The In-Crowd Steps Out

After the Correspondents' Dinner, Parties Are Icing on the Cake

And now, for the after-parties. We are so ready. It is nearly 11 on Saturday night and Rich Little is depressing the crowd at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner with imitations of dead people, so we sneak out early. One of us is wearing a microphone in our sleeve, attached to a tape recorder, which feels very wily, very "Fox News investigates."

The other one of us is wearing cleavage, good for any occasion.

We clickety-clack down Connecticut Avenue toward the Bloomberg after-party, ahead of the mass tuxedoed exodus, feeling awfully proud of ourselves because we won't have to wait in a god-awful line.

Of course, we are wrong. There's already a line at the Costa Rican Embassy, and some dude in front of us is helping his friends cut ahead, which makes us feel very fourth grade (Hey! No cutting!), and the poor shlubs who aren't on the list are being made to wait in a roped-off "penalty box."

"We were invited by Ludacris!" a woman wails.

Pathetic creature.

We inch past, feeling quite special, and show our ID to a man with a laptop who does not smile. He waves us along and we walk in feeling very cool and then suddenly, very hot. Goodness, it's cozy in here.

Grab something pink and fruity and wander toward the heat source, which turns out to be a crowded and steamy room that keeps changing colors, with long gauzy streamers that look like toilet paper hanging from the ceiling. Reporters and politicians and Hill staffers stand shoulder to shoulder, gossiping and sweating and sipping and spilling and leering.

This is the brain of Washington. And it is drunk.

Look! Celebrities! Kind of! There's football star Reggie Bush! There's figure skater Michelle Kwan, who says she's "good friends" with Katie Couric! There's Morgan Fairchild, looking very much inflated around the chestal region, and comedian Eddie Izzard, who does both his American and English accents for us, and some really important lawyer dude!

There's Sanjaya, man of the evening, curls dangling around his neck like dainty fruit.

Regimen? we ask.