Illustration: Stephen Olson
A friend of mine, whose job entailed huge amounts of entertaining, once brushed up to me at a lecture, surveyed the room, and said, “I knew it. Low turnout. Even my clients now have event fatigue. There are just too many parties.”
I used to throw three or four parties a week, and on the other nights I’d usually attend one benefit and try to make it to a friend’s birthday or book launch or whatever. I would go to anything—well, almost anything; I drew the line at a client’s daughter’s bat mitzvah. For 10 years I kept this up, with only occasional bouts of exhaustion, which could usually be cured with a stay at the Huntington Ritz-Carlton. (Nobody goes there—I just love it.)
But event fatigue finally caught up with me, and now I’ve got it bad. Maybe you do, too. Here’s what to look out for:1. Do you throw out invitations before they’re even opened, even from hosts whose outings you’ve enjoyed before?
2. Do you refuse to check your coat? (This is a big time-saver. I highly recommend it. There’s always a drop table with a long cloth where you can ditch stuff, though I have lost a few laptops this way.)
3. When asked, do you say, “I think I have something that night,” when you know for sure you have nothing, and in fact were planning to do a glycolic-acid skin peel while watching Seinfeld reruns?
4. When hosting a party, do you constantly walk back into the kitchen, ostensibly to check how dinner is coming, but in actuality to have a cigarette, alone, by a warming bin?
5. When the room is being seated for a presentation, do you announce (to anyone who will listen) a mad dash to the men’s room (or ladies’ lounge), never to return?
6. At big shindigs, do you find yourself constantly checking for emergency-exit signs? Or worse, mentally rehearsing your escape?
7. Do you pretend to talk on your phone in a highly agitated manner so that no one approaches you? (I hear Paris Hilton does this, and if anyone should have event fatigue...)
8. When an evening’s program is provided, do you carefully estimate the length of each speech, adding up the total and then checking your watch at each transition, swearing quietly?
9. Are you annoyed if they don’t serve espresso?
10. Do you ever claim to have attended an event that you skipped?
If three or more of these sound familiar, you are suffering from event fatigue. What to do?
Well, I can tell you firsthand that turning to alcohol is no solution. Every annoying person, tacky flower arrangement, and soggy fried-eggplant fritter just becomes more so through the prism of booze, and you’ll find yourself muttering insults that passersby can hear.
Nor is texting on your Treo or Sidekick or whatever electronic disorganizer you use. Trust me, in a short while, this will be viewed as being as gauche as talking on a cell phone at the movies, which I hear Larry King does.
What you can do is make written notes. This is acceptable, and gives the impression that the event you are at is giving you so many wonderful new ideas and exposing you to so many scads of interesting folks that you just have to jot it all down. Who needs to know that you’re writing a note to the dry cleaner reminding them that the sheets are to be folded over hangers, not packed in paper?
You can also do laps. Walk the perimeter of the party, with a drink in hand, occasionally nodding or lifting your glass in a greeting mode. Just keep going round and round and round. Some staffer may peg you as a terrorist, allowing you to leave in indignation—even better.
Once, at the CFDA fashion awards, I lay down under the dinner table as the event passed the five-hour mark. I told my fellow table guests what I was doing, got their approval, and it was wonderful for a while. But I felt like a fool getting up.
Here’s a good trick: Show up for the party 20 minutes early. The hosts, all tense and overbusy, will see you and be so grateful when you suggest taking a walk around the block. Just keep walking.
Or make friends with a waiter. Pop him or her a twenty and watch the hors d’oeuvres come piping hot from the kitchen straight to you.
Sometimes, feigning intense interest in the silent auction is a good way to pass the time, but then you often end up with dinner for four at a restaurant you go to all the time, and end up too embarrassed to use the coupon.
Some events are long enough that you can sneak out and take in a movie. This is particularly tempting whenever I’m at the Marriott Marquis (there are theaters galore), although toward the end of the flick, you start to feel a bit squirrelly.
At a particularly tedious dinner, I’ve been known to help clear the plates. (Once I even folded chairs.) But I haven’t tried that one in a while.
Now that I’m a dog owner, I’m considering bringing him along. “Oh, the Waldorf-Astoria doesn’t allow dogs? Who knew?”
I suppose you could take up isometrics—you know, those exercises you can do on an airplane, clenching and unclenching your buttocks, that sort of stuff—but for some reason, this just doesn’t appeal to me. Another thing you can do is practice your French and say, “Au revoir, mes amis.”
I used to throw three or four parties a week, and on the other nights I’d usually attend one benefit and try to make it to a friend’s birthday or book launch or whatever. I would go to anything—well, almost anything; I drew the line at a client’s daughter’s bat mitzvah. For 10 years I kept this up, with only occasional bouts of exhaustion, which could usually be cured with a stay at the Huntington Ritz-Carlton. (Nobody goes there—I just love it.)
But event fatigue finally caught up with me, and now I’ve got it bad. Maybe you do, too. Here’s what to look out for:1. Do you throw out invitations before they’re even opened, even from hosts whose outings you’ve enjoyed before?
2. Do you refuse to check your coat? (This is a big time-saver. I highly recommend it. There’s always a drop table with a long cloth where you can ditch stuff, though I have lost a few laptops this way.)
3. When asked, do you say, “I think I have something that night,” when you know for sure you have nothing, and in fact were planning to do a glycolic-acid skin peel while watching Seinfeld reruns?
4. When hosting a party, do you constantly walk back into the kitchen, ostensibly to check how dinner is coming, but in actuality to have a cigarette, alone, by a warming bin?
5. When the room is being seated for a presentation, do you announce (to anyone who will listen) a mad dash to the men’s room (or ladies’ lounge), never to return?
6. At big shindigs, do you find yourself constantly checking for emergency-exit signs? Or worse, mentally rehearsing your escape?
7. Do you pretend to talk on your phone in a highly agitated manner so that no one approaches you? (I hear Paris Hilton does this, and if anyone should have event fatigue...)
8. When an evening’s program is provided, do you carefully estimate the length of each speech, adding up the total and then checking your watch at each transition, swearing quietly?
9. Are you annoyed if they don’t serve espresso?
10. Do you ever claim to have attended an event that you skipped?
If three or more of these sound familiar, you are suffering from event fatigue. What to do?
Well, I can tell you firsthand that turning to alcohol is no solution. Every annoying person, tacky flower arrangement, and soggy fried-eggplant fritter just becomes more so through the prism of booze, and you’ll find yourself muttering insults that passersby can hear.
Nor is texting on your Treo or Sidekick or whatever electronic disorganizer you use. Trust me, in a short while, this will be viewed as being as gauche as talking on a cell phone at the movies, which I hear Larry King does.
What you can do is make written notes. This is acceptable, and gives the impression that the event you are at is giving you so many wonderful new ideas and exposing you to so many scads of interesting folks that you just have to jot it all down. Who needs to know that you’re writing a note to the dry cleaner reminding them that the sheets are to be folded over hangers, not packed in paper?
You can also do laps. Walk the perimeter of the party, with a drink in hand, occasionally nodding or lifting your glass in a greeting mode. Just keep going round and round and round. Some staffer may peg you as a terrorist, allowing you to leave in indignation—even better.
Once, at the CFDA fashion awards, I lay down under the dinner table as the event passed the five-hour mark. I told my fellow table guests what I was doing, got their approval, and it was wonderful for a while. But I felt like a fool getting up.
Here’s a good trick: Show up for the party 20 minutes early. The hosts, all tense and overbusy, will see you and be so grateful when you suggest taking a walk around the block. Just keep walking.
Or make friends with a waiter. Pop him or her a twenty and watch the hors d’oeuvres come piping hot from the kitchen straight to you.
Sometimes, feigning intense interest in the silent auction is a good way to pass the time, but then you often end up with dinner for four at a restaurant you go to all the time, and end up too embarrassed to use the coupon.
Some events are long enough that you can sneak out and take in a movie. This is particularly tempting whenever I’m at the Marriott Marquis (there are theaters galore), although toward the end of the flick, you start to feel a bit squirrelly.
At a particularly tedious dinner, I’ve been known to help clear the plates. (Once I even folded chairs.) But I haven’t tried that one in a while.
Now that I’m a dog owner, I’m considering bringing him along. “Oh, the Waldorf-Astoria doesn’t allow dogs? Who knew?”
I suppose you could take up isometrics—you know, those exercises you can do on an airplane, clenching and unclenching your buttocks, that sort of stuff—but for some reason, this just doesn’t appeal to me. Another thing you can do is practice your French and say, “Au revoir, mes amis.”
