over my need to congratulate her. Right. So. Pharmacology! My friend Wolfie, an actor/DJ/grip, was spinning for a party of about 50 professor types who looked like Wilford Brimley, if Wilford Brimley smoked the ganja (they wore tweed jackets and shorts), and gawky boys-2-men. There were probably four girls present, but they were all kinda hot in a disconnected-from-their-bodies kind of way. Wolfie was having a terrible time mixing his intros—all the ditties stopped and started abruptly—but there wasn't a soul there besides me who noticed. They did get into it, though, especially the professors and some little boys who danced like Anthony Michael Hall in Sixteen Candles. When Mike Kaspar has the most rhythm in the room, you are looking at a party!

Then, during the Beastie Boys' Sabotage, the eggheads started a mosh pit, leading us to the heartwarming exclamation, “Awwww! Look at the egghead mosh pit!” They were very sweet and very nice hosts, and the beer never ran out, even though some of them seemed to be drinking.

Then our bitchen car came, and we left. Did I mention that it matched my evening gown? Fuckin' cool.

My trip to the Pierce Street Annex on Nov. 17 was all a girl could hope for and then some, at least if you're the kind of girl who hopes for supremely drunk and smelly men to grab her arm—and not let go—when she's trying to traverse the room. This is the most egregious form of bad manners in evidence at the country's finer meat markets. Here's a tip: do not stand against the wall and stop women who are trying to pass you, demand their names, and never offer your own. Such a move is pregnant with the implication that a woman's job is to come to you and satisfy your needs while you just sit still and wait. It's terribly sexist, or at least it would be if any of the girls had enough brains and awareness of the world outside their own hairdos to notice. It's even worse manners to keep holding on when the girl tries to walk away, which, let's face it, is what girls like to do just to give you a little pain. You're trying to get laid, and she's trying to get seen. She will promenade, and you will stand there. How about actually approaching a woman, instead of just manhandling her? That's good manners! There's even a sign in the bar that says so (“Talk, don't touch” and the “Rules for Beginners”), though I think just about everybody ignored it.

Despite the terrible, terrible drunks and the smelly guys, there was serious eye candy in the house—many of whom turned out to be terrible, terrible drunks and smelly guys. For instance, the handsome, handsome (but not clever—shhhh! Let's not talk!) man who insisted on dancing with OC Democratic Foundation executive director/brunette hotty Sandra Ramos even though she was wearing penny loafers (with pennies), wasn't skanked out in the slightest, and, in fact, had sobbed off all her makeup during an early screening of the dreadful, dreadful Ben Affleck/Gwyneth Paltrow bore-a-thon Bounce? (Yes, it was dreadful, but Ramos is a big softie. Luckily, she's a softie with classic bone structure.) Yes, he was handsome. But then, in the middle of their dance, he bolted upright. “I think I have to go to the bathroom,” he mumbled before leaving, presumably to go hurl.

Manners have become even worse at the heretofore charming and friendly Little Knight down the street, in addition to its shortage of handsome men. At least the morons at the Annex looked good—even the trashed, seedy old man whose first words to me were, “I'm buying a boat this weekend, gonna drive it around. I'll be over there. It's up to you.” Sadly, I can no longer recommend the Knight until it whips things into shape; it's become The Knucklehead Depot, and you just don't need to subject yourself to that. You do not! Happily, at least for our egos, a group of cute li'l 23-year-olds invited us to “come back and party” with them. Isn't that sweet? Mmmmm-bop!

Co**********@ho*****.com">Co**********@ho*****.com. I want to be alone.

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