The awards show. It’s the ultimate reason for a bunch of
celebrities to dress up and get together in the same room to
congratulate one another on being fabulous. Plus, with the
paparazzi lined up along the red carpet, the open bar, and the
afterparty, it makes for a glorious affair to which every regular
Us Weekly reader covets the prospect of scoring an invitation.
And finally, after years of watching awards shows on TV and
looking at pictures of stars such as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan
dancing the night away after the main event, I managed to finagle
my way into attending an awards show. OK, so it wasn’t the
Oscars or the Emmys, or even that other awards show that’s
been on a Britney Spears-style downward spiral, the VMAs. It was
Hollywood Life’s Hollywood Style Awards on Sunday night.
Needless to say, it didn’t take long for me to realize
that my dream of rubbing elbows with celebs and, at long last,
becoming part of the Hollywood crowd would come crashing down
around me like the vase I knocked over after stumbling home from
Margarita Monday last week.
First of all, like most of Westwood, I couldn’t resist
going out after the game on Saturday night. The result of this
college blunder meant that I showed up to the awards with a
hangover and having eaten the subsequent
morning-after-drinking-heavily breakfast, while the rest of the
people in attendance had been practicing the Hollywood diet of
water and a tablespoon of olive oil to look their skinniest in the
days leading up to the event.
Then there was the minor detail that my invitation wasn’t
so much an invite to party as it was to volunteer at the event. My
roommate and I were each handed a staff badge upon arrival, but we
managed to take them off in the bathroom after avoiding the people
who would assign us to do actual work.
And, as you probably know, there are two entrances to the event
““ the red carpet, and then the one for all the normal people.
Let’s just say that my feet never touched the red carpet.
I believe it was sometime during the first 10 minutes of
standing awkwardly by the bar watching all the stylists and
designers and actresses who actually knew each other mingling that
the reality set in. We didn’t know anyone there, and just
because we had managed to get in and I could stare at Nicole Richie
from a close enough distance to make her visibly uncomfortable, it
didn’t mean we belonged. It was like being back in the junior
high cafeteria and being sentenced to the dork table ““ you
might be able to see the popular kids, but that didn’t make
you one of them.
The awards show itself was a little bit better, kind of like
being in class in junior high. Everyone takes a seat and
doesn’t talk, so it doesn’t really matter who you are
when you listen to celebs get up and tell personal stories about
one another or themselves at the podium. And you get to learn
interesting E!-worthy facts such as how Taryn Manning was on that
infamous Jet Blue flight that had the landing gear down and that,
to the disappointment of all the males in the room, Carmen Electra
announced she had moved past her stripper phase. It looks as though
Midwestern housewives who want to slim down their waistlines and
spice things up in the bedroom shouldn’t expect a
“Striptease Workout, Volume 2″ video.
Anyway, after the show, we all filed over to the afterparty,
which was like the pre-awards cocktail party, but in a cooler
setting and with food tables. I shouldn’t have to say that my
roommate and I camped out next to one of the food displays and
looked at the people we didn’t know all talking with each
other and virtually ignoring us, junior-high-dance-style. We
finally accepted the fact that there would be no dancing on tables
with Nicole Richie that night, and decided it would probably be
better to start off the first week of fall quarter with a full nine
hours of sleep.
Forget Hollywood awards shows. I’d much rather be at
Maloney’s, where everybody knows my name.
Despite what she says, Rodgers still really does want to go
to Hollywood awards shows. Feel free to invite her to be your
“+1″ at
jrodgers@media.ucla.edu.