Last Night’s Ultimate Gossip Girl Summit…

…was nothing short of spectacular. (See Maryanne Ventrice’s photographs here.)

Actually, it did run a little shorter than would be ideal, but that’s cause we had to start later. The PIT had to turn many people away, and put out extra chairs for others. In fact, when Ces and I got up there at around 7:20 PM, there were already people milling around, some of whom had been told the show had sold out but were waiting around to see if they could get standby tickets.

Amazing, right?

The show was an utter delight. Richard Lawson, Jon Friedman, Jiwon Li (as Nan Zhang), Jen Kwok, Heather Fink, Francesco Marciuliano, Diana Saez, and Rya Backer did an absolute bang-up job of being pithy, witty, funny and saucy when it came to the subject of America’s Greatest Television Program. Michael Cirelli was a great house manager, and Michael Newman was a great tech dude. Teresa Bass made it all happen by giving the green light to this insane event that I termed “like a Star Wars convention, but for hot people.”

Diana’s introductory video, co-starring New York scribe Chris Rovzar of the Daily Intelligencer, was extraordinarily fun AND informative. I’ll post a link once I get it up on YouTube.

And publicist Hillary Buckholtz worked magic and got us big ups in the New York Observer, Village Voice, and Metromix.com. Richard Lawson (a.k.a. LOLCait) mentioned us on Gawker.com in a post that has to date reached over 30,000 views (is it any wonder we sold out within 24 hours of the Gawker post?)

Each attendee received a complimentary white cloth headband, and complimentary cupcakes were available (Francesco went out and got 72 of them earlier in the day!) The panelists had free wine and beer, and quite a few of the audience members bought wine and beer at the front desk at the PIT.

All in all, a thrilling night of magic, and I’m certainly going to bring it back in anticipation of the season premiere–albeit perhaps at a larger venue. I adore the PIT, and I think it is the warmest and best venue for live comedy in the city–and it also has the best classes in writing, improvisation, and everything else–but it only seats about 65 people, and the hordes who didn’t get in were alternately depressed and pissed. Also next time we’ve got to go longer than 45 minutes…I’m thinking an hour and a half would be better, if we keep it moving with video clips, even more audience prizes (this time I gave away iTunes giftcards, Starbucks giftcards, and PORN!), and more in-depth discussion and debate.

Also, I made an Edward Said reference during a question about GG’s fetishization of the Asian female, and the mention was a personal victory for me as I had been determined to work Said’s landmark tome Orientalism into a question. And then I only let Jen Kwok answer it, because I wanted to show reverse racism in a response to Josh Schwartz letting Kati Farks/Nan Zhang say basically three words for the entire first season (before the actress left the show and “went to Brown,” yeah right. That’s just a bullshit excuse they’re giving because they think that because Zhang is Asian, the viewers will OF COURSE believe she left the best show on television to go to an Ivy League school. It’s a transparently racist attempt to throw off the masses from the reality that someone on the show didn’t like her. Next they’ll tell us Isobel is leaving to follow her lifelong dream of picking cotton. I CALL BULLSHIT, SCHWARTZ.)

I also felt good about getting to work out some of my Trachtenberg-related ish, bestowing the verb to Trachtenburgle (“to come on a previously brilliant and amazing show and irrevocably fuck it up”) upon the world. The evening was very healing for me in that regard.

So thanks to those who were there in person and there in spirit. It was a really good time.