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It was well after three pm on the Sunday of
One Mighty Weekend
at the
Buena Vista Palace (aka
Party Central) and still the boyz were lollygagging in their rooms:
recovering, primping, pimping and bumping. As for the ones who’d
made it downstairs (without mishap), it was all they could do to
slip into the pool, cocktail in hand. After-hours rehab. The sun
beat down on the beat down faces—eyes shaded by LVMH.
Phil B. was on the
decks—banging out the beats—but these girls couldn’t move more than
a pinkie. Not yet, anyway. It would take
Debby Holiday to get
them on their feet and onto the dance floor as she werked her way
through a mini-concert of her chart-toppers, including “Dive” and
the
Tony Moran-produced
“Surrender Me.”
One thing about the
Reunion Pool Parties—they’re
a fashion show of what the straight boyz will be wearing in ten
years. That is, if those straight boyz spend as much time at the gym
as this tribe. Calling Janice Dickinson: these boyz are ready for
their close-up! And speaking of La Dickinson, JP Calderon was in the
house, as was Gil Dominach, and so was Matthew Rush—and really, to
be honest, by six pm, who wasn’t there? Even
Joe Caro had made his
much-anticipated late entrance…
To be honest, the only way to get through this juggernaut called One
Mighty Weekend is to think of it as a seventy-two-hour marathon—and
by Sunday evening, you have to realize you’re at Heartbreak Hill,
ready for the slide into the home stretch. So best to hydrate,
replenish, refuel—and set the Magellan for Universal Studios.
This year, the Sunday night party had been moved from Hard Rock—to
Universal Studios—and
maybe there were people who imagined we’d be inside—but no, and why
should we have been indoors given the balmy night and an entire
studio lot made up like a romanticized Manhattan, the New York of
your dream state, where everything’s stylized and clean, and where
the Metro Tribune building is next to Fifth Avenue brownstones and
Finnegan’s Bar becomes The Absolut Lounge for the night. It was like
walking through a diorama of the swank and sleek Manhattan you
imagined as a kid. You slipped into one door—where there were nubile
boyz dancing on a bar—and then out another door, and onto a
fountained courtyard with acrobats swirling above the street—and
meanwhile, over at VIP at the Monsters Café, there were cocktail
waiters serving trays of Red Bull-and-vodka—and Skittles! “Skittles?
Where’d you get those?” You’d swear, we were thirteen again.
And our jungle gym for this over-steroided playground? A lighting
rig that looked like a gargantuan Rubik’s Cube torn apart by the
Hulk on a Ritalin revenge. Rays of light pierced the night like
scores of arrows from Cupid’s quiver. And the man in charge of the
music and our good time? Our man
Abel, a One Mighty
Weekend stalwart who still manages to surprise and soothe as he
drives us expertly through the night. This was Abel on a New York
back lot street, by way of Hollywood’s art direction, in Orlando—or
in other words, Abel Universo. The man who takes a party and reminds
us of the ones we’ve loved before, even as he makes this one sui
generis. And to dance near the lip of the stage, more or less at
Abel’s feet, was to be surrounded by Abel aficionados, the ones who
know his catalog forward and backward—and are still amazed at Abel’s
prowess with his beat mixes.
In essence, in general, the Universe party was the perfect party for
anyone suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. You could leave
the dance floor and ride the Mummy roller-coaster (where one car got
more than they bargained for when the coaster stalled in the Boiler
Room—and riders got slow-roasted…) It was visual extremism and aural
overload and a visceral smorgasbord—and everywhere you turned, at
any time, at any moment, you witnessed the most overwhelming sense
of freedom: a playground without restraint.
There are few times when you get to see the little boy in your
grown-up friends—the boy who might have been your sandbox buddy—and
this night was one of them. For as one friend observed, it was the
sort of party that you wanted somehow to share with those you love
from the outside world—so that they, too, could see the joy and
wonder of it all. Which was maybe how Abel felt as well, when he
plated Soul Logic’s “Let Get Together”—and right then, it all came
together—all over the playground, all over Universal Studios, at One
Mighty Weekend 2008.
And then from the playground to the carnival… The night still young,
the circus caravan headed south to Kissimmee where the boyz poured
into Arabian Nights with its tilt-a-whirl lighting rig. Everyone was
there. There were girls with geisha fans, and there was Holly as
Nurse Silver Pasty, mirror balls on her nips, and there was someone
who said, “Last night I was too fast for the music,” and someone
else saying, “Look at me—I’m fucked up.” And at the helm, in full
orchestral mode, there was
Tony Moran, the
brilliant impresario who seems always to plumb the romance of every
party. And later, there was
Manny who took the
baton from Tony and ran onward with it, taking the packed stadium
into the late morning. Everyone dancing on a floor in a stadium
built for the sport of kings—a floor which rose and fell whenever
the crowd caught the beat in tandem and shook the floorboards—at a
party which brought an end to this year’s edition of One Mighty
Weekend.
This year’s One Mighty Weekend beneficiaries were the
Elton John AIDS Foundation
and Orlando’s
Hope and Help Center of Central
Florida, Inc., two deserving institutions that provide
needed services to the greater LGBT community.
Because as this year’s One Mighty Weekend proved, however you get
there—and back—be it flying in a twelve-seater Gulfstream or flying
down the freeway in a red Mustang convertible, top down, hair
blowing, music trailing in your wake—the trip to Orlando for One
Mighty Weekend is a trip you gotta make. It’s good for the soul.
Best always,
Mark and Robert
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