If there’s one thing I love, it’s camp. So, if there’s a second thing I love, it’s Liberace. My grandparents have lived in Las Vegas for more than twenty years, and I’ve been visiting the (currently homeless) Liberace Museum for about as long. My house features many a tchotchke purchased at the museum’s gift shop.
So, you can only imagine how stoked I was for Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabara. From the day it was announced, I was ready. As the day of its premiere on HBO drew nearer, I knew I had to get my friends together to celebrate and watch. The campiness and fabulousness and Liberaceness were not to be denied. Now, because I currently live in Los Angeles and all my friends live in the Bay Area, the lovely Angela offered up her house and her party-planning prowess. Angela did the heavy lifting (and amazingly so!), decorating a la Lee’s “palatial kitsch” with gilded…well, everything. I brought some booze and a Jello mold. And my enthusiasm!
Guests were encouraged to dress up in Liberace-worthy duds. I opted for a sequined dress and big rings. (Photo by the lovely Adiel.)
The champagne was flowing! (Don’t worry, we weren’t getting children drunk. Club soda is just way more festive in a champagne glass!)
There were concoctions of dubious origins.
Silly photos were taken, featuring many silly faces. And apparently a beret made an appearance.
And Lee himself presided over things.
By the time the movie started, we were all pretty well in the bag. We did not have an official drinking game, but made one up as we went along. There was enough fromage in the movie that we all pretty well instinctively knew when to drink. For instance, when this happened:
A good time was had by all. A great time was had by most! (Put that on my tombstone.) I think we all need to watch the movie again because we were kind of drunk the first time, but I call that a successful evening.
Our next shindig will feature the classic film Willie Dynamite, which I foisted upon Angela and Steve when they came to visit me a few months ago. It really deserves a party.
Boom! Sharks swept the Canucks tonight! The first series sweep in Sharks history! The first team to finish a series this year. Can’t wait for round two!
Every year I take a trip back to NYC and I visit museums, see plays, walk around, drink, and eat at all my favorite places (and try to find somewhere new too). The chicken livers from Celeste on Amsterdam are must-haves. That giant plate comes and I dig in. I eat nearly the entire thing and then gobble up a bowl of gnocchi and a delicious orange-blossom grain cake for dessert. That I managed to take even a blurry picture last year is amazing because all I wanted to do was dive in. Those chicken livers are one of the highlights of my year.
I have never been to Germany, but if my experiences at German restaurants are any indication, I think I would enjoy it. Sausages, pretzels, schnapps, and the tasty concoction you see above: Berliner Weisse mit Schuss. Berliner Weisse is a semi-sour wheat beer and it’s often served mit Schuss or with a shot of syrup, usually raspberry or a lovely green woodruff-flavored Waldmeister syrup, which is my favorite (it’s also good in cheap champagne). Both ingredients can be sort of hard to track down (even many German restaurants have trouble getting them all year long), but it’s well worth it to try. (I found both in Las Vegas, which is, like, a drinker’s paradise, even far off the Strip.) The drink is light and sweet and refreshingly delicious. Plus, it’s probably the one beer you can confidently drink with a bendy straw.
