Hollywood – Tinseltown is awash in self-adulation as the whole town is buzzing, getting ready for its annual senior prom known as the Academy Awards.
(Be sure to click on a Live Stream from the Red Carpet Sunday beginning at 430 p.m. EST.)
Thursday night I hit the Mondrian hotel's "it" spot Skybar for Jason Binn's bash. Binn is of Niche Media fame, which puts out Hamptons Magazine and Los Angeles Confidential.
Say what you will about Hollywood and its denizens, they know how to throw a party.
In New York, everybody from the security staff to the bartenders seems to be competing with each other to see who can have the biggest attitude, but out here in La La Land, these same positions are occupied by nice folks.
Imagine that.
Former "Apprentice" star Nick Warnock was working the door (he works at Los Angeles Confidential magazine), and it was nice to see a familiar face in this bastion of beautiful people.
Warnock brought me in and introduced me to some of his Hollywood pals, among them another former reality star, Bradford Cohen from last season's "Apprentice."
You might recall Cohen was the guy who was fired after deciding to join the boardroom after his team lost, even though he had immunity. Trump fired him for making a bad business decision.
As much as we Grrr! name dropping, I am out here in the land where name dropping was invented, so forgive me.
Matt Dillon was there, chatting up Dennis Hopper and his "Crash" co-star Ludacris. Dillon is basking in his first Oscar nomination, and he's generally favored to win the award. The Academy likes to honor actors for a body of work, rather than one particular performance.
If anybody doubts me there, just go back and see "Scent of a Woman" and tell me that Al Pacino didn't win that Oscar for "Godfather," "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Serpico." Hoorah! (Yes, I'm still bitter about losing the role of Robin to Chris O'Donnell).
More celebrities to grace the party included Tom Arnold, who remembered me from this video at the Consumer Electronics Show, and Pat O'Brien of "The Insider," who I will say was a pleasure to meet.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman was slated to attend but if he showed up, I didn't see him. What I did see were a bunch of wannabes.
It's funny how here in Hollywood, the pretenders are easy to spot. The men all have perfect hair and exactly the right blazer/jeans/T-shirt combination, and the women, no matter how chilly it gets at night, show way too much skin. Then again, looks and perception mean more than anything else out here.
There were a few exceptions, like Randy Wayne, who plays one of the leads in ABC's "Sons and Daughters."
Wayne is 24 years old from Oklahoma City. This is his first major role, and he's very excited.
"This is the very beginning of my career, man," he said. "I'm really excited and can't wait to see what happens with it."
Wayne also mentioned that his parents Linda and Dale are proud of him but added, "it's almost not real until they see it on TV."
Roger Friedman was also on hand, and his FOX 411 column has all the juicy gossip, as usual.
Ironically, in the Asia de Cuba bar adjacent to Skybar, my buddy Jay Calavas from WebsideStory, a Web analytics firm that we work with at FOXNews.com, called me on my cell, and when we both figured out we were in the same building, I escaped the madness and spent some time with some real people. Imagine that.
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