The Rhapsody MP3 Store Party!

First off: for those of you who are all like “How come you never post photos of yourself on this site???”, here you go. A photo of me. On this site. Are we all happy now? Hooray.

Now let’s talk about the party tonight to celebrate the launch of the Rhapsody MP3 store, where you can download tracks at iTunes prices, but in MP3 format, so they’ll play anywhere you want them to play. It’s actually a really cool product. I was explaining it to my sister, like, “You know how when you buy a song from iTunes you can only play it on your computer or on your iPod?” and she was like, “Ugh, yeah, I hate that,” and I was like, “This is like iTunes but you can play it anywhere.” They’ve got over 5 million tracks available now, and the first 100,000 people who sign up get a free album. So yeah. It’s kind of a little revolutionary. Now I plugged the product (which is, in all honesty, very, very cool — I am a longtime Rhapsody user, and am very psyched for this) and now we can get back to talking about important things like me.

So somewhere around 4 pm my sister and I decide to order room service, because we’re hungry and I’m just going to be charging everything to RealNetworks anyway. A few minutes after we place the order, I get a call from Ryan, one of the (super-hot) RealNetworks PR guys. “You should get downstairs to the venue,” he says. “Ben Gibbard’s gonna be here in a minute to do his sound check.” Ben — the lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie — is our entertainment for this evening’s party. He’s going to do a solo acoustic set, and I really want to get downstairs to check him out, but I also really want to eat the food I just ordered. So my sister and I wait for the food to show up, eat it quickly, and then run downstairs, but we’ve just missed Ben.

We are only marginally disappointed about this until Ryan’s like, “Oh, and Jim from The Office was here with him. They’re buddies.” I’m like “John Krasinski????” and Ryan’s like “Who? No. Jim from The Office. The one who dates Pam,” and I was like “THAT’S JOHN KRASINSKI YOU DUMBASS!” Um, only one of the hottest men on television right now. Duh. “Is he coming tonight???” I ask Ryan. “I think so,” he says. I immediately text everyone I know to inform them that I might see John Krasinski tonight.

I then inform Ryan that I am about to go upstairs to my room and dye my hair brown. “Don’t do it,” he says. “No no no.” Ryan thinks it will look terrible. I assure him that it will look amazing. He looks at his watch. “It’s 5 pm,” he says. “You realize that this event starts at 7. Are you telling me you are going to dye your hair and get dressed and ready in two hours? No way.” I consider this a challenge.

My sister and I run upstairs, dye my hair, determine that it now looks awesome (and my sister would certainly tell me if it did not), get dressed and ready and get downstairs by 7 on the dot. Oh, and I also have to tell you guys that my sister put swimsuit pads in her bra to push her tits together in her dress. And I really wouldn’t have told you this except for that, when she did it, I jokingly said “I’m going to blog about this,” and she got so upset about this possibility that I decided I was, in fact, going to blog about it. So there. Seriously, though, I was kind of annoyed I had to walk into this party next to my sister, because she looked so strikingly gorgeous (as always) that I looked gross by comparison. Here’s a photo of my beautiful kid sister (whose bra is padded):

As with most NYC events, I expected most people to start trickling in an hour or so after the event actually starts, but, when we get downstairs at 7 (on the dot!) there is already a line around the corner. This Ben Gibbard guy has some serious fans in New York. I skip the line (because I’m badass) and head inside with my sister and find the place already packed. Craziness.

A bunch of my other NYC girlfriends show up to chill with me, and we all head up to the VIP lounge, because that is how we roll. My friend Tiffany asks me who the performer is tonight. “Ben Gibbard,” I tell her. “He’s the lead singer for Death Cab for Cutie.” Tiffany makes a face. “Oh,” she says. “How very indie. I feel like I should be wearing, like, pants I made myself.” I have no idea what happened during the ten minutes following the issuance of that statement, because I was laughing so hard I couldn’t see. My friends and I are such spoiled brats. I embrace that.

The open bar is serving Rhapsody-tinis and MP3-nis. OMG.

Ben Gibbard starts his set at around 7:30, and the place goes silent. All eyes and ears are on Ben. His voice is fantastic, he’s an accomplished guitarist, and his lyrics are — as many a drunken chick mentions — “waaaaay deep.” He’s got that whole nerd-chic look working for him, thick-rimmed glasses, plaid shirt, the whole deal. Most of my girlfriends had never heard of him before his set began, but afterwards they all had newfound crushes. Even Tiffany was like, “Wow. That was actually really good.”

Ben stops about halfway through his set. “You know,” he says, “this party is not at all what I expected. And I mean that in a good way.” I think he had expected a bunch of drunken assholes screaming at each other over his set, but the place is dead silent, hanging on every note. In fact, I am actually shushed while arguing with his manager over my right to take flash photos of him from the front row. I did get one, though:

Ryan comes up to me and points out John Krasinski — he’s sitting in a booth with a few other guys, hiding beneath a dark baseball cap, and he’s actually mouthing the words to some of Ben’s songs. I find this adorable. You guys, he is soooo much hotter in person, even from far away and in the dark. I was lovestruck. I think he’s hot on the show, but, in person, OMG. Fucking gorgeous.

I didn’t want to interrupt him during his buddy’s set, so, after Ben finished (to a standing ovation), I made a beeline to his booth, thinking they’d be running out the second the set was over, as many performers do. John was incredibly polite, and agreed to take photos with me and all my friends. Tiffany — who is a huge fan — spent the rest of the evening telling me that John looks happier in his photo with her than he does in his photo with me. I have to admit that this is true, and it saddens me.

Much to my surprise, Ben and John don’t leave after the set. Instead, they head up to the VIP area with their crew and party with us for the rest of the evening. My sister, who pretty much never drinks, has now had three MP3-nis, and is trashed. She will kill me for saying that, but it’s true. I know when my kid sister is drunk, and my kid sister was drunk. This does, however, motivate her to walk over to John and Ben’s booth and start chatting them up. Half an hour later, I go to check on her, and she is wedged between John Krasinski and John’s best friend in a booth, showing them photos of her friend’s dog on her cell phone. They are both delighted with her. My sister has that effect on men.

The party closes down around 10, and about 15 people head up to my hotel room to raid the mini-bar and play with my puppy. We’re in my room for probably twenty minutes, and my hotel room is now trashed. There’s a broken glass in the sink. Beer is spilled all over the carpet. Cigarette ash is everywhere. Plus we got hair dye all over the bathroom earlier in the day, and spray tan all over the linens. When did I become the sort of person who trashes a hotel room? So rock star.

Then we herd ourselves down to the hotel’s sushi restaurant, where we are joined by my old LA pal Dave Aizer, who now lives in NYC. You might remember Dave as the former host of Nickelodeon’s Slime Time Live. I thought I had given him all the shit possible about this, but when my girlfriends meet him, they quickly begin making jokes comparing his sex life to the premise of his former television show. I can’t believe I never thought to ask him “Did anybody get slimed tonight?” after he’d been out on a date. I’m truly ashamed of myself. I think I should have my blogger’s license temporarily revoked for this gross oversight. Anyway, Dave realized that if you tie the napkins at the sushi restaurant around your head you look like that guy from The Karate Kid:

Around 1 am, we got around to discussing whether or not Adam Duritz’s recent weight gain could be attributed to the fact that he ate the other members of Counting Crows (Dave: “Now I only count one!”) and decided that was our cue to call it a night. Well, everyone else called it a night. I came up to my room and worked for the next three hours. Because that is how I roll.

Anyway, the party was phenomenal and went off without a hitch. Mad props to Lacey, Tiffany, Ryan, Bill and everyone else involved in pulling off such a killer event (and thanks for flying me to New York to write about it … even though I just ended up writing about my drunken escapades with my friends … but you knew what you were getting into).

Make sure to be one of the first 100,000 people to sign up for Rhapsody’s new MP3 store and get an entire album free.

More pictures of party insanity are after the jump.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 12:42 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.