Famous People #18: David Bowie is dead
Lizzie: Early in the week, in our super-secret exclusive Gchat, Kaitlyn asks Ashley and me if we want to go to a David Bowie party on Friday at the Brooklyn Museum. James can put us on the list, she says, so it’s free, and who knows what it’ll be like, but as I said, it’s free. And we need some kind of party for this party newsletter.
Kaitlyn: We were last-minute additions to the press list and James had to ask me the name of the website I work for. This is how I found out that he does not know what I do for a living even though we have literally been friends since before he rebranded as a guy who does not wear sweatshirts that have whimsical prints in the hood lining.
I, of course, told him I work for Famous People and that the email he should list is lizzieandkaitlyn@gmail.com.
Lizzie: The day of the party we plan outfits in Gchat. Kaitlyn says she is going to wear her new glitter eyeball shirt and a striped skirt (she doesn’t) and Ashley says she is going to wear the outfit she wore on her birthday (she doesn’t) and I say I am going to wear my silver leotard (I don’t). This is a real lesson in party preparation: things are never going to turn out the way you expect them to, especially when you’re going to something called “Night of 1000 Bowies” without any David Bowie fans.
I wasn’t initially planning on putting much effort into my look — I figured there’d be enough Bowie freaks there to cover up for my lack of enthusiasm — but then the Australian dude with the nose ring who works with me said he was also going to “Night of 1000 Bowies” and was going to paint his face, and I didn’t want to end up standing out by trying not to stand out.
(I feel like I shouldn’t even need to say this, but nose ring boy did not end up painting his face).
Kaitlyn: In my defense, I didn’t lie to Lizzie on purpose, which is something I would rather die than do, obviously, and in any case it would have been a boring lie to tell. No, after work, I rushed home to discover that the glitter eyeball shirt was the color of Halloween decorations. It was also barely wide enough to cover really even the smallest of boobs, which are what I have, so I’m not sure who it is for. (Pre-teens dressing as slutty Hannah Montana for Halloween, actually, is who it’s for. It’s so cool that they get the reference!) After getting really angry for several minutes, I put on some shiny silver jeans I bought in the Target clearance section and a backless black shirt that once fell almost entirely off of my body on Avenue A. Then I went to Lizzie’s house to drink warm rosé and watch her glue glitter onto her eyelids.
We waited for Frankie, who showed up 15 minutes later, ate one dried date from the top of Lizzie’s fridge and said “I’m not going to spit it out, but I wouldn’t have another.” It might seem like it took us a very long time to actually arrive at the David Bowie party, and that life happens in the in-between. Haha, yes, ain’t that the truth. Also, according to the subway posters for the Netflix original movie Kodachrome — which I believe is Rochester, New York propaganda starring Elizabeth Olsen — “Over time, everything develops.” This is also the truth. Over time — specifically the walk from Lizzie’s apartment to the other side of Lizzie’s apartment, where I pointed to her books one by one and recited a list of which ones we had the same opinion on and which ones we had different opinions on, and which ones I had borrowed from her and which ones I also owned, but in a different format (hardcover vs. paperback vs. Kindle Cloud reader) — we realized we hadn’t eaten dinner. So, we had to make a plan to go and buy cheese pizza and then eat it near the JFK bust in Grand Army Plaza.
Then we wandered in the loose direction of the Brooklyn Museum.
Lizzie: They should’ve called this event “Night of 1000 Porta-Potties” because the block surrounding the Brooklyn Museum was lined entirely with Porta-Potties in preparation for a big running event the next day. I asked Kaitlyn and Frankie if it would be a good joke to hide in a Porta-Potty all night and jump out whenever someone at the marathon opened it the next morning. We all decided, “No, not a good joke.”
Kaitlyn: I think I said “good joke but not worth it.” Still on the way to the party, which I bet you think we never arrived at, I told everyone the story of how I met James’ boss for cocktails at the Statler Hotel during my senior year of blogging college, and he got really mad at me for giving her a copy of our college zine, in which he had written a short story about doing cocaine in the bathroom of a pizza place and having a hard time with flirting. Here’s the art I made for it, we could not afford color printing:
James, I love you. But the first line of this story is “Life has been hard on you,” and the last line is “Isn’t adulthood fun?”
Lizzie: Here’s the thing about a David Bowie party. The theme is David Bowie. Everyone is dressed like David Bowie, or the American Apparel version of him. The decorations are David Bowie’s face. The music is David Bowie. Being at a David Bowie party when you’re not a David Bowie fan is like being at a chili cook-off when you’re allergic to chili: there’s nothing in it for you. I’m not saying all parties need to be tailored to my personal tastes, but I am saying I would prefer it that way.
Kaitlyn: I paid $11 for a glass of merlot and Lizzie paid $11 for a glass of prosecco. By the time James got there, the line for the bar was 100 people deep and for once I am not exaggerating. There were 4 bartenders x 2 bars (total: 8 bartenders) for 1,000 Bowies. We kept saying “Our options are to dance or get super drunk,” but since we couldn’t do the latter we couldn’t really do the former either.
Ashley showed up two hours late in a dress that was partly transparent vinyl, with a new set of purple glitter acrylics, and told us she had just eaten prime rib. This is a classic way for Ashley to show up. I love it like you love the moment of squinting at the front of an oncoming train and realizing it’s the train you need, not the other train that stops on the same track but gets you nowhere useful.
Lizzie: The best part of the night was trying and failing to get into the actual David Bowie exhibit at the museum. We climbed 17 flights of stairs to get to the 5th floor and were told we needed to buy different tickets to get into the exhibit, and that our “position” on the “press list” wouldn’t get us anywhere. To make myself feel better, I took close-up photos of a bunch of Renaissance painting people making weird faces and sent them to basically anyone I’ve ever texted.
Kaitlyn: It’s true! I got one. Then we left. James was supposed to meet us at Washington Commons but he ultimately pulled the trick where you say “I’ll meet you there” and then text “I have an early day” like 10 minutes later.
I don’t blame him. He lives in Park Slope now and has to act this way. Anyway, Scarface was playing on the TV at the bar, yet Lizzie got yelled at for asking for a Miller High Life — a riddle I haven’t yet solved. Ashley and her friend from California went to Doris, where she met a furniture maker whose Instagram account features a close-up photo of his finger taken, apparently, just after it was sewed back on to his body. Back at my apartment, Katie and Tamar were watching the Lifetime original movie about Meghan Markle, eating mini Twix bars and using a… Juul? I don’t know. I said thank you to James and sent him a crescent moon emoji, to remind him that he is lovely, and better than nothing, but not living up to his full potential.
It rained all morning and Frankie went to three bodegas to find a newspaper, which turned out not to have any photos from the royal wedding because it had happened only four hours prior. We completely missed everything, including @clocarus’ insightful commentary on the royal wedding, and including David Bowie’s life, which ended a while ago, and which didn’t affect any of us very much when it was happening.
PARTY REVIEW METRICS
Did anyone bring a dog?
Lizzie: No, but I did find this gleefully deranged Telegraph article about how David Bowie’s dog had two different colored eyes: “The late singer's dog has differing eye colours, it can now be revealed.” Perhaps distracted by the groundbreaking revelation, the Telegraph fails to ever name the dog.
Kaitlyn: I kind of thought Lizzie only read The Daily Beast, so this is all big news to me.
Did anyone get engaged?
Lizzie: Oh god, probably. What a nightmare!
Kaitlyn: It’s hard to think of ticketed events that would be good settings for a marriage proposal. Right now all that’s coming to mind is the Jell-O Museum in Avon, New York (which charges $5 for admission but you can pay $2 more to also get into the terrible Women’s History Museum next door), and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom — the park or the movie. And the Met Gala.
Did we hear any good secrets?
Lizzie: Does the David Bowie dog story count?
Kaitlyn: Do Lizzie’s reading habits count?
Did anyone get famous?
Lizzie: No, but we spent all night naming famous people we’d like to see at the Bowie party, like Mike Birbiglia, Chris Gethard, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. We didn’t see any of them.
Kaitlyn: The crowd parted, and we saw Fox News liberal talking head Sally Kohn, who recently got herself into some trouble. Good enough, we thought, and “That’s Sally Kohn!” I yelled. I sort of imagined we would run into New York Times music critic Jon Caramanica again, because wouldn’t that just be the way life goes? But, at least this time, it wasn’t.
PARTY SCORE:
Lizzie: 2 Bowies
Kaitlyn: Out of 1,000.