It was just a few days ago that I packed my rolling suitcase with just a few ordinary essentials: jeans, frilly tops, heels, cocktail dress, and an evening gown. I headed to JFK Airport to embark on a whirlwind weekend at the Cannes Film Festival as the temporary heir apparent (or so I thought) to the Jacques D’Azur empire. For those of you who don’t know Jacques, he’s sort of the king of Cannes, a dashing man that’s known to rule the party scene and be a lover of extraordinary skill. This year’s festival was lacking Jacques, however, as he was busy vacationing on some beautiful and foreign island. So, I did what I could with some new friends to fill in for his party shoes. The lovely people at Stella Artois set the backdrop by keeping us full of frothy beer every step of the way.
If you think a weekend in the south of France sounds good, imagine how good it is when you’re imbibing more alkie than anything else. We were welcomed at the airport by strapping young men with the sole purpose of transporting us to Picasso’s former mansion (where we’d be staying for the weekend), and to constantly remind us that beer was on the way. Normally I have no interest in young men, but I like the idea of men driving me around and ending up at a destination full of art and alkie.
When I arrive at the manor to unpack (which never really happened seeing as I was only there for 2 nights), I ran into the oh-so-fabulous Yu-Ming Wu of FreshnessMag.com, and Ian Sobel of ScreenJunkies.com. Little did I know, these two would be my partners in crime for the remainder of the weekend. We walked the red carpet together at the Palais for the premiers of Woody Allen’s newest flick, as well as the much-heralded new Wall Street movie.
Truth be told, Wall Street didn’t live up to the hype, but the drunken yacht fiestas that ensued after more than made up for it. We partied for hours around endless quantities of Stella and Veuve.
The weekend was a crazy party: parties, yachts, beautiful people, water boarding via Stella Artois (it was pleasurable pain, trust me), and limos. Speaking of limos, I seem to have made “special friends” with our limo driver on the 2nd night. His name was Denis (that’s deh-nees to you sloppy Americans). He was in his 20’s, tall, and didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t at all interested in him. He shuttled Ian, Yu-Ming, & myself from the Croisette back to Picasso’s house and then left us to eat our lobster dinner in peace… or so we thought. By the time I got back up to my room I noticed a fun little note had been slipped under my door:
Needless to say that nothing happened with Denis… we all know I prefer old guys (whose last names I know).
The weekend drew to a close with an early morning flight from Nice back to New York with much of the Cannes crew on the same Delta flight. I’m still trying to fill my sleep debt and cleanse my liver, but I keep craving the bittersweet frothy Stellas that got me through the weekend.
