Monday, April 30, 2007

Thursday, Part Four: The Afterparty

Let's say you have approximately five hundred authors and assorted hangers-on in a room and you release them simulatneously. Let us further state that the building where they are being held also contains a bar. If you arrive at the bar approximately thirty minutes after the release, how long does it take you to get the attention of the bartender and convince him to make you your overpriced lemon drop? *(See below for answer.)

Preparties are fun, and banquets are where the business happens, but everyone knows that the real stuff goes down at the afterparty. That is, assuming you can manage to get yourself a drink before everybody goes to bed.

Our little clutch of revelers colonized a table in the middle of the restaurant (several tables pushed together, acutally, we weren't that little of a group) and stole chairs to squeeze around it and had a grand old time until, at some point after the Dutch dentists asked us to rate their friend's ass but before the fight broke out, the alcohol and the exhaustion caught up with me and I gave up and went to bed.

*Approximately seventeen minutes, at which point a man will walk up to the bar and be served immediately, causing you to say (perhaps not quite as far under your breath as you intended) "But I've been waiting here forever", and the bartender will finally notice you and serve you next, but you will be so embarassed that you will add an overlarge tip to your already rather expensive drink. Did you get it right?

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