Who's House?

Artist's rendering via NVC.

Holy shit. I'm clearing out the cobwebs here. It's been so long since I've taken to the left side/since Paolo first blogjacked it that the floorboards are all creaky and I just got some dust up my snooter and ACHHLEW! [Ed. Gesundheit!] Speaking of which, there's a party tonight: it's Katie's birthday! And speaking of skiing, Katie's a great skier. Srsly!

Anyway: this reminds me of that time, like, a few weeks ago, when I offered the backchannel an opportunity to hold a roast for 99 at his birthday party (predictably, at Joe's, The Most Depressing Bar On 6th Street That Isn't The Cherry Tavern). Nobody responded, so for his birthday, he ended up with one drink (purchased by me, which does nothing to chip away at a year's worth of YM-subsidized booze) and an email full of bad police brutality jokes.

As for Bakes, I would roast her, but it's hard! For example, my source material:

• She has this innane obsession with Mickey Kaus that I really don't understand.
• Did you know there was once a picture of her in Business Week when she was like, ten, because she ran some kind of forum for thicknecked Rangers fans on Prodigy or something? Truth!
• She also has friends who don't work in media, and she doesn't work in media, which makes her media fetish as unhealthy, strange, and worrysome as Curt's. That being said, if she ever gets a job in media, I'm leaving New York: that'd be like going home from college to find out the Girl Next Door got addicted to Oxycotin after hanging out with all the bad kids for so long and managing to completely stay out of trouble. DO NOT WANT.
• I can't think of a single person who doesn't like her, which sounds like non-compliment, but around these parts, it's really not. Also, she taught me what advertorial was and didn't make fun of me for not knowing sooner for more than, like, a week.
• Katie's the kind of person that can survive having a facist roommate without bludgeoning them, which is also impressive. This actually happened, and the worst thing Bakes really ever did about it was break down the door to her apartment, which she contends was not an act of agression so much as the need to go to the bathroom. She's even too nice to admit that she was raging against the (Jewish NeoCon) machine.
  
• She devotedly wears her Giants jersey when she watches games at home.
  
• Her dogs smell (or: look like they smell) and she likes them anyway.
  

The point is, there's really not that much to roast Katie over, or maybe there is, but really, like, how could you? Anyway. She's (predictably) having another party at Barramundi and I fully intend on buying her and her charitable cause a drink. She is wonderfully smart, talented, a great friend, by far, the funniest writer on the YM masthead and inextricably (maybe, for her - and especially for Dave - tragically) part of the family. Katie, you might be a shiksa, but you're our shiksa*, goddamnit. This joint goes out to you:



*But Bakes is not the only shiksa in the YM-Tang Clan! I'm not sure exactly what persuasion Spiers is, but she probably renounced it, like, nine years before you've even heard of it, anyway.