Saturday, September 30, 2000
The Gold Coast, da'lin!
Last month sometime I received an invitation to my friend Tom and his fiancé Keller's wedding shower—a BBQ. Cartoon pig, B-B-Q in a large font and stuff with real straw. So I'm thinking this is a BBQ—a cook out. Jeans, tee-shirt, sneakers. Pretty low-key—mostly close friends (I've known Tom for twenty years now) and what not, being held at (most likely one of Keller's) a friend's house in West Palm Beach.
The address is along the Intracostal. In West Palm Beach.
In other words, just down the street from the Kennedy Compound (more or less).
I didn't quite realize this until I was actually driving along the road to their house and I'm passing the Breaker's Country Club. This is an exclusive place here. Absolutely georgeous. I turn down the final street and about a hundred yards down a man in a valet uniform flags me down.
“You here for the party?” he asks. I get this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomache. I'm wearing sneakers, jeans and a tee-shirt and here's this guy in a freshly pressed valet uniform, in front of a beautiful home on the Intracoastal of West Palm Beach (the Gold Coast, da'lin!). I'm seriously underdressed here. Seriously.
But not much I can do. “Yes,” I said, getting out of the car. I head up to the front door and enter.
I enter a West Palm Beach social function. Beautiful people in a beautiful place eating beautiful (and catered) food and being served drinks (full wetbar) by a crisply uniformed bar tender.
I felt so out of place.
Greenlight
It seems that my other friends that were invited to Tom and Keller's party were informed of the rather … upscale nature … of the party (with the except of my friend Jeff, who showed up in sneakers, shorts and a tee-shirt. At least I had company.
We hung out in our own little clique talking about various topics. One of them was Project Greenlight, a website for aspiring screen writers (of which several of my friends are) to submit a screen play in a contest, the winner to have a million dollars to make their film for theatrical release and a documentary made about their film to be shown by HBO.
I feel so much better
After the party a few of us ended up at Denny's (yes, we're a high class of people here). I mentioned that I felt seriously underdressed for the occasion.
“That's okay,” said Martin. “I told people there you were a computer genius who invented screen savers.”
Gee. Thanks Martin. I feel so much better now.
