Thursday, November 09, 2006

October's Events: Classy, Campy and everything inbetween

Well, as Groucho Marx said, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." And time has been flying these past few weeks! For me personally, it seems like Thanksgiving's already here and then there's the other holidays and then whoosh! 2007! It could be, perhaps, because I am leaving tomorrow for a week sojourn in the Mexican Riviera. Yeah, that's probably it.

It's been a busy few months, what with my graduating from an innovative self-defense program (well, a single girl traveling the world's gotta have her street-smarts) at Prepare, Inc. Check out this amazing and innovative program (http://www.prepareinc.com/) and my continuing studies at NYU's Continuing education program in French...

...which will serve me well when we do our next European "Cocktails with Courtney" in Paris on January 9th, 2007! That's right, folks, you read it here first. Now, go tell all your amis et amies! :)

Among other highlights of the month include the Art Directors Club's "Fall 2006 Ping Pong Challenge," held on October 19th where teams of men and women (mixed doubles) competed and feted. Synapse Productions completed its compelling and thought-provoking "Ignite Festival" in October (http://www.synapseproductions.org/index.html). iBreakfast's social at the Time Warner Center, also held on the 19th, featured the "new breed of Web 2.0 companies" in the New York area. Dozens of giveaways including MP3 players, jumpdrives and tickets to "important new events" added incentive to those who still had their doubts.

October's end went from classy to campy. On October 30th was Trader Monthly's (tradermonthly.com) first "Women in Trading" celebration at Le Cirque with gentlemen and women in proper business attire, sipping fine wines and cocktails and nibbling on hors d'oeuvres, all adding to the air of refinement.

And then the very next night was a different story altogether (here's the "camp" part) with the Groucho Marx-themed "Cocktails with Courtney" soiree on Halloween at Pulse Restaurant. Guests arriving in Groucho Marx masks got their admission price waived (treat!) and those who didn't...well, no tricks but let's just say, "they paid the price." Among the guests (in costume) were: Propanda Marketing Communications Inc's president Amy Krakow and her notable husband, Gary Krakow, who's seen the insides of the Microsoft beast since the early days. Other guests ala Groucho were: Andi Jompole (theperfectpresent.net) and her four friends including Gerit Quealy and Susan Kaufman, David Glackin, John Joseph Bachir (formerly of the fabulous ibiblio.org and all-around-cool-guy) (http://blog.johnjosephbachir.org/) and Richard Allen Charles Leider who's had the whole shtick since high school!

[HERE ARE THE PICTURES!]

While every guest is near and dear, some other notable mentions are: TMGI's Angelina Jao (http://www.tmgi.us/), Vantage Point Venture Partners' Howard Yeh and AOL's Ken Gawrelski. Then the dueling Larry's showed up (separately and without a duel): Larry Aronson brought me up to speed on his programming efforts and Larry Kesslin on his burgeoning entrepreneur consulting business. Martin White, TJ Walker (mediatrainingworldwide.com) and Shehzad Daredia rounded out the fun-loving, comic and effervescent guests that the CWC events are known for!

Come to our next 'Cocktails ~ Monday, November 27th from 6:00 PM – 7:30 at Pulse Restaurant.

And with that ~ Olé and see soon!