The World's Longest Dinner (or, be careful of your waitress at the Tate Modern, she just might be an EEL)

I just came back from the World's Longest Dinner Party. It lasted for 8 days. These things do- they're either very long or very short. I try and make them about 10 minutes, people are rarely interesting after that. But this dinner party ended up being...an interesting social experiment.

The party itself was one of those social events that involve food and people and people wearing clothes. There's also "small talk" at these social events- the conversation generally goes like:
Person one: Mutter mutter OH YES mutter.
Person two: Flatter flatter flatter DON'T YOU LOOK GOOD flatter.
And so on.

If Donatella, Coco bless her plastic soul, is involved in the party it will go something like this:
Person one: Honour honour flatter flatter ITALIAN FOOD flatter
Donatella: Mutter LOOK AT MY MEDUSA LIPS mutter mutter

Meanwhile, if Anna is involved in a the party conversation with her would sound something like this:
Person one: Fear idol fear loathing fear honour-to-meet-you fear.
Anna: Hello.
20 minutes later.
Anna: BLERGddhdDSHSSIEYRDnhcsjcfscnscjscDDJDAcfbsjfbafbsjfbsoaiddhdbJCJNJNCSCA.

Which is why Anna does not go to many parties. She really can enunciate tha many letters than fast. It's something of a party trick. By 2 hours later, Anna will have mistaken most of the guests for deer and start shooting them. It's all that time she's spent at my place in Vermont.

If I were to sum up the dinner party I went to mathematically, we could say that it was 80% "You DO look good" and so on, 5% Donatella and 7.5% Anna- the rest being the people Anna shot at the party, with a tiny dash of Tom Ford attempting to direct a movie with his Sony camera.

The press clippings from the party probably would read something like this:
"Anna Wintour shot 12 people at a party recently, held by the fabulous Mr. and Mrs. So and so. When interviewed by the police about the incident, she claims that she mistook several guests of the party as deer, and proceeded to shoot them as she would do on Karl Lagerfeld's Vermont property. The people were not eaten, and are now in the good care of graveyards. Chef to the stars, Mr. Somesuch, worries about the waste of food: "Well in this resseccion, you've gotta take everything you can for food. When I was a little boy growing up in Scotland, we had to eat food out of newspapers. Nay, we had to eat it off the ground! Nay, we had to eat it at sea level!
Meanwhile, Ms. Wintour has entered into a plea bargain with the police about the unfortunate incident. She will make gun safety commericals to screen in September- "a faaaabulous tie-in to the "September Issue", Large Editor of American Vogue, Andre Leon Talley said. Ms. Wintour also said that she did not intend on shooting anyone else, although she believes guns will be a big accessory in summer 09. More on this exciting accessory story as it happens."

Of course, that story will never be published because here at Chanel, we have a certain power over the elite. It isn't good publicity to have editors going around killing people, you know. Deer or not deer. The fabulous Mr. and Mrs. So and So ended up holding everyone hostage for 8 days, where there was much chit-chat that went around the lines of "prison uniform is SO not chic," and "flatter DON'T YOU LOOK GOOD," as the fabulously well-to-do guests were not so much air heads as helium heads, unaware that Mr. So and So were holding them hostage. Eventually, everyone signed the criminal equivalent of a post-nup (a post-shoot?) and they were allowed to leave, air-kissing everyone until the only things left to kiss were themselves, which they did with remarkable dexterity. And that was dinner.

Shoes

Yesterday I was in NY at some boring dinner that Anna was hosting. Is it possible for a more boring guest list? There were all these 50ish women who thought they were 30 and dressed like they were 20. They all look the same. Blond hair, tight face, lips painted a ghastly shade of red; wears a dress with too many frills by some dullard who saw a couture show and said to himself "right, couture=frills". They talk like they're perpetually happy in this stilted manner. "Hello! Karl. How, are, you?".
Really- a comma is too long for their pauses between words, it needs to be a half-comma. But each word is pushed out with a kind of forced happiness which is dreadful to watch.

So I was at a table with all these women, and their husbands (who aren't even worth mentioning. They all seemed to be named "Henry" or "John". I'm not even sure if they were real. Maybe they're cardboard cutouts). And I'm fuming behind my glasses, so I decide to play games.

"Heheheh", I think to myself.
"What was that?" says one of the blond women. Anna calls them socialites. I call them the living dead.
Anyway, it seems I said that outloud and the blond women looked rather mortified like I'd just committed some great faux pas or something.
"Heheheh" I say again. It's a sort of sinister chuckle. I do it when viewing the new bags at Chanel. It produces good results.
"Oh...erm" says the Living Dead Woman..."do you like my shoes?"
"They're delicious. I could eat them up with my bare hands, rip them apart with my tounge and have Martin Margiela re-assemble them into something else." I say.
"Te-he-he-hee" titters Living Dead Woman. Like she knows something's happening but she doesn't know what it is.
"Could I see your shoes closer, hmmm?"
"Sure."

And she actually takes off her foot with the shoe on it, and gives it to me.
She takes off her foot.
"Hmm?"
"Oh, detachable feet. They're all the rage here in NY. A different set of feet for every different pair of shoes. One for the Jimmy's....one for the Prada's....you know" says she.
"Ah."

"So what do you think of the shoes?"