It seemed funny, the idea of a bunch of college kids having a banquet at a French bistro (Sandrine’s, which very graciously donated 22 four-course dinners to the FM cause. We love them. They’re the best), but no one was appreciating the irony. Everyone seemed to be doing a pretty good job at acting refined, composed and generally ready to enter that larger world out there. As each of FM’s fifteen seniors arrived to our tastefully blocked-off corner of the restaurant, there were air kisses and sophisticated-sounding greetings. Everyone was really well-dressed, except maybe Andrew D. “Tad” Warshall, who looked sportingly non-conformist with a tuxedo jacket, open shirt and scraggly head of hair topped with baseball cap. People drifted in, sat down, sipped water and made conversation while we all waited for dinner to start.
Overheard:
“I was trying to go for the Charlotte look, but my dress was more Carrie,” said Hilary L. Levey, who had purchased her formalwear especially for the evening and apparently adheres to the “Sex and the City” school of fashion.
“He’s disgusting and tacky and slimy,” said someone at the dinner about someone else at the dinner. Scandalous!
“Violin is not something I have a unique talent for,” said viola whiz Sarah C. Darling, probably lying.
“What is in the salad?” asked FM creative director Christina S.N. Lewis. “Is it just a melange of greens?” It was.
“We don’t wear headpieces at Abercrombie & Fitch, thank you very much,” said Kiana C. Foster, who works there.
“Body hair on men has totally decreased,” said Hilary, who apparently knows.
“My dad sends me e-mails every week asking if I’ve got a job,” said Agnes M-Y Chu. She does not.
“Do you know why people don’t like the French? They’re jealous,” asserted former Parisian Christina Lewis, delusionally.
People ordered wine and the soup arrived. Everyone had been asked ahead of time to prepare a “presentation” in some way emblematic of their personality. They were also asked to guess why they’d been included in our motley band of seniors (although that turned out to be mostly a dud as they all figured they’d been picked because they knew someone on FM).
The presentations began with S. Chartey Quarcoo, who set a suitably sophisticated tone and read a poetic journal entry he wrote freshman year about John Coltrane’s song “A Love Supreme.”
Hilary Levey opened up to the crowd, declaring, “I’m neurotic about everything.” She talked about how she went to a psychic (which is, like, the biggest coinkydink ever, because FM did too! See page 18). “I got my tarot cards read,” she said. “I was like, alright, psychic, tell me about my future. She was like, I can go into this love thing, and I was like, no, all I care about is success.” Lest this make Levey seem freakishly ambitious, she explained that her love life is stable. She also later added that her mother had encouraged to take a diaretic before the dinner lest she look bloated. Let it be said that none of our distinguished guests seemed unduly gassy.
Famously conservative Ross G. Douthat charmed the predominately liberal crowd with his tales of the political iconoclast’s lonely life. “People recognize me on the street and they spit on me,” he said. “People go by my white board and write ‘Die Fascist Pig.’” He then led a singalong to “Part of Your World,” from the Little Mermaid. We are not making this up. We’re thinking about voting Republican.
Kiana Foster claimed to have spent eight hours getting ready for dinner. She looked great, but had no presentation. Dude?
Jazz musician Danny Fox seemed nervous, calling himself “that guy in section whose voice cracks,” but got a big laugh describing his recent discovery of a website called groupiecentral.com which features tales of anonymous sex with musicians. “Stories like that make me proud of my craft,” he said.
Sarah E. Moss said she figured she’d been chosen as a token math/science concentrator. She then inadvertantly used the word “hypothesis” in the next sentence. Funny!
Tad Warshall, math whiz, played the part, teaching everyone a math major numbers game called Nim and then demolishing FM associate ed Antoinette C. Nwandu one-on-one in a Nim match. “You lost as soon as you made the first move, actually,” he shouted to general but slightly uneasy laughter.
“If you know me, it’s probably from partying,” said the boa-clad Ashanti A. W. Decker, “All I do is hang out.” Apparently confused about the nature of the presentations, Ashanti said she had a sheet of paper full of nice things people wrote about her; she read one which was written by her roommate. It was indeed nice.
Albert H. Cho described himself as “generally pretty boring,” a charge his friend, FM co-chair and international sex symbol Vicky C. Hallett, rebutted by pointing out that Albert was just in Qatar at a suspicious-sounding “conference.” He recited an poem about Vicky that he emptily claimed was made up on the spot, which climaxed, in all senses of the word, with him giving Vicky a hickey, which rhymes with Vicky. Other dinner guests refrained from saying anything about the display making them sicky.
Agnes Chu said she filled the dinner’s VES quota, which had the ring of truth. She brought luminous photographs taken in China and Italy, because she figured out that there would be no outlet to play her films. Stephen N. Smith, on the other hand, thought for some reason that the bistro would be able to meet his massive audio-visual needs, bringing a videotape and CD, both of which were useless. The videotape sounds like it would have been great, though: Steve revealed that he’s made the “fourth or fifth round” of callbacks for The Real World: Las Vegas, and he brought along his audition tape. He read stanzas from John Lennon’s “Imagine,” challenging us all to make a better world. Ross Douthat said, “Sign me up!” which was pretty damn funny. He was being sarcastic.
The only current or former roommates in the group were Suzanne M. Pomey and Hilary, who lived together freshman year. Suzanne thought her claim to fame (or notoriety) was kissing Anthony Hopkins on stage. She drank at the dinner, but all FM’s crack staff could not find out if she was enjoying a nice chianti. (This is an allusion to Hopkins’ famous portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. Funny!)
David Modigliani said that he was at this dinner because he imposed himself on people, and the Sandrine’s waiter who motioned for him to quiet down would not argue. He offered a poem, “Transactions,” about an elephant trainer who got traded to another circus, and a loud and funny impression of his Italian grandparents.
Kevin H. Meyers, Hasty Pudding thespian, was the loudest audience member with his glass of Kenwood merlot. After informing the crowd that he’d “been having some wine” (get out!), Kevin presented some haikus that, charitably, fell under a loose definition of “haiku.” “This Spring I’ll wear high heels / I make a hideous girl / but that’s OK,” he told he audience. And he was right.
Whoever the Sandrine’s guitarist was that night, apologies from FM. Douthat’s song and Modigliani’s impression were both louder than all hell. When Sarah Darling stepped up to present, she started by saying, “I don’t have that much to talk about,” so she broke out her viola. The guitarist should have just packed it up and gone home as soon as she drew her bow. The group exhorted her to ask the guitarist to stop, and he wisely complied. Sarah played variations on “I’m a Little Teapot” to demonstrate the divergent musical styles of various campus groups. After these, she played the prelude to Bach’s First Cello Suite, and it was bee-yoo-tiful, and then she played one of those mournful Irish folk tunes that always shows up in the sad parts of movies.
After the meals and the presentations were finished, the seniors left our weird and vaguely pretentious dinner, rejoining normal college life for another semester, but with full-time immersion in the strange fancy-dinner real world only a few months away.
