What's My Line?
Before we get into the details of the most glittering night imaginable, I'd like to remind you that I'll be live on stage in What's My Line at the Acme Comedy Theatre tomorrow night.
It's a very fun show with surprise celebrity guests and interesting panelists, not including myself. I'm just there for the free coffee.
The show lasts about an hour, so you'll be home in plenty of time to take your Metamucil and watch Judging Amy, or whatever the hell you people do on a Wednesday night.
See you there!
Night Of About 15 Stars
As you know, John and I attended the Emmys Sunday night, along with Mick and our friend Jorge. This is the first year I've gone, mainly because the Academy mentioned my dad in the memorial segment, and I just felt like I wanted to be there.
The good times started when the limo arrived. Apparently Mick attempted to do a little name dropping with the limo company, and mentioned me. This was a real roll of the dice, because most people have no idea in hell who I am. Luckily for him, the owner is a talk radio fan, and immediately offered Mick "an upgrade".
What this translated to was a 14 person white Excursion limo. For the four of us. This thing had three full bars, two plasma screens and a fiber optic multi colored light show. I couldn't decide if I felt more like a prom queen or Suge Knight.
The drive was fairly uneventful, save for trying to keep cocktails from slopping out onto our fabulous clothes. The men were all decked out in tuxedos, and I wore a black Armani dress with elbow length leather gloves. We looked amazing. I'd show you the pictures but, well, we'll get to that in a minute.
When we got off the freeway, we started making our way down surface streets to the Shrine, and let me tell you, this was not easy. Many streets were closed off, and we found ourselves in a sea of limos, inching our way forward.
It occurred to us that anyone of any importance in television was stuck here, and it became apparent that it had occurred to someone else as well. Because we soon found ourselves alongside a parked car with a huge photograph of an aborted fetus hooked up the roof rack.
I wasn't quite sure what this was supposed to accomplish, but I desperately wanted a photo of it. The juxtaposition of all these limos full of media heavyweights creeping by this horrible poster made me giddy. Mick even suggested we all get out in our finery and pose with it, which I thought was brilliant, but we weren't moving quite slowly enough to pull that off. Instead, I duck walked over to the southernmost bar and attempted to take a photo through the window.
My camera was dead. All my dreams of capturing the cast of CSI for posterity went up in smoke.
I guess I don't really care about that so much, because thanks to Tivo, we can see Marg Hellgenberger whenever we like. No, it's the fact that there are no pictures of the four of us looking like Hollywood royalty that really pisses me off. I think Jorge may have gotten one or two pictures in the limo, but he was well into the Jack by then, so who the hell knows?
We finally got to the turn off for limos with special passes. I didn't think there was any way we were going to get through, but our driver Edgar turned that tank around like it was a Prius.
Speaking of which, we all decided that a stretch Prius would be the ultimate Hollywood Irony. A hybrid limo. Someone has to get on that. I can just see Ed Begley, Jr. getting out of one. I mean, if he had somewhere to go.
Anyway, we got through the cones and only hit one small barricade, but who's counting? We crawled through side streets along the marked route, and wound up in a very long line outside the Shrine. This is where it really got interesting.
First, we saw the protesters. They were definitely taking it up a notch here, as the presumption would be that limos in this area were either presenters, nominees or other people of importance (and I think my presence there shows just how foolish it is to make assumptions).
The first set of signs instructed us as to who would be going to hell. We all peered out the windows, hoping our names would be called. And we were not disappointed! Among the helbound:
Seeing as that's everyone in Hollywood, the after party in hell is going to kick ass.
Now came the really good part. All that traffic had made everyone pretty late. The Academy has a strict rule that the doors to the Shrine close at 4:45 sharp, so if you aren't there, you aren't getting in, no matter who you are.
We all kept looking at the clock, because we were hovering at about 4:36 and not moving all the quickly. We could see that part of the hold up was some of the most intense security imaginable. Hundreds of cops, looking inside everyone's limos and trunks.
We started to see people getting out of their limos, hoping to simply walk down the block to the Shrine, but the police were not having it. Everyone attempting this was told to get back in their cars, and the tension was mounting.
I looked out my window and saw a man in a tux attempting to negotiate with a cop, waving his arms and pointing to his watch.
"Hey", I said, "Isn't that the guy from Scrubs?" Sure enough, Zach Braff was standing on the corner in a tux in the shttiest part of L.A., arguing with a cop. Apparently the cop didn't much care for Garden State, because Zach was instructed to get back into his limo and wait.
A few minutes later, we saw Jack from Will & Grace walking up to the same cop. "Look!" I shouted, "Seth MacFarlane!" John looked at me like I had two heads. "April, that's Sean Hayes. Seth MacFarlane is from Family Guy." Hey, what do you want from me? I'm a liberal unsubmissive wife.
When we rounded the corner and arrived at the red carpet, Academy officials were knocking on every limo window, asking if there were any presenters inside. A few limos ahead the answer was yes, and a golf cart was dispatched to take Whoopi Goldberg straight to the stage. It was all terribly exciting.
But not as exciting as what was yet to come!
When we actually got out of the limo, we had three minutes before the doors closed. We couldn't meander as we may have liked along the red carpet, but we did manage to get more glamour and excitement in those three minutes than most people get in a lifetime.
First, we saw Sandra Oh, just steps away, modeling her dress for the camera. She was the tiniest human being I ever saw. Seriously. If she doesn't brace herself when she sneezes, her head will snap off.
"Look Mick," I said, "it's Sandra Oh!". "Who?", he asked. "Sandra Oh! See?". I pointed to her.
"Oh," Mick said, "that flat-faced chick from Sideways.". And I think this explains why we weren't invited to the Governor's Ball.
A few steps further and we saw Joan Rivers in her TV Guide hut, doing her tired spiel with Melissa "Why The Long Face" Rivers.
Now, I want to say something about Joan.
A lot has been said about Joan's appearance. People make fun of all her plastic surgeries, and to be fair, she doesn't photograph very well. But seeing her in person is another story.
This may surprise you, but in the flesh, Joan Rivers actually looks worse.
The word that comes to mind is "desiccated". She looks like an apple doll covered in pancake make-up. And I don't know what the hell kind of outfit she had on, but it looked like an old skating costume from Tai Babalonia's storage unit.
And now comes the highlight of my entire evening. As we turned the corner, just to the left of us, hugging and glad handing like an old Hollywood has been, which in fact he now is, was Clay Aiken.
Really, I could have gone home right then and there. And I probably should have.
I won't bore you with details of the show itself, which you've all seen. Instead I'll tell you about my second favorite moment of the evening, which happened on the way out.
We had pushed our way through hundreds of people to get out onto the curb and wait for the car. There we stood, watching people load up, admiring the horrible dresses and bad hairdos, when we noticed that we were about 4 feet away from Tom Brokaw. He was drinking a bottle of water and waiting to get into his limo.
John looked over at him, jerked his chin and yelled, "Hey T-Bone!"
I looked at John in awe. "Did you just call Tom Brokaw 'T-Bone'?"
"Yeah," John said. "He likes it."
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