Celebrities are people, much in the mysterious, metaphorical way that corporations are people. They have normal human things, like children and emotions, but they also have entourages and price tags and auras. (Those last two make them sound like oil paintings, which they also have.) Nowhere is their ontological status muddier than in the strange ritual of the paid party appearance, wherein an A-lister attends an event as one-third guest, one-third entertainer, and one-third really glamorous piece of decoration.
Behold Paula Abdul pulling enormous needles out of 8-foot-tall haystacks for a Yahoo party in Los Angeles. And Christina Aguilera singing at the wedding of Russian banker Andrey Melnichenko. (He married Miss Yugoslavia.) And Robin Williams and Paul McCartney gracing the 70th birthday party of the financier David Bonderman. (Bonderman needed to top his 60th birthday party, which featured the Rolling Stones and John Mellencamp, somehow.) Not long ago, Justin Timberlake reportedly flew out to attend a super-secret f
