I spent last night at the swanky Time 100 gala, held at the Live at Lincoln Center theater in the Time Warner building. (Fun fact: you may know this glass-encased room as the arena where King Silas held court in Kings.) Above, you can see my iPhone photo, from my perch in the nosebleed seats, of John Legend‘s performance. Rather than inflict more of my poor camera-photography on you, I’ll direct you to time.com’s video of the red carpet, which was actually red, and easy to trip on.
I had to leave early, Cinderella-style, to write up my American Idol reviews, so I missed some of the major post-dinner hobnobbing, but even to a jaded entertainment journalist the night made for some amazing star-gazing: Michelle Obama spoke, as did Oprah—no chicken giveaway, however—Jimmy Fallon (not on the Time 100 list but appearing to do some standup), and there were a series of celeb toasts, including a moving speech from anti-sex-trafficking activist Somaly Mam, appropriately brief words from the Twitter guys and a sweet toast from New York Times columnist / Nobel Prize winner / forecaster of doom Paul Krugman to his wife.
A brief hail of bullets:
* It’s surprising, and kind of cute, how starstruck stars get among other stars at an event like this—particularly one that combines celebs from worlds that don’t always intermingle. The typical experience of a no-name columnist at one of these events is a brief introduction to a celeb guest, a handshake and polite words, and a ruthless, but nothing-personal, dumping so that the celeb can greet a bigger celeb. And yet it’s in some weird way flattering to know that you were actually dumped for the First Lady.
* Speaking of which, I was not the only one busting out the bad iPhone photography; at some points the dining room looked like the world’s swankiest Apple Store. Even celebs snap shots of other celebs; TIME Washington correspondent Karen Tumulty, seated at a table with Fox host Glenn Beck, reported that Beck whipped out his cameraphone to get a snap of Michelle Obama. Probably only to document any covert signs of socialism/fascism.
* This being the first time in years I’d worn a tuxedo, I needed to study how to tie a bow tie. Naturally, I turned to YouTube, which was pretty much made for instructional-video purposes like this.
* The world of TV, broadly defined, was well represented—besides this year’s honorees, there were past Time 100ers and general media personalities including Charlie Rose, Chris Matthews, J. J. Abrams and Judd Apatow, with wife Leslie Mann.
* Like many news organizations, TIME tries to keep a file of preliminary obituaries prepared, in case of an untimely and high-profile death. Which means that, unbeknownst to them, many of the celebs greeting TIME journos were shaking hands with their undertakers. Mwahahahahahaha!
Needless to say, I’m not exactly caught up on last night’s TV, so I’ll turn it over to you. What should I watch on TiVo first today?