Yesterday I lost about 10 lbs walking from 1140 Broadway to The Skirball Center on LaGuardia Place. Washington Square Park was packed with drum circles, stinky sweaty humans, and lazy fat squirrels. Perfect night for the Webby Film and Video Awards, don't you think?

I love food. I love watching people wield knives like magicians, and I want to hug Tom Colicchio. Which means that when I got the invitation to Chefs' Night Out (the big party thrown by Bon Appetit and others before the official James Beard Award ceremony), I put my homemade duck l'orange on hold and slipped out the door like a little neck clam down the throat of a Hampton's housewife.

Remember the good ole Science Fair days? You know the one, where your diorama of that elephant (made with homemade clay) just couldn't hold a candle to Chauncey's self-healing, genetically engineered hamster? So you peed your pants and cried? Remember that? Oh wait, that was me. I held it in, though, when I walked through the brain overload that was "An Evening at Maker Faire" in the bowels of Saatchi and Saatchi.

I smelled something as I rounded the corner of Nassau and Banker, heading towards Studio B for the Live Diggnation and Digg meetup. I couldn't put my nose on it, but it tickled something familiar. A memory fog descended, flashing back to my IBM days, when I used to plan the annual Kickoff meetings and pre-parties. That's it! It's the pungent odor of uber-nerds colliding with social situations! My lips crafted an exhausted but good-feeling smile as I dodged through the drizzle and Studio B came into view.

Blissful. Magnificent. Sparkly. Surreal. That was last night. The event went down at the Museum of Modern Art (or if you're punk rock, MoMA) and was flawlessly thrown by AICP, celebrating the Art and Technique of the American Commercial. It was a black-tie affair and I, without a black tie, did my best to blend as I trounced in between the gussied up crowd in my little Payless wedge sandals, toughened up against the couture intimidation.

I've never had Campari. I've heard of it, don't get me wrong, but I've never had a reason to say "I'd like a Campari and ..." when it's a lot easier to say "shot of tequila" or "Bud Light" (mmm, wings and beer...). I've also never read RADAR or RADARonline, but hey, what better time to give 'er a whirl than at a party thrown by RADAR magazine and Campari, celebrating 25 emerging New York artists? And by "What better time" I mean "please don't ever make me drink this stuff again and where is the magazine collateral?"

Monday Monday, can't trust that day. I never got that little lyrical blurb. I mean, a day can't really do anything to you. I guess unless you're the mamas and the papas and maybe you've licked a sheet of turtle-logo'd acid. Then maybe, maybe (to you) a day can actually not be trusted. Today, though, you wily women and spastic men who attended COREMedia's 16th Anniversary/Keep a Child Alive benefit last Thursday night should be a little nervous Monday is packing. Because... you people were NUTS.

I took 449 pictures last night. Do you have any idea what that does to someone's brain the day after a kickbutt party at Marquee thrown by COREMedia? It makes the brain soupy. This was the party to beat, people. I used all my space-age film (some call it a compactflash card), my battery died, AND my phone died by the end of the evening. It was like Y2K up there.

If your name is Clay Weiner, you probably have a wonderful sense of humor honed from years of childhood name-game torture, and you made one of my favorite commercials, Bud Light's "Dude." If you're James Larese, you're a tilted-fedora-sporting, cool as a cucumber creative force with a humble smile -- part of the three musketeers of Syndrome, Robot Films. If your name is David Katzenberg, well, I guess you're doing us all a favor by showing up late with Nicky Hilton (double-what?), and you're either painfully shy or grimacing, "Augh, why do I have to do these plebian appearances?" From …

Yesterday I was stressing. We're talking the weird, slightly bitter-smelling sweat stressing. I had NOTHING lined up party-wise Tuesday night. For inspiration, I blathered to my favorite people here in the MediaPost office about my Memorial Day Weekend trip with a dream-come-true pit stop at Grandpa's Cheesebarn in Ashland, Ohio. Truer words have never been spoken by the prolific Amy Corr: "Isn't it always a party any time cheese is around?" I thought "Shooooooot, ya'll, if NYC isn't going to throw any parties tonight, I'll hit the Online Minute readers Ohio style."