Übercool, page 1

The thing about being a catering waiter/bartender is you never quite know what you’re getting yourself into until you arrive on site. Working the “übercool” party was deceptive in that case. Upon arriving, lighting and staging crews were fussing around attending to last minute details regarding the party production. On the catering end, the job, for the waiters, involved merely passing hors d’oeuvres for three-plus hours. We had no idea who the company was or what the fuss was about, but it sounded simple enough from our end.

The night unfolded in its own surprising and somewhat surreal way. With the above strip, the first of two pages, I tried to show how the level of weirdness slowly took hold of the event. The company was called Übercool that does “trend analysis” (http://www.ubercool.com). Their slogan, “bringing trends to life”, took on a new meaning in this party.

Besides the actor dressed up as a rapping donut, there was an actress who feigned a nervous breakdown in the middle of a cluster of unwitting guests: her cell phone ringing, her purse exploding with items, her this and her that causing her meltdown. The solution? There was no real connection being made. However, the “ideal” product was some multi-tasking palm device being served around on a tray like a large hors d’oeuvre. There was the thumping din of electronic music, large visual displays.

This took place at the Limn Gallery near Caltrain depot in SF, where there was a simultaneous showing of the most fragile paper sculptures, exposed and vulnerable. The growing throngs of drunken trendsetters were threatening the items at every turn. The party energy turned more and more chaotic. Carrying food on trays, we became sitting ducks to aggressive feeders in a claustrophobic place.

In catering, one envisions well-mannered people being gracious of receiving pampered attention to their food needs. In a riotous crowd of cocktail drinkers, all pretense and care gets trampled.