By Mark Baratelli
Owner
Staff Page
Owner
Staff Page
Wednesday night I attended the opening night party for the Orlando Film Festival thanks to a paid tweeting gig from new online video company UbeeaTV, hence my string of tweets last night (to those of you who follow @thedailycity). They got me into Ember and got me a VIP pass (thank you!) where I enjoyed all the free drinks, free food and Haley Joel Osment I could handle. Not kidding. He was there.
Ember is a lovely downtown bar with a huge outdoor patio. They had all 40 of their wall mounted hurricane fans set to "Katrina" and any table I sat at, the fans blew the smile off my face. No worries though. It rained, so they turned off the fans and my right shoulder got soaked while standing on the outskirts of the covered part of the bar... next to Haley Joel Osment.
Someone in charge of something got on a mic and welcomed us to the party and then reminded us that we're drinking for free (excuse me?) and we need to remember to tip the servers (classy). I gave him a tip: Haley Joel Osment just stiffed that server who brought him his drink* and if its good enough for Haley, its good enough for me*.
The night ended with me slip sliding my way to SAK Semi-Comedy Lab to say hi to a friend and then over to Red Fox Lounge where a friend was introducing his friend to the magic of Mark and Lorna, the two forever-singers in the tiny lounge attached to the Best Western Inn. They did not remind me to tip the servers but did shove paper copies of articles about themselves in my face.
*not true
packed
much cheese
Meeting Barack and George sort of
Sean Koehane from Orlando Puppet Festival
handing me his Lure-designed postcard.