Team Party Crash: Young Lions Benefit
Seriously, we read books.
When the invitation to the New York Public Library's Young Lions Benefit arrived in our inbox, we contained our excitement. After all, what sane person chooses to spend an evening at a freaking LIBRARY? Scary shit happens at those things, right? So we called in a favor and sent Gawker special correspondent K. Eric Walters**** and fearless photographer Jennifer Snow instead.
Turns out we did the right thing. Julia Stiles, Ivanka Trump, Moby, and an AWOL Ethan Hawke after the jump...
The title of the gala sparked what little imagination I had left: "Literary Havana: The New York Public Library's 2005 Benefit Takes Inspiration from Ernest Hemingway's Cuba." The PR people obviously didn't have Ernest's gift for clarity. Nevertheless, I liked the idea. Machismo. Booze. Courage. Latin sex. A night for a man to live like a man.
I entered the 42nd Street landmark, ready for a serious clusterfuck.
"Hemingway drank mojitos, too!"
The dinner opened in Astor Hall with the president of the NYPL speaking incomprehensibly into the microphone. "....Flamingo....15 million books...9 million manuscripts....thank you..." Celebrities and the slightly famous were sprinkled around the room: Julia Stiles, Ivanka Trump, Moby, Jaime Johnson. Among them were the usual media suspects and lots of fashion editors, including what seemed like the entire masthead of Teen Vogue. Ethan Hawke, aka Honorary Co-Chair of 2005 Young Lions, was nowhere to be seen.
Not Ethan Hawke.
Dinner rolled out. Grilled Shrimp. Grilled Rib eye. Crisp Banana Tart. The evening moved on, slabs of bloody meat sitting awkwardly on many a vegetarian plate. The degenerates in attendance headed out on a small balcony to smoke cigars before dessert. I approached supermodel and very wealthy chick Ivanka Trump, staring at the leafy gold earrings she had "borrowed from a friend." I mustered up the courage to ask her a stupid question.
Ivanka Trump, expert on 20th century American literature.
"Would you rather be a boxer or a bullfighter?" A bullfighter, she said, because of the "tight Spanish pants that are so cute." Emboldened, I continued: "Your favorite Hemingway?" Now she's game. "The Sun Also Rises. I love Hemingway." She then waxed eloquently on Papa the complex relationship between antagonist and protagonist etc and recommended that I read his short story, The Dimly Lit Room. "You'll read it, and you'll watch for yourself the moment when he turns from author to drunk." Ivanka at least could read, which is more than I suspected of most in attendance. [Doesn't she mean A Clean Well-Lighted Place? Ed. Who knows. I was looking at her "earrings." -KEW]
An unidentified Castro sympathizer; reads only Cond Nast publications.
NYPL President Paul LeClerc knows chicks love guys with a huge stack.
Next on my famous person checklist was Julia Stiles. She also chose "bullfighter" for fashion reasons and said her favorite Hemingway was Old Man and the Sea. By this time, Moby had apparently fled. I didn't mind. A quote from him was as valuable as the hyper-inflated Bolivian peso. But where was Mr. Hawke, currently starring in coke-drama Hurlyburly with an 8:00 curtain call?
Julia Stiles with her Latin heartthrob, Jonathan Cramer, who is also not Ethan Hawke.
A Havana flower or someshit.
Classier than us.
About as classy as us.
To find him, I ventured to the main event of the evening in the Celeste Bartos Ballroom a samba dance, $150 a ticket. When members of NYPL do samba, it is not a pretty sight. Latin tunes played, cut with the occasional Michael Jackson hit. Young couples twirled madly. The dance floor was covered in broken glass, the of result open bars on each side of the room. It reminded me of a poorly planned Bar Mitzvah, even though I'm not a Jew. The common refrain: let's go to Bungalow 8, weeeeeehhhh!
"I'll pay for the cab to B8...if you sleep with me..."
Hudson Morgan and Derek Blasberg, overtly displaying Hemingway subtext.
"Do these yellow ruffles make my ass look big?" Yes, yes they do.
And Hawke? I asked a man standing next to me. He turned out to be the executive producer of The Daily Show, Ben Karlin. He seemed to think it was a very stupid question, but not as stupid as the follow-up. Had he read any Hemingway to get in the mood for tonight? "We read the Patron label," he said. "It had more truth in it than any single book in this entire edifice."
Moments later, a PR flak broke the news: didn't look like Ethan was coming. On the bright side, around $500,000 had been raised for the cause of preserving literature. I called it a night, but not before trying to check out a copy of The Dimly Lit Room. Security stopped me. They told me the library was closed.
****Still trying to hold onto day job.
