So here's how it went at the Globes:
My original plan to roller-skate back and forth between the deadline press room -- where my laptop and phone line were located -- and the video press room -- where the backstage interviews were conducted -- came to naught. It's just too hard to get out of the middle of the front row, and the show moves so much faster than most awards shows that I could easily have missed stuff.
Technology came to my rescue in the form of a pair of headphones that let me listen in on the activities in the room across the hall while monitoring the show. Very cool, occasionally confusing.
After filing for deadline, it was off to the HBO party, scheduled to be the truly glamorous part of my evening. Glamorous people, though, don't usually go to big Hollywood parties toting the leather briefcase containing their laptop, and since the Beverly Hilton absolutely refused to let me check mine, I ended up sitting for most of the time with some of my fellow reporters, all of whom found themselves in similar straits.
If we'd only thought to work up an act we might have impersonated one of those accountant drill teams.
The people-watching was good, however. While I never personally laid eyes on Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, I talked to at least two people who did. Even that wouldn't have been as surreal, though, as being upstairs just after the awards let out and seeing Liam Neeson, Warren Beatty and Annette Bening only a few feet from me.
Turns out I'm not as jaded as I'd thought.
I even passed the Riverses, mother and daughter, in a hallway, and marveled at the fact that they look more like weird sisters -- but only because poor Melissa was made up to look like a woman in her 60s.
My companion and I never made it to the NBC party, the only other of the multiple parties at the Hilton to which we'd scored an invite. Halfway through the snaking line, we learned that the fire marshal had already closed the party, along with several others. HBO only avoided the same fate by closely monitoring the number of incoming partygoers, admitting new ones as old ones left.
Ah, the high life.