The Australian Romance Readers Conference opened with a lovely evening reception followed the next day by a slate of panels, keynotes, and signings.

Five out of six of the main speakers  at the event were American (MaryJanice Davidson, Susan Grant, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Dianna Love and me!), and to my great pleasure I knew them all from prior events.  MaryJanice Davidson set the bar high with the opening keynote.  She’s as hilarious in person as she is on paper. That’s her on the left and Sue Grant on the right.

My first panel session, This One Time At Band Camp (anecdotes by the authors about things in their personal life that influenced scenes in their books),  followed in the afternoon.  Alongside me on the panel: MaryJanice Davidson, Susan Grant, and Australian author Amy Andrews who writes medical romances for Harlequin. 

Susan talked about being a pilot and a fighter jet instructor and eradicated any interest in The Mile High Club the audience might have ever had.  

Amy described the assorted and sundry items some of her patients had “stuck up their bums” (she said one of them had a kind of moose jammed up there and only after I parsed the accent did I realize it was not a kind of moose but a can of mousse.  Sigh.)  

I shared a couple of tales from my Antarctica years (favorites included my description of the hot scuba diver scientists killing their own hotness by wearing brown furry onesies out at the bar plus the story about the dude who thew a party for the fruitfly he found in the lettuce shipped out from New Zealand).

MaryJanice mostly mocked the rest of us panelists, which had everybody in stitches. 

After the panel I went to lunch at Victoria Market with Sherrilyn Kenyon and Dianna Love who seem to be on permanent tour. Surely world domination should be within their reach by now, already. As always, spending time with them is a hoot–I should have had them on my Band Camp panel because the stories they tell…

A booksigning followed in the afternoon and the welcome here from the Australian readers was FABULOUS.  Everybody seemed so happy the Americans had made the trip; it was such a delight.  I sat next to Sue and we both signed books and programs and cover flats and met lots of readers–some who were already fans of our work and some who were just excited to try our work for the first time.

Amongst the readers was Tez Miller (there in the middle!), whom I knew prior only as an online friend.  Tez has always been so supportive and it was really a treat to meet her in person.

The infamous Rosemary (center) of Rosemary’s Romance Bookshop in Brisbane was also there. Here she is with Sue (left) and Sherrilyn Kenyon (right).

A few of the readers had made the trip to the U.S. to attend a prior RWA or RT event, but most were new friends. Here are a few reader snaps:

After the signing, we had a short break and then reconvened for the gala dinner. (I so love the word, “gala”) Everybody went upstairs and made themselves all swanky-looking and then we met downstairs again for dinner.

Sue, MaryJanice & Anthony, and I were all assigned to the same table. Our table included several lovely readers and a couple of the most entertaining academics I have ever met. (Yay, Toni and Glen!) The food was incredible. The best conference food I have EVER had, no contest. And the wine did not stop flowing. Hilarity ensued. I seriously don’t remember the last time I had so much fun at a, ahem, “professional” event.

BONUS VIDEO:

Sue Grant and I had a lot of problems ordering coffee. Of all things to cause a great cultural divide, it was coffee that threw us for the biggest loop. Our barista, Simon, was Seinfeldian in his disdain for our inability to order properly, and I believe he actually started screwing with our minds. On one day, a TALL BLACK was two espresso shots cut with hot water, the next it had no hot water in it, and the next the order itself simply didn’t exist as a coffee form at all.

Here’s a track of Australian Bek explaining some slang and then Sue explaining her coffee issues.  The video quality is kinda funky at first but it smooths out when it gets to Sue Grant.  I think I figured out that I need a higher-powered computer, believe it or not.  This sad, little fujitsu chip isn’t processing the Flip video easily.  SIGH.  Buy a $200 video gadget only to find out you need a new $1500 computer.  Whatevs.  Press Play.  Have a go.  See what you get.  I’ll work on getting better quality in the future.

Cheers!

Liz

Personally, I’m still recovering from the majesty of Marianne puking into her makeup bag at NYC Fashion Week (I told her she sounded like a very special episode of Ugly Betty and that her solution showed true calm in the face of crisis.  I’m also making a mental note never to borrow her lipgloss again.  Not even the stuff from Dior.), but since I can’t be there with my own special brand of mockery/commiseration, I’ll just get back to the business of blogging the con in Australia.

When last I blogged, I was off to dinner.  Dinner turned out to be a fantastic Greek feast at Melbourne’s Tsindos.  Platter after platter of seafood and meat and dipping sauces and pita and salads arrived at the table in a orgy of food the likes of which I haven’t seen since the last time I stuffed myself in wild culinary abandon.  (Which wasn’t that long ago, but I don’t suppose you need to know that sort of detail.)

While I must give MAJOR PROPS to Melbourne for living up to –and surpassing– the expectations of this here foodie, I do have one small quibble.  There was a lot of food left over and we weren’t able to take it because it’s illegal for restaurants to send food home with customers.  Yes, you heard me.  The city government of Melbourne is concerned that I will not properly refrigerate my leftovers, will contract some hideous disease due to lack of said refrigeration and will die.  Thank you for your concern, Melbourne, but I’d really like some of that leftover souvlaki right about now.

Except now that I mock my host city I realize that clearly…CLEARLY if Marianne had been similarly culinarily legislated in such a way back in the U.S., she would not have found herself vomiting amongst the socialites in New York City.  Clearly. 

Except now that I mock Marianne, it occurs to me that vomiting amongst the socialites in New York City is a really good bonding experience.  I mean, they’re probably ALL vomiting at Fashion Week.  Nice networking move, Mare!

But I digress.

So we had this AMAZING Greek meal and chatted with our lovely conference hosts.  A perfect way to start the week.  But it gets better.  What’s as perfect as great food and great people in a great city?  Number one bestsellers come mighty close.  Here’s me at the dinner shooting video of Dianna Love toasting Sherrilyn Kenyon for her sixth consecutive Dark Hunter #1 bestseller…with a bonus shot of MaryJanice Davidson throwing in a shout-out to…Evil. 

You sure you got all that? 

That’s Sherrilyn on the left, Dianna Love toasting on the right, me saying “And that was MJ”  and MaryJanice laughing at the end.

I’d left NY at 6:10pm on February 17th and went to bed in Melbourne at 10:30pm on February 19th.   Boo-ya!

Liz

P.S. I put the camera into service today.  Good snaps in the next post.

Liz

I landed in Australia today.  Over 10,000 miles/3 flights/1 spectacularly hideous-looking untouched meatloaf dinner later.  Old friend and fellow author Susan Grant was on the flight.  She was somewhere upfront on a reclining first class seat (She’s also a pilot.  Perks, yo.) probably having grapes fed to her by a scantily clad twenty-something Australian boy. 

I was in the cheap seats trying to close off all five of my senses for the duration of the voyage.  I would like to give a shout out to my seatmate, Joseph, who kept me entertained when it began to feel like one of those war camp stories.  (It’s sweaty and cramped and we’re considering a) an escape plan and b) weevils as a source of protein.)  Sue and I dovetailed in Sydney, made our last flight leg to Melbourne and then were picked up by the fabulous Bek who drove us to the conference hotel.  We met the also fabulous Maggie as we were checking in.

I’m one of those people who believes that you must go local immediately and in order to avoid napping, I showered and changed (I wouldn’t put in such a boring detail were it not for my fear that leaving it out would make it sound like I walked around Melbourne with 36 hours of travel ick still on my skin.)  and went for a walk where I promptly annoyed everybody by periodically forgetting to walk on the correct side of the street. 

I changed some money, bought a samosa at the Curry Bowl (Melbourne already gets extremely high marks for the awesome international cuisine) so that I wouldn’t pass out from hunger before the official dinner, and then realized I was severely coffee-withdrawn. 

I then behaved like a lunatic ordering said coffee.  The lovely coffee-girl spent some rather long minutes explaining the difference between a long black and a flat white.  In the end, I went with the long black which was basically hot water mixed with two shots of espresso which you can then “pollute” with milk.  Better too strong than too weak, I always say and the flat white sounded worrisome.

Ack!  It’s suddenly time for dinner.  Here’s the first scrap of video from my new gadget. 

Liz

Oh, c’mon.  You couldn’t expect me to pass on leading with THAT snap from dealer row.  It’s a science fiction con. What were you expecting?  Yeah, yeah, okay. 

Ahem.  Here’s what I probably should have led with.  Me, left.  Alisa, right.

So what DID become of our foray into the depths of Arisia 2009?  The original purpose of going was to support my pal Alisa Sheckley Kwitney who was speaking on four different panels.  I was also curious to see more of the science fiction conference world since my past experience has focused on RWA events. 

I was also in the mood to road trip, and, in fact, I did take the train out to the wilds of outer New York where Alisa picked me up in her jalopy and drove us off to Boston.  First up, however, was the requisite diner breakfast.  I’m a huge fan of the diner breakfast.  This was a particularly fine iteration. 

Aside from really stellar food, the placemat was a total bonus. You’ve got to love the small town. Where else can you find an advert for a massage therapist named “Raven P. Strange” next to one for a llama rental? (You realize we are not actually at the science fiction convention yet.)

After breakfast we hopped back in the car and sped off toward our destination.  As it turned out, neither of us had brought an Official Roadtrip Checklist and subsequently we had not thought to prepare our musical selections.  We tried sharing a set of earplugs so we could listen to our iPod/Blackberry; as you can see, that was amusing and somewhat lame…but ultimately inconvenient.

That would explain why we spent the bulk of the Roadtrip Sing-a-Long trading between the soundtrack for the musical Spring Awakening (“We’re Fucked!” being the most popular song selection) and a Best of Hall & Oates disc, the origins of which Alisa claims to have no knowledge. (Yeah, sure. You just loooove to sing “Rich Girl” when you’re alone in the car, doncha?)

After we’d “gone too far” and were aware that “it didn’t matter anyway,” we arrived in Boston (or Cambridge or wherever it was) and Alisa decided that “the L.A. driver” (me!) should take over driving responsibilities for the city portion.  I swear to god, I asked if she was really sure that’s what she wanted, and she said the city part required my mad L.A. driving skillz.  And that’s what I gave her. It was so much fun watching her throw out “seatbelt arm” every three seconds as I invoked the L.A. Law of Driving ["Always act under the assumption that a) the other person will always act as if they have the right of way and that b) the other person understands that you will act as if you have the right of way."]  It’s like double offensive driving–nobody ever crashes.  Brilliant.

We made it to the hotel alive, and I realized immediately that our sunny charm made us instantly dislikable in the state of Massachussetts.  Once we’d established that the desk people disliked us instantly for no apparent reason and the concierge disliked us instantly for no apparent reason and everyone else in the hotel from New England disliked us instantly for no apparent reason, we went to our rooms and unpacked for the con, and I called Cambridge native Megan Frampton to lodge a complaint against her people.  She laughed at me, an appropriate response, and off Alisa and I went to catch the last bit of Friday night con.

Lemme just throw down the best of the pix for Friday and Saturday:

Samaurai Luggage Cart

Gross Things. Fun!

Knights in Full F-ing Armor. Dude.

Wish I could have snapped her using her Blackberry. Anachronisms, yay!

Alisa, on panel explaining something very important and interesting.

So much better than Spanx. I'll have to remember that...

Um, what the hell?

Nope, still not sure.

Tall kick-assery.

I totally have that same wig!

I wouldn't want to use the bathroom after her. Just sayin'

"Yes, it is rather large, isn't it?"

Steampunk Spider. Woot!

Hard to tell, but this is a man in a skintight leopard suit with a red cape and matching boots performing a modern interpretive dance with R2D2.

Me wanna pet the nice doggie! (Er, explain THAT one to the kid.)

Well, them’s the goods.  I’m off to bed.  I was only there for half the time.  I’ve got to put a call into Alisa to find out what happened after I left…I am happy to report, however, that she did get home safely.  Heh.

Liz

Okay, so Marianne is in Texas, which leaves the cataloguing of our last adventure to me. Nintendo was hosting a special preview of one of their new games, and since we were in that Gamer Girl frame of mind due to the release of Marianne’s new book…what better way to celebrate?

The game being feted was Animal Crossing: City Folk for Wii. It’s rather like Second Life for kids. The event was set up such that the more you played the game, the more “bells” you received. You could buy stuff with the bells.

Earning our Bells:

Once we’d earned our bells, it was difficult to decide how to spend them. Sephora makeovers?

Or time with a psychic?

In the end we decided on the later. It’s always nice to check in with a spiritual advisor to find out just how doomed one is at any given moment. Not that finding a new Holy Grail mascara wouldn’t be a deeply spiritual experience for me. I mean, seriously, if I could find a mascara that didn’t dry out within two weeks of purchase…

But I digress.

As usual, media-savvy Marianne knows how flattering the profile shot is (as does the psychic, for some reason), whilst Liz is all “Blaaaaaarrrrrh, camera, I’m right here!” moonface-like.

All in all, free cocktails and ‘dourves, video games, makeup, and fortunes. Good times. Thanks Nintendo! (Excuse me while I go play the Animal Crossing turnip stock market now…)

Oh, you want the results? Marianne = not currently doomed at all, Liz = slightly doomed with overtones of recovery predicted for early next year.

Liz

Updated 11/2/08 with Marianne/Uma Thurman video at bottom.

Where were we?  The Zac Posen gala.  Enough about me and my underpinnings.  This is about Marianne.  Oh, she looks so innocent, doesn’t she?  Just wait ’til she gets on the red carpet.

The party was at Time Warner Center in a gorgeous, multi-level venue.

 Marianne wastes no time.  She knows what’s what, where’s where and it’s all about getting b-roll before Uma and Zac show up.  Destination, the bar.

And that was my cue:   Champagne Bitch, you are cleared to move on in, ascertain the resources, and procure the necessary provisions. 

There was plenty for everyone.

No, really.  There’s enough champagne for everyone.  Twice over.  At least.

Oh, but you want it served to you on a silver platter?  We can oblige!

 What’s that?  You don’t like champagne?  No problem.  Have some rum. 

Rum’s not your bag?  No worries.  Vodka coming right up. 

ACK!  The rumors are flying!  The red carpet is abuzz.  MUST.  GET.  BACK.  TO.  SECURE.  THE.  BEACHEAD.  The team heads back to the paparazzi outpost.  Lights!  Camera!   Wait…no, she looks cool but she’s not famous…moving on…

Cute pirate boys always make a party that much better, but they’re not what we’re here for either…

Who’s next…oh, cool!  Did you know that we medaled in Olympic fencing?  Yep, check out the strapping young duelists below.  Both of these guys were completely adorable, a fact enhanced by Mr. Morehouse’s business card.  On one side it says, TIM MOREHOUSE/Olympic Silver Medalist  and on the other it has this picture of him just after he won, in full-on, “FUCK, YEAH, I DID IT!” pose.  For a second I wanted to be ten years younger.  Well, actually, I tend to want to be ten years younger on a regular basis.  Nevermind.  (Maybe I should get a business card that says LIZ MAVERICK/Won Stanford Shopping Mall Easter Egg Design Competition at Age 7.  I’m sure there’s a picture of me somewhere at age 7 just after I won, in full-on “FUCK, YEAH, I DID IT!” pose.)

Okay, SHE’S famous (and yet, if I knew her name, I’d put it here, ahem): LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!  Marianne’s internal recording light goes on and she’s doing her thing…

He’s here!  And that must mean Uma isn’t far behind!  We hope.  Not that it’s all about Uma, or anything.  Of course it’s about Zac.  I mean, he’s getting the award.  (But, where the hell is Uma?)

Marianne thought bubble: “I am so ready to trample that chick behind me if she gets in my way…”

Marianne thought bubble: ”Oh, yeah…another red carpet…me and Zac Posen…just another day…”

 Will you look at the journalistic intensity in her eyes?  (Do NOT look directly into the light.  Seriously.)

Marianne thought bubble: ”Thanks, Zac, and time for one mo–OMG, move out of the way!  Gossip Girls are coming down the red carpet!!!!!”

Are you asking her the tough questions, Mare?  Like, um, whose boyfriend is she gonna steal on the show?  (You know Marianne’s a HUGE Gossip Girl fan, right?)

It’s always startling when you realize that sometimes the stars aren’t being airbrushed at all; they actually are that Insanely Beautiful.  This picture doesn’t even do her justice.  (Mare?  Actress names?)

So the Gossip Girls go in to see and be seen and all is strangely quiet on the carpet until Uma Thurman finally arrives and goes through the mysterious “back entrance” instead of via the red carpet to give a short speech about Zac Posen’s fashion prowess.  Apparently, she’s “nervous about her speech.”  Someone loudly says, “She’s an actress, for god’s sake.  She gives speeches for a living!” 

Near mutiny ensues amongst the paparazzi.  Marianne, diplomatic as ever, chooses to wait it out until the very end and refuses to participate in a drawing of the cocktail straws in which the loser would be forced to trip Uma as she leaves the party.   I’ve got some video of what she actually did below:

Yeah, um, next time I’ll remember to hold the camera the other way when I shoot video of myself.  Heh.

And after the Uma Thurman, It’s Not About Me moment, it was all over.  And that’s me, below.  Liz Maverick, Official Champagne Bitch and Paparazzi to the Paparazzi.  Hey, the swag was awesome.  Anytime, Mare.  Anytime.

Liz

Will you look at that costume photo in Marianne’s entry below? She’s so forward-thinking. She’s already in Halloween mode, I’m still back in last night’s Zac Posen gala. Maybe it’s because getting ready for that thing was such an ordeal. Needless to say, it was a cornucopia of opportunities for self-mockery.

You know how sometimes you’ve got it and sometimes you just…don’t?

The trouble started with the dress. And the so called underpinnings. Apparently when I bought my retro-futuro dress, I somehow neglected to look at the side angle. I must have been so delighted with the architectural avant-gardeness of it all, that I failed to fully examine the garment from all possible views.

In short, I wasn’t sure how to operate the thing. It has a very unusual neckline, and from the front, it’s damn cool. From the side, however, it looks like something from the Madonna-Gaultier years. If I knew for sure that’s how it was supposed to be worn, no problem. But it was pretty damn strange, I have to say. So I futzed with the neckline thinking that would solve the problem. Not quite. You live, you learn, you stop wearing dresses with pleats in the stomach area.

The neckline was even more revealing in futzed mode. So that’s when I got to thinking about the underpinnings. They’ve got those stick on, push-up bra thing-ums and, I thought, what the hell, I’ll give it a try. It’s the equivalent of plastering stickers to your boobs and hoping for the best. So now I’m appropriately stickered and hopeful.

And then I was thinking, maybe I should try one of those newfangled shaper garments all the young kids are wearing these days. So I bought one. And I took it out of the box and, I kid you not, each leg was like the size of my wrist. It was like an elf bathing suit or something. But I put it on anyway, in the name of research and science.

So now I’m stickered and compressed, and it’s like being held together with chewing gum and string, and I suddenly realize I have a problem with the open-toed shoes. I wanted to wear nylons, but I’m not sure where we are as a society on that particular point of etiquette. So I call Marianne. And Marianne helpfully says, “I think we did a segment about that, but I don’t remember.” And so I google it and I get a variety of opinions on the subject. Some say yes, some say no. Some say only in winter, some say only if you’re wearing black nylons. Many, however, say, that to wear nylons with open-toed shoes is essentially equivalent to summoning the devil. That’s a lot of pressure. I decide to go without nylons because this is a fashion event and it seems like a bad time to guess.

I also decide to remove the stickers and ditch the elf pants. And that’s two hours of my life I just spent MacGyvering my body (and then reversing it out) that I will never get back. In the end, I just went and had a good time. Who cares about the little black dress anyway, when you’ve got a mask on?

We’ll share some video and photos from the gala soon. I’ve got great stuff of Marianne working on the red carpet. It’s always fun to see her in the paparazzi crush.  “Uma!  Zac!  Over here!”  *giggle*

Liz

Warning: Pictures of short skirts and thigh high socks below. 

I found out a couple of days ago that my book Wired (the prequel to Irreversible) won 1st Place in its category of the FF&P Prism Awards, followed by one that said it also won Best of the Best. My first reaction was to blink rapidly.  Then I smiled.  Then I burst into laughter.  What was so amusing about winning these lovely awards? First let me explain that the Prism is a very prestigious book competition specific to the romance genre. 

Normally the awards are bestowed at a special dinner and ceremony that take place during the week of the huge national romance novelist’s conference.  (Yes, there’s a huge romance novelist’s national conference.) The award is (not surprisingly) a very attractive crystal prism thing-um. 

You have a nice little soiree with your peers, the awards are bestowed, speeches are given (the prior year I believe I won second place…at least I think I did.  I recall going to the podium to joke that I was going to take the winner–my author friend Cindy Holby–out back and rough her up.)  After the 1st Place and Best of the Best winners get their very attractive crystal prism thing-ums, everyone goes to the  hotel bar.  People who have won for differenet things that night are milling around drinking cocktails and flashing their award hardware. 

And so would I have done if not for the fact that this is the year the competition coordinator absconded with the entries and disappeared…forever. They had to start the competition over again. The word went out that this woman had somehow freaked out and was never heard from again. The entire judging session was delayed, finalists were not able to be notified and the awards ceremony was cancelled.   

This would be, of course, the year that I won.  Not just my category…the whole damn competition.  And this was a very significant year, you see, because it was also the year in which a deranged subset of my peers analyzed the possibility that I was a total moron.  

I confess that I am a smidge deflated by the loss of that special night, that night where I would–after having been runner-up or loser for several years, now–have dearly loved the opportunity to take that walk to the podium to deliver some clever speech and then to prance about the bar in a Too Short Skirt (with my matching crystal prism accessories) so that all might become acutely aware of the fact that I’m actually not a moron in a short skirt…that my Unparalleled Literary Brilliance actually works IN CONCERT with my Incredibly Lean Thighs(tm). 

And now I’m suddenly really frightened that you don’t know what I’m talking about and you think I’m as batty as the coordinator now basking in the Bora Bora sun.

It all started…

(cue wavy dream sequence screen)

…when Marianne and I wore anime-inspired outfits to the 2007 National RWA Conference. Said outfits inspired a kerfuffle of such magnitude amongst our romance writing peers that luminaries such as Jennifer Crusie and Nora Roberts weighed in about their relative  ”appropriateness.” 

Wired is the book I was promoting at the time. It was the launch book for Dorchester’s then new Shomi imprint, and all of the covers had Japanese-inspired anime design.  You see, Marianne and I decided it would be fun to dress up in outfits like the covers. Apparently, several women felt it was unprofessional and inappropriate. Many of these same women did, however, feel it was entirely professional and appropriate to talk smack about us in great detail on the Internet.

In several cases, the possibility was floated that we had to dress up like the bimbos we obviously were because our books couldn’t hold their own. The size of my thighs entered the discussion. I confess that I did not post a comment to explain that it was just a flattering angle and that my THIGHS IN MIRROR ARE FATTER THAN THEY APPEAR.  It would have been a losing argument; for some, they could never be fat enough.  One author suggested that we might as well be wearing pasties and dancing on a stripper poll.  (Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that.)

And here the very book I was promoting at the time, wins double Prisms.  Best of the Best, yo!   That’s why I laughed.  I’m just so very pleased!

Shocking, eh?

Love,

Liz

“Dear Chris,

Congratulations!  You are a fine editor, indeed.  Brilliant, actually.  And
that’s the truth.  I’ve never met anyone who could plot as well as you
can.  Nor anyone who could find so clearly the logic in a story muddle.
It’s uncanny the way you can reference a myth or an obscure legend to
illustrate an arc or add a layer of meaning.  It’s astounding, all the
things in your brain, those bits and pieces of knowledge that you pull out
with such casual aplomb, but which so often transform a passage into
something much more than it was before.

Well…except for that one time when you told me I needed to add “and then
his sex sprang free!” to that one scene.  Yeah…to be totally honest, I
think it was better before. Sort of makes it sound like a wild ferret
leaping from his trousers.  As if his–what’s that?  What’s that you say?
This is being read before an audience?

Oh!  Oh, my.  Um.  I digress.

The fact is that your instincts for what makes a book work well are truly
unparalleled, and your ability to pinpoint that which can take a good
manuscript to the level of greatness is a gift.

This award could not go to a more deserving editor.  Congratulations.  And
nevermind about the ferret.”

Chris and the bewigged Rebels

I did manage to catch up with Chris, Marianne, and the rest of the gang after the show.  Wine was imbibed, and if I’m not mistaken, there was some sort of pact sworn to start including “and then his sex sprang free!” in other books as a kind of homage. 

Oh dear.  That’s a lot of ferrets.

Liz

Note: Marianne wrote this and forgot to stick it on The Rebels blog.  So Liz blatantly stole it off Marianne’s blog and added her own commentary.  There you have it, on to the report.

It’s that time of year again in New York. When all the celebs flock to tents in Bryant Park to watch the runway shows and see what they need to stock their closet with in the upcoming year. Yes, it’s Fashion Week.

(Liz: Thank god it’s time for Fall fashion.  I’m not a summer clothes person.  I am SO ready to rock the kick-ass boots, fab stripey and lacey tights, elbow-length leather gloves…)

Today I’m going to be among them all, mixing with the rich and famous, producing a story for Better TV. The segment is called “A Socialite’s Day at Fashion Week” and is basically how it sounds. We follow a socialite through her day – from hair and makeup and clothes to the shows and backstage to cocktail parties and clubs. The day starts at the hairdresser’s and ends at a party at Marquee. Should be quite a day.

(Liz: While Marianne spends the day with models, I’ll be cleaning my apartment.  The day starts with the vacuum and ends with the sink.  Should be quite a day.)

Last night Liz and I had a sneak preview of the madness that’s sure to come by attending an invite-only fashion week party thrown by Target. It was pretty wacky and really popular.

(Liz: Is guerilla marketing still guerilla marketing if Target’s involved?  I don’t know.  Maybe I’d call it Faux Guerilla.  Either way, the Bullseye Bodega party was awesome!)

Set up like it was a Bodaga selling Target products. You walked around and mingled previewing Target’s fall designer collections. (All the designers were on hand as well.) It was soo crowded though!

(Liz: I’ll tell you, watching Michelle Trachtenberg examine the “special for Target” Sigerson Morrison shoes was fun…it would have been even more amusing to see her in kitchenware trying to decide between the paring knife and the cleaver.)

(Liz: Heat one can of brand identity for five minutes over hot stove.  Stir in ranting stockholders and season with shredded financial statements.  When heated, pour into bowl and enjoy with a glass of Limited Express.)

They served their drinks in paper coffee mugs. And their appetizers on top of cans…

(Liz: That was just super-cute.  And by the way, apparently they hired everyone from Must Look Good To Serve)

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out who the celebs were. Sometimes when people walked in, you could just totally tell they were “someone” but we weren’t sure who. Like this girl below with the reddish hair…

(Liz: That one is really going to bug me.  I recognize her from TV.  (She’s not Isla Fisher or Amy Adams, BTW)

But one celeb I definitely recognized. Michelle Trachenberg. AKA Buffy’s sister and notorious Gossip Girl, Georgina. I had to get a photo with her.

When I texted Jacob to tell him, he texted back and asked if I told her she single-handedly ruined season five of Buffy… Heh. I loved her as Georgina so I’m more willing to forgive.

(Liz:  If you tell me she’s not getting paid to be at this party, no problem, but if she was being paid to be at this party, I’ll tell you that girlfriend was not particularly pleasant.  Just sayin’  (as Megan Frampton always says.)  And here Marianne is such a huge fan of her show(s).)

All in all it was an interesting event and we’re glad we went. We ended the night dancing on tables with lampshades over on our heads…

(Liz: I do need a lamp…should’ve bought that one up last night.  It had this cute scalloped edge…)

Um, just kidding about that last part. I’m saving the lampshade thing for tonight at the Paris Hilton party!

Marianne (& Liz)