Thanks to Bachman for confirming what I’d written off as a hallucination — Lord Black really did have a giant po-mo portrait of Adolph Hitler in his living room. I didn’t mention that when I originally posted about this party — given for Mark Steyn when America Alone came out — leave it to me to get a detail like that wrong.
When Tal Bachman walked in, guitar case in hand, I thought: Look, it’s Carrie’s prom date. Turned out he was an actual famous singer/songwriter guy, and don’t believe him: his performance was terrific.
Sounds like almost everybody was nervous that night, except for Lord Black of course. I don’t get out much anyway, so I was sweating like a hippo. I was also trying not to fall out of a low cut, black velvet dress, or get swallowed up by the overstuffed chintz couch, or saying “Hey, nice Hitler painting!”, or, out of sheer terror, projectile-vomitting onto John O’Sullivan.
And I was just starting to feel ok when Mark Steyn called over the editor of the National Post.
“Instead of trying to hire me back,” he said, “you should hire Kathy Shaidle here instead.”
The editor narrowed his eyes, looked at Mark, looked at me, looked at Mark again, and walked away without a word or even a smile.
“Er, that went well,” said Steyn, after a decade long pause.
“I feel like we’re all back in Grade 7 and you just dared him to kiss me,” I said.
The sushi was cool, though.
