The In-Crowd Steps Out

Ten minutes with a stylist and a curling iron, he says, all soft-spoken and gentle-like.

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But the crowd and its sweaty tentacles have swallowed him whole.

What would the correspondents' dinner be without the after-party? It would be not worth it. This year, there are three big bashes: In addition to the perennially decadent Bloomberg party, Capitol File is hosting a lavish affair at the home of the Colombian ambassador, and Vanity Fair has revived its storied shindig at the home of writer Christopher Hitchens, where a person can be sure to get a proper drink.

We are duly swagged. Capitol File is giving away party bags containing camera memory cards and $50 gift certificates to Lord & Taylor. Bloomberg has staffers passing out slippers, and hot model types in bathrobes giving out single-serve bottles of champagne from a bathtub. No glass, just a straw, which causes the bubbly to foam up and drip all over your hands. Additional swag: light bulbs. Don't know why.

At Bloomberg we want sweets, but at first find only fried pickles and refrigerators stocked with flavored waters and, oddly, meatloaf sandwiches. As at last year's party, the drinks have emasculating names like Cocokamikazi and Bellinitini, and, as at last year's, the bathroom lounge is so overdecorated it's difficult to actually find a stall.

"Oh, these are doors?" says some guy who has to be directed by an employee.

The one of us wearing a microphone spends much of the evening talking into his sleeve, dictating details of the party and congratulating himself for this brilliant arrangement, which is much easier than taking notes when one has had three Bellinitinis. There's Michael Chertoff (he goes into the sleeve). There's some model type (she goes into the sleeve).

This technique appears to work brilliantly, though we will think differently in the morning, when we turn on the tape and find nothing on it.

There's Georgette Mosbacher mincing past in high-high heels, looking like she should be carrying a teeny-tiny dog in her arms. We don't see singer Sheryl Crow and activist Laurie David, so we can't ask them about their dust-up at the dinner with Karl Rove. They say they tried to discuss global warming with the presidential adviser; he says David insulted him. (Sheryl, did you really reach out to touch Karl's arm and did he really snarl, "Don't touch me"?! He sounds like he needs a deliciously sweet Bellinitini! Instead, he will get a deliciously sweet shout-out from Sheryl at her Earth Day concert yesterday at George Washington University, when she dedicates "We Can Work It Out" to her "new friend, Karl Rove.")

Now, where were we? We see Marc Cherry, the portly "Desperate Housewives" creator who looks the teensiest bit like Karl Rove. That's sort of something. We ask him which Washington type would play him in a movie. "Jerrold Nadler," he says, referencing the rather rotund Democratic congressman from New York.