Honestly, I was a bit torn about attending the premiere performance of The Long Count and requisite opening party at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last Wednesday. Don’t get me wrong: I really wanted to check it out (shit, I even wrote about it in this here publication), but as a diehard Yankees fan, it’s tough to miss a World Series Game One.Thankfully, I got a partial fix, as one of the central themes of both the show and party was the 1976 World Series—a triumph for the Cincinnati Reds over my beloved boys from the Bronx that just so happened to coincide with the birth of two of the piece’s creators, Bryce and Aaron Dessner.

 

Held in BAM’s upstairs Lepercq Space, the party featured hot dogs, miniature ice cream cone hors d’oeuvres, servers handing out pinches of cotton candy and baseball chocolates and decorations. It was more stereotypical Americana than actual baseball dining circa 2009 (hello, sushi).

The mix of older, NEA-donating dudes and younger indie heartthrobs mingled and subtly swayed to the inoffensive music. Kim and Kelley Deal huddled over a table munching on street cart pretzels. When Joe Melillo, BAM’s executive producer, extended thanks to the three men involved in the collaboration (the brothers Dessner plus visual artist Matthew Richie), Kim let out a loudish chortle. “Men, huh?” she said and then snickered to a friend as if they got caught passing a note in class. Sufjan Stevens thoroughly held down a reclusive Where’s Waldo chic, hiding under a large, red-and-white beanie and staying close to the escalator. Considering the nature of this column, I asked a photographer if there was anyone from Gossip Girl or some other trash that’s popular with the kids these days.

“I think they hang out at Marquee on Fridays, right?” she shrugged. The moral: It’s good to hang with good people doing creative things that also have no idea what the Gossip Girl cast looks like.