![[h2so4]](../h2so4-logo.gif){kind=logo}
|
Maxim Motel
Party, Los Angeles
My friends Linda Liang and Scott MacBlane are the photo editors for Maxim magazine. During my month in New York this last summer, I had one of those wild, entirely too alcohol-fueled nights with them, during which: I was told not to stand on my chair at abar; we all drank, during the course of the evening, frozen mai tais, sugar cane alcohol, vodka, bourbon and red wine; Heidi met an Italian academic man who (like me) had studied with Giorgio Agamben and who spent the whole evening trying to sleep with her; Heidi, in a very drunken state, actually approached me (as I waited in line for the bathroom at some photographer’s party) to ask (prompted by “La the Italian guy”) whether I would like to have a three way with her and him; I, in a very drunken state, instead of just saying no, offered up a painstaking and exceedingly rational argument for why I would not like to do so; Heidi sat down in awading pool fully clothed and called Marian on her cell phone; Heidi then wore her soaking-wet dress to the next stop in our evening, a bar, where she made a pool on the floor; other details I’ll leave out in case my grandma reads this.
So anyway, at about 5 am we were all at Florent eating food and drinking that stupid red wine Scott had ordered, when suddenly I was called upon to promise I would go to Los Angeles for the Maxim magazine party. And I did promise, having been told by Scott that he would hunt me down and kill me if I didn’t show up.
And that is how I came to spend $150 to fly to Los Angeles for 24 hours in September, with Evany Thomas at my side.
And oh what a party! Maxim rented out an entire motel and set up 21 theme rooms (i.e., the s&m room, the karaoke room, the rock gods room, the room made of cheese, the prom night room, the romance room, the gambling room, etc.) All the liquor was free and flowing, and in every room there were free things being given away and drinks being pushed on visitors. Plus, The Cult played! I think I must have been either lying on the heart-shaped vibrating bed trying to lomograph myself in the ceiling mirror, sitting in the voyeur room watching other rooms, or watching the foxy bellydancer while The Cult played, because somehow I managed to miss their whole set. (I read later in US Weekly that Matthew McConaughey was front and center during the performance. Damn! But Beck was nowhere in sight!)
When I got the film developed, this is what I found photos of: Evany on a bed with four midget women dressed like KISS; Evany and I on that vibrating heart-shaped bed, taken in the ceiling mirror, very blurry; Evany writing on the wall in the graffiti room by means of an El Marko in her mouth; the back of Linda’s right calf in her foxy chaps-like red designer pants (was I laying on the floor?); Evany singing R-E-S-P-E-C-T with a bunch of male back-up singers in what must have been the karaoke room; my cleavage in front of a velvet painting of gambling dogs; many, many ofthose hand-held let’s-take-a-picture-of-the-two-of-us, way-too-close-up shots....
Anyway, it was indeed a VERY GOOD PARTY. It was exactly what a party is supposed to be: trashy, drunken, disorderly, wild, experimental, and enough to keep you smiling for days. Please, don’t ever grow up so much that you stop enjoying such parties altogether! I beseech you!
The thing about having a party in a motel: there is a bathroom in every room! No lines!
The party got closed down by the riot cops at, like, 11:00 pm! Lucky me that I started at the party so early, having to get there ahead of time with my Maxim-connected friends. Poor September cover girl Kirsten Dunst never even got into the party. And then there were the riot police who were so Los Angeles-freakishlyhandsome that I thought they were extras hired for show. Until they pushed me and Scott started screaming about not pushing women in heels. Indeed, Evany, Linda and I had all chosen fashion over comfort for the evening. We made our way, tired, drunk, our dogs a-barking, desperately looking for a cab (in Los Angeles), back to the Sunset Marquis, for the classic failed attempt at reviving a party back in a hotel room. Indeed we were in bed with room service sandwiches by the time Conan O’Brien was on.