You know what’s great? Parties. How do you celebrate a compendium of popular favorites representing (in the collective opinion of our fabulous readers) the finest aspects of life in your community? With a feature article, yes, and by making sure to experience as many of the winners’ excellent qualities in person as possible (that’s a promise, Café Kacao), but also with a bloody great party.
Done and done.
March 27. Cowboy Hall. I dropped by the morning of to help lug some swag in and do a chore or two (by the way, if you happened to regard the 3×3 cube shelf on and in which the VIP treats were laden and thought to yourself, “My word, what a useful and not-at-all-shoddily-assembled item of furniture,” you’re welcome. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t notice, though, considering how swank the other furnishings from Factor 110 were) and when I found my way into the colossal venue I immediately thought, “Aw, man. How are we ever going to fill this amount of space?”
Hard cut to the answer that evening: With delicious treats from Nonna’s, Cuppies & Joe and other taste purveyors. With equally delicious grooves from Born in November (who, by the way, knock out a ferocious cover of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”). With plenty of enthusiasm from emcees Lauren Hammack and Jim Roth. And most importantly, with hundreds of people, dressed to impress and ready to enjoy.
Wayne Coyne didn’t rush the stage to sing “Good Morning, Starshine” – for that matter, Kanye didn’t rush the stage to announce that he would let Lauren finish, but Nic’s Grill has one of the best greasy cheeseburgers OF ALL TIME – but from my vantage point, the inaugural Slice Awards went pretty swimmingly. Everybody seemed to have a good time. The dozen or so stalwarts who stayed out on the dance floor until the very end seemed to have a real good time. And a certain Ms. Houston, who won over $3,000 worth of Naifeh Fine Jewelry’s finest as a door prize, presumably had an exceptionally good time. Sincere thanks to everyone – from Larry Nichols on down – who came out to celebrate with us; we should totally do it again next year.
STEVE GILL is unusually tall, has a B.A. in Letters and a minor in Classics from OU, drinks a great deal of coffee and openly delights in writing, editing and catching the occasional typo for Slice – especially since his dream career (millionaire layabout in a P.G. Wodehouse novel) is notoriously difficult to break into. He's probably trying to think of a joke about pirates right now.
