A Night with Prom Queen

Hear the name Julia Allison and a constellation of words likely spring to mind. Journalist. Blogger. Pundit. New York City. I began to follow her on Twitter at the behest of a friend who bent a sympathetic ear toward my kvetching about my recent move back to Los Angeles from NYC. I knew very little about her, personally or professionally. In her tweets, Julia requested style feedback concerning celebrities I held little regard for: Justin Bieber, Nick Thune, Blair Fowler. Who are these people? I felt somehow out of the loop, especially considering that I am Ms. Allison’s senior by exactly eleven days.

Still, like many people who have called NYC home, I was happy to hear the occasional snatch of gossip from someone who appeared, on television at least, to be an authority on such matters. Julia Allison remained among the 150 or so Twitter accounts that I followed and kept up with on a semi-regular basis.

Several Sunday mornings previous, having little planned for the day, I reposed in my bed and scrolled through my Blackberry, checking email, Facebook, and, naturally, my Twitter feed. I noticed a tweet from Ms. Allison, roughly 30 minutes old.

Hey LA denizens - I have an extra ticket to the Streamy Awards - anyone want it?

The Streamy Awards (this, their 2nd annual) are a well-funded, corporate-sponsored, unfortunately named attempt to confer legitimacy on the mostly free, occasionally profitable, streamed content programming that makes up today’s Interweb.





Largely a nerd or techie-oriented event, I knew a few people who had attended the year previous. They included web developers and nascent comedy writers, folk who take YouTube quite seriously and consider their smart phones to be vital organs. To some degree, these are my people. I no longer own a TV, and thus, depend exclusively on the net for news and information.

I composed an email.

I did not anticipate receiving a response.

Julia Allison is followed on Twitter by 20,000+ people. I, by contrast, am followed by slightly north of one hundred people.

Twitter, by design, is the most fickle and striated of all social networking sites. Communication is limited to 140 characters, personal profile information remains uniquely spare, and there exists only one line in which a Twitter user may enter website information. Twitter’s growing popularity stands as lasting testament to our headline-thirsty society.

Two hours later I received the following reply:

Done!! One favor though: would you mind taking a few photos of me throughout the evening?

Fortuitous, indeed, as fine art portrait photography remains one of my great passions; the equivalent, perhaps, of inviting Kobe Bryant to a party, one the condition that, once arrived, he can sink a few free throws. After a handful of logistical details, we arranged to meet at the Orpheum, a beastly, aging Art Deco theater, in Downtown Los Angeles.

Walking up to the Orpheum, I felt a bit antsy, the more I considered my odd twist of fate. The internet, whether it be a blog, Twitter handle, website, or Facebook page, has a way of making web-surfers feel as though they “know” a celebrity by gleaning information from posted content.

Honestly though, I had no idea Julia Allison even existed until a few weeks previous. I knew she owned a pocket dog. I knew she recently broke up with her boyfriend whom she referred to, in previous tweets, as Prom King. I also knew she appeared to be beautiful. Beyond that, the whole situation seemed nebulous and alien. Part of me felt like a Make-A-Wish foundation recipient, malignant cancer cells somehow allowing for an otherwise un-grant-able desire.

After a volley of concise text messages, I located Ms. Allison, who was queuing up to walk the red carpet. She was, without question, haltingly beautiful. I asked a few stock questions.

“What brings you to LA?”
“Meetings.”

She wore a pink, high-waisted, strapless dress accompanied by hefty bling around her neck.

“Where did you go to college?”
-unintelligible- (I thought I heard her say Deutschland)

She fidgeted with her black leather purse and generally seemed nervous.

”Oh,” I responded, sarcastically, “and where’s that?”
“Um, in Washington DC.”

I later discovered she answered Georgetown. In my defense, I have disproportionately small ears, Ms. Allison is about foot shorter than me, even in heels, and the crowd around us was, well, a crowd. Noisy.

I was asked to hold her purse and camera, and then politely instructed to meet her “on the other side.” BRB, I believe, considering the event, would be the appropriate vernacular. Clearly, my red carpet debut was not going to occur this particular evening. I waded through massive lengths of high-bandwidth cables, shoulder-to-shoulder press figures, celebrity wranglers, event staff, security guards, and the occasional autograph-seeking fan. I spotted Justine Bateman and Illeana Douglas while waiting for Julia, who made it through fifty feet of red carpet in roughly ten minutes.

Observing Ms. Allison walk this gauntlet, I would imagine its something like what a lab rodent feels in the presence of experimenting, semi-sinister scientists. Flitting from camera to camera, posing regally in Plasticine perma-grin until asked to stop for an interview.

Once through, Julia thanked me graciously for waiting, apologized for seeming nervous, reporting that she had to present an award tonight, her first time doing so. We were whisked away by event staff, a female celebrity wrangler wearing a headset and microphone tethered to a hip-holstered walkie-talkie, who unloaded a dearth of event paperwork, all of which was given over to me. I now held my camera, Julia’s camera, four tickets, four party passes, and two official programs.

Julia kindly introduced me to several well-dressed male and female acquaintances, who in turn, trained all of their attention back to her. I felt like celebrity arm-candy or a professional escort, but I remained chipper, obliging Julia’s every request. My only unvoiced concern was that we had sped past the lobby bar without stopping.



Now inside the auditorium, I used the opportunity to snap a few photos. The interior of the Orpheum is a lasting tribute to the Downtown Los Angeles of decades past. Unlike most other relics downtown, the Orpheum remains remarkably up-kept, authentically preserved. Three columns of opera boxes straddle each end of the lower mezzanine. The balcony, seats several hundred additional people and twin twenty five-foot cranes were afloat, to “stream” the event, over the Internet.

Next to our ticketed seats, sat three vacant spots. Like a drug-fueled wave of profound realization, my position in the evening’s proceedings became unflinchingly clear. Here at my arm, introducing me to haute couture-encased blondes and skinny-jeaned hipsters was a beautiful female comet of pure ambition, whose trajectory, orbit, and velocity did not rest long enough for the inclusion of friends, not at events like this.

Flanked by empty seats, Julia asked me repeatedly if I was having a good time. No, I thought, sitting next to an attractive celebrity is really taxing. Do you have any prescription pills? To me, this was an horrifically good time: a chance encounter with an individual who’s relative A-list status allowed for line-jumping, red carpet walking, and placard-secured seating. I felt oddly notorious, like a spy or a foreign dignitary.

The Streamy Award Host was comedian Paul Scheer, largely of Internet notoriety, who navigated as best he could through poorly written masturbation, vaginal rejuvenation, and porn jokes. Technical snafus saw video projector miscues occur repeatedly and without correction, despite audience boos and hisses.

Julia turned to me, “Is this bad? This seems bad?”

I shook my head. “Terrible.”

A pair of male streakers managed their way onto the stage, performing two naked laps, before it became clear that there was no security to shoo them away. Eventually they covered up their previously flopping genitalia and shirked awkwardly away, off stage. Crass, perhaps, but, LOL, I believe, would be an appropriate response.

Julia then sprung from her seat with little explanation, a case of apparently jangled nerves, in order to prepare for the presentation of her award. I was left to chat with whom I assumed to be a seat filler. After the technical hiccups began to reach an astronomical level, I leaned over to “Sib,” as his business card denoted, and mockingly blamed him for the fiasco. He smiled with worried eyes and said nothing in reply. Later he mentioned that he was a voting member of the Streamy academy.

Julia sent me a few text messages from backstage, commenting on a duo of presenters known as the Ed Hardy boys, who she found funny. Absolutely, I replied, Best yet. Time wore on and the audience thinned considerably. I heard murmurs of the lobby being more crowded than the auditorium.

Julia’s presentation went smoothly enough, in comparison to the rest of the debacle. She stumbled briefly with one line, but by that time, the audience had thinned to loose rabble, feet propped on seatbacks, little cliques of conversations in the aisles. No one seemed to notice.

I snapped the requested photos and once Julia exited the stage, made a b-line for the lobby, intent upon imbibing as many cocktails as I had I had cash on hand to afford. Not that I wasn’t having fun, but, in my estimation, my role had come to fruition and the time to drink had arrived.

Astutely sober, I was devastated to see that the bar had shuttered early. A quick once-over proved that the crowd in the lobby had indeed exceeded that of the remaining audience. I found a lanky Swede, whose Ja I mistook for German, to take a photo of Ms. Allison and myself. Julia remained gracious through the bitter end, and we parted with a nice hug and the promise to remain in touch, during any future LA visits on her part, or future NYC trips on my part.



The next morning found a boyish grin unable to depart my face, bad jokes, daft organization, and forced sobriety notwithstanding.

Just my kind of weird. Given the choice, I’d do it all again, though next time, I’d likely pack a flask.