Here it is at last:

Museo Gala

Wednesday evening's gala in celebration of El Museo del Barrio, the city's most prominent venue for Latin American art, was somewhat more splendid than I had expected from an event associated with something else with the word "barrio" in it (apparently, "barrio" is not Spanish for "ghetto," even though the terms are functionallyinterchangeable throughout much of the U.S., but rather equates to the more neutral term of "neighborhood"). Banquet reservations were going for, I believe, somewhere around $25,000, which seems like quite a bit until you realize that the price includes a shrimp cocktail for everyone at the table.

We arrived before most anyone else save the waiters. Gloria Estefan was running around the banquet area singing into a microphone, presumably as a warm-up; later, I noted with appreciation that Senora Estefan seemed to be very approachable, and was happily talking to random attendees for minutes at a stretch - centuries when measured in happily-talking-to-attendees time. Still later, I find out that this was actually a Gloria Estefan impersonator, as the real one had cancelled. At any rate, she was nice.

The guests began to stream in. One gringa with fashionably-cropped hair was wearing what I assume to be a hoop skirt insomuch as that I've heard the term a number of times and would seem to apply to this particular skirt, which had a diamater of perhaps five feet. I made a note to keep an eye on her so that I could find out how she would accomplish otherwise-basic tasks like walking around, but she wisely decided to just stand still in a corner for much of the evening. Well played, Fashionable Hoop Skirt Chick.

At some point, I realized that Governor Patterson was standing nearby for some reason or another. No sooner had I spotted him then a band of mariachis materialized from out of nowhere and began serenading him; then, gala co-chair Yaz Hernandez presented the governor with a birthday cake (it was, I gathered, the governor's birthday). Patterson seemed pleased enough with all of this; there probably aren't a whole lot of places Patterson can go to these days where he's likely to be sung to and presented with cake.

That spectacle having eventually ended, I tried to eavesdrop on people. This was made difficult by the fact that most of the attendees were speaking in Spanish, a language I've mostly forgotten except for a few random words and phrases learned mostly in school; I was only able to determine that nobody was asking anybody else how to get to the shoe store or telling them to sit down and be quiet because Spanish class had begun.

A few stately old WASPs of the sort that could be cast as nothing other than stately old WASPS had they been actors instead of stately old WASPS could be seen here and there, travelling in husband-and-wife couples. When two sets of couples bumped into each other, they would naturally initiate the Protestant Polite Consersation Ballet, with wives pairing off to step a few feet away and discuss charming things that they'd recently put in their homes, and the men remaining at the original meeting spot to hold conversations about books they've been reading about Marines or about Marines assaulting Fallujah or about other things that Marines have done in the past or may be expected to be called upon to do in the future. A childhood spent in part among the wealthy of Dallas saved me the trouble of eavesdropping on any of them.

One presumably Scotch fellow showed up in a kilt. Take that, Latin culture!

I was eventually hit on by a gay Latin fellow who approached me apropos of nothing and tried to hit on me by making enthusiastic small talk about what a splendid event this was. Or perhaps he wasn't hitting on me at all, but simply just wanted to tell someone how he felt about the event. At any rate, I agreed with him that the event was very splendid. I myself later went through the motions of hitting on a pretty Muscovite emigre, but gave up after deciding that she was too good for me. Or maybe she decided that and I just picked up on it. Anyway, the drinks were free.

When it came time for the real participants to go enjoy their dinners - and let's hope they enjoyed them very much - Benjamin the photographer and Sonia the publicist and I headed departed for the Bowery to check out the Make-a-Wish Foundation benefit at Antik, which also served as the venue for one of the GEN ART film festival's after-parties a couple of months back (apparently, I pissed off all of the organizers right down to the Three Olive Vodka promotional people by way of my somewhat mean-spirited write-up on that one). One of the two rooms that make up the venue was being used for a silent auction with prizes of varied levels of desirability ranging from things I would pay for (a Rolling Stones album autographed by what I assume to be all of the Rolling Stones) to things I wouldn't even bother to steal (a copy of The F-Factor Diet).

Like most events of this sort, the Make-a-Wish thing was attended largely by people who had no intention of actually bidding on items or even giving donations at the door, which made me feel better about not bidding on items or even giving a donation at the door. I tried interviewing a fellow who looked like he might have been someone worth interviewing, but he didn't seem to agree that he was worth interviewing, and I eventually came to agree with him. Later, I was somehow introduced to a fellow from Mexico City who works for the United Nations in the capacity of an economic analyst or some such thing; he gave me an impromptu but enjoyable lecture on how U.S. policy was either totally responsible or not to blame at all for the global financial crisis (I should take better notes), and I remember agreeing with him very strongly about whatever it was that he was saying. Then the two of us made an attempt to hit on a pair of young beauty pageant winners (they were wearing their sashes and everything, although I've forgotten what states they had won). Incredibly enough, they declined to sleep with us.