Disguise Season
Amy Poehler, Matt Walsh, and Horatio Sanz discuss their hilarious Halloween costumes. The Citibank CEO runs away from my questions at a fancy fall gala. This month's Bash Compactor makes $1.75 million a year but doesn't want to talk to you.
Celebrity Impersonators
The Upright Citizens' Brigade has opened a new East Village location, and original UCB co-founders Amy Poehler and Matt Walsh hosted its grand opening in October. The "Parks and Recreation" star introduced skits from up-and-coming comics with Walsh and fellow ex-SNL cast member Horatio Sanz, and she was often seen audibly cracking up by herself, beer in hand, while the rest of the audience was fairly silent.
Amy told me on the red carpet that she didn't have a costume picked out for Halloween and that she planned to "take it easy" this year since she dons costumes so often for her day job. But when Walsh asked her what her costume was going to be during the show, she said she was thinking about going as Sue Mengers, the recently deceased L.A. super-agent who hosted star-studded salons at her house for celebrities, like Barbra Streisand, Cher, Faye Dunaway, and many of their famous friends.
Walsh didn't seem to know who Mengers was-and neither did anyone in the crowd except me, since I was the only one cracking up-so Poehler explained. "She was this old Hollywood agent, and she was like so cool," she deadpanned. "She had this fuckin' mansion where she invited famous people. And she only talked to famous people."
Walsh's costume idea was similarly off-the-beaten-path: "Last year I was a Washington General. That's the team that plays against the Harlem Globetrotters. I thought that was genius, but not many Americans got on board." Sanz quipped back: "You should've had a black person play a Harlem Globetrotter. Just pay him 100 bucks to follow you around."
Sanz's costume idea: "a Che Guevara T-shirt. I put my head through like a T-shirt, and I wear a T-shirt the whole night." Of all the costumes discussed, only Poehler's two kids' ideas sounded pedestrian: "A pumpkin and a policeman."
From Chelsea to Bed-Stuy
My Halloweekend plans took me to an afterparty for the popular S" show. Part-performance art, part-theater, the regular show has audience members walk through twenty-plus rooms in the sprawling 40s-era "McKittrick Hotel." Masked and asked not to interact with the actors, you're an invisible voyeur watching various actors play out their roles. For the "film-noir formal" themed after-bash, I dressed as homo Humprey Bogart, with a sparkly sequin fedora and the requisite tuxedo. Everyone else at the party was dressed just as historically accurate, and it felt like we were in a totally different time era. What a warp!
Runaway Pandit
Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit did not want to talk to this reporter at Accion's 50th Anniversary Gala, where he was honored for Citi's financial support of the microfinancing charity. I figured the guy made $1.75 million this year and my taxpaying ass bailed him out a few years back, so he might throw me a quote or two.
Not so: my first attempt ended up with the classic "let's-talk-about-you-not-me" deflection tactic, with Pandit asking how long I had been a reporter. After finally getting to my question for him, he said he was too preoccupied with taking photos with Accion board member Diana Taylor (Mayor Bloomberg's girlfriend) to talk.
After photos were done, I gave it one last try. News reports that day said hackers had released personal information of Pandit's on the Internet in retaliation for the arrest of Occupy Wall Street protesters trying to close their accounts at a Citibank branch, so I asked if his cell phone had been compromised. His handler blocked the interview, and he simply walked away.
For her part, Diana Taylor would not discuss Occupy Wall Street, but she did have a comment for Pandit's villainous hackers. "It's ridiculous. It's horrible. It is absolutely horrible that people don't have better things to do with their day."