Inbetween my more meaningful weekend experiences, I dropped by Arianna Huffington’s book party on Saturday night. The book is called “On Becoming Fearless…in Love, Work, and Life.” Meghan O’ Rourke ably reviews it, and Arianna herself, here, in Slate.)

(A digression: Slate is now running hideous ads that start playing video and sound some time after you click on the page, so that you won’t immediately click away. The ads have a tool bar that looks like the Quicktime tool bar, with a button for pausing and a button that says “close.” The only problem is, when you click either the Pause or Close buttons, they take you to another ad. Sleazy—and makes me hate the advertiser.)

The party took place at the glorious East 66th Street manse of Tom and Kathy Freston, who know Arianna from…well, God knows, because Arianna knows everyone. Tom Freston is the media executive who was just ousted from Viacom by Sumner Redstone. Kathy Freston—and you’ll be shocked, shocked by this—is a former model. (She is now a writer and blogger for Huffington Post who describes herself as “a self-help author and personal growth and spirituality counselor.”)

Kathy Freston

Kathy Freston: Knows how
to pose.

But it was sort of nice that Kathy Freston is a former model, because it meant that her friends, other former models, were also there. I was chatting with one of them, a lovely woman of about 35 with a massive engagement ring, when she turned and declared, “I’d like you to meet my fiancee.” It took me a moment to realize that she was talking about the 70-something year old man standing quietly next to me.

But I shouldn’t have been surprised: Such are the laws of beauty, power and money in New York City, and an Arianna party is nothing if not an invitation to watch the machinations of all three. What makes Arianna interesting, in part, is that she is both part of this world, and yet removed enough to remain something of an outsider, fascinated with its codes and rules. (The tell-all Arianna could write!)

I know Arianna from my days at George—she was the epitome of a George story, and I’ll never forget being invited to her 40th birthday party, held at a massive suite in the Waldorf, and seeing Arianna work the room while her husband Michael played, alone and happy, with their two children. Also, I’ve blogged for her site. But I stopped doing it months ago, because it seemed like all we bloggers there were doing was providing Arianna free content while she used the site to help maintain her high-profile. And here’s an interesting story: When I said hello to Arianna on Saturday, she kissed me on the cheek and said, in that lovely Greek accent, “Darling! You haven’t been blogging!” Which meant either an impressive level of familiarity with her site, or a level of pre-party preparation that is simply astonishing. Both possiblities intrigue.

While I drank white wine and fended off overtures from clean-cut waiters bearing vegan appetizers, I checked out the crowd. There’s Naomi Wolf! (She’s working on a book about…well, she wouldn’t want me to say.) There’s Barry Diller! Society photographer Patrick McMullen! And journalists in abundance: Joe Conason from the New York Observer, Eric (ugh) Alterman, Alex Starr of the New York Times Magazine, Steve Roderick of New York, Kevin Buckley of Playboy, Jamie Steen of the Baltimore Sun and Nina Burleigh of People. It was one of those parties where you may not know everyone, but they all look vaguely familiar. I bumped into an ex-girlfriend, the ex-boyfriend of my ex-agent’s ex-assistant, and a young woman who’s helping make a documentary about the global water crisis. Such are Arianna’s parties.

As Meghan O’Rourke points out in her review above, it’s sometimes hard to tell whether Arianna really believes in anything, or whether she just loves to be in the mix—lives to be in the mix. Nonetheless, she is a character, and she has a remarkable amount of energy, and there is no question that she has overcome adversities in her own life to get where she is. Which is another way of saying that as long as she keeps inviting me to her parties, I’ll keep going.