If your pal X'ortel needs advice on covering up those scales, she should look no further than Allure's "Starry Night" feature, which advocates tinted moisturizer on the cleavage and not one but two types of makeup on the legs. But where Allure truly shines is the social sphere — essential tips on activities most humanoids take for granted. Devoted followers will remember the immortal "How To Take A Shower," but the December issue expands on the seemingly-simple-activities theme by offering advice on how to talk to people. For instance, aspiring humans should try to relate current events back to fellow partygoers' lives. Allure's example: the Jaycee Dugard kidnapping. Charming! But X'ortel might not want to take her cue from alleged human Kirsten Dunst, whose insight after a recent cross-country road trip was, "wow, America is so poor." Celebrities, like aliens, want to seem down-to-earth, and Dunst is, as we say here, doin it rong.

To watchers of MTV, elaborate parties for spoiled kids is nothing new. What sets a quinceañera apart, of course, is the religious element: in addition to ushering a girl to womanhood, it reaffirms her commitment to the church and involves a mass and a blessing. And the quinceañera involves a tacit element of sexual purity which parents in the article are quick to acknowledge. One mother says that she wanted her daughter to wear white because "it was the only time I could take her to the altar to be blessed and know that she was still pure." Whereas (tiny British dads aside) we hope that no one really thinks of a 13-year-old Bar Mitzvah as a man, the exchange of a doll for a bouquet, in the case of a 15-year-old girl, is more loaded: in the old days, the ceremony meant she was marriageable, and even now it's an ambiguous age between child and teen.

Elaborate quinceañeras are becoming the norm in communities like Rio Grande Valley, where even families of modest income budget for big parties. The parties used to be homegrown affairs, but that won't do these days. Part of this is a natural consequence of assimilation on the part of immigrants: Americans like parties big and showy. Some in the article suggest that it may have something to do with the fact that girls are marrying later, if at all; some of a wedding's emphasis is now placed on the quinceañera. As one girl puts it, "You don't know if you're ever going to get married, but everyone turns fifteen."

The price of each gown, which the emcee did not divulge, ranged from $500 to $800. And that's just to outfit the birthday girl. She typically has fourteen damas, or attendants (one for each year of her life), who, like bridesmaids, wear identical dresses and may change into additional dresses or costumes if la quinceañera is performing a choreographed dance number as part of her debut. There are also the chambelans, the young men who serve as the damas' escorts, who usually rent tuxedos for the occasion.

The piece profiles one quinceañera, Elizabeth Miranda, whose "pink diamond"-theme party, is complete with visits to the giant "Latina Bridal and Quince Girl Expo" and the full complement of court, party, and dance routines. Elizabeth seems generally interested in honoring her Mexican culture, but is clearly psyched about being queen for a day. While her quinceañera's a far cry from some of the parties the piece describes - a particularly horrifying Phantom of the Opera-themed event springs to mind - it's a big deal. Indeed, some of the boys have been in so many of the ceremonies that they know the dance routines cold. As the author describes it, it's a thrilling day for a girl, and she really is getting the royal treatment. It is like a wedding, and while we can see the appeal, it's worrisome enough when an adult bride focuses all her energies on the superficials of one big day. Isn't it that much harder when that day comes so much sooner, and so is over so much earlier? As the ceremony indicates, 15 is just the beginning.

Sweet 15 [Texas Monthly]

Her Brighton home was raided by a group of more than 500 crashers describing themselves as "the Facebook Republic Army," who scaled the walls, trashed the house and generally caused such chaos that the story garnered national attention. Result: Georgina's picture came to the notice of Storm Modeling Agency, which is now interested in meeting what they describe as "a quintessential and very cool English Rose." We're guessing she's still grounded. [Telegraph]

This is a thorny issue we're not unfamiliar with — Jessica's interview with author Janellle Brown touched on it memorably. Said Brown, who had written up just such a scene in her book All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, "There's always this awkward shuffle around the bill. Money definitely creates this imbalance, especially because in creative worlds it seems like it flows so easily and quickly, particularly when you're not the one getting it." These are issues that we're all aware of to one degree or another, but rarely are we forced to deal with these ugly realities except in the case of the birthday dinner. Sure, any dinner with friends can fall into this trap, but it's only in the case of a birthday that the facts are inarguable, on another's terms, a veritable test of your loyalty.

Swansburg defines it thusly:

As my friends moved from graduate programs and entry-level positions into decent-paying jobs, a birthday meet-up at a dive bar to pound SoCo-and-lime shots started to feel a shade déclassé. Yet everyone was still living in small studio or one-bedroom apartments—no place for a proper cocktail party. The compromise: People started celebrating their birthdays by inviting friends out to dinner, typically at a moderately fancy restaurant. The kind of place that frowns on bringing your own candles and Cookie Puss but isn't averse to sticking a sparkler in a crème brûlée.

He proposes three courses of action: shamelessly arranging your own check with the waiter; attempting to keep the bill down; resigning yourself and getting a good, partially-subsidized meal out of the ordeal. He readily admits that none is without its pitfalls. Having tried all of these with varying degrees of success, and having often ended such a meal feeling resentful, frustrated and broke, I've been giving this sort of thing a lot of thought lately. My boyfriend is of the school that brings his own flask and a wax-paper-wrapped sandwich to restaurants, which is not the solution. Recently a successful friend with a good job came to New York eager to paint the town red for her birthday. I simply didn't know how to say, "I can't afford that" without feeling like a killjoy or forcing her to pick up the tab. I know people who gripe about being broke right before the check arrives and it's far from comfy. Ultimately, I suggested a bunch of "creative" alternatives and hole-in-the walls I'd been wanting to try, and we did that instead, to everyone's satisfaction. But when can we get to the point where we can talk about this stuff openly? When it comes to someone's birthday, probably never.

Obviously a sensitive friend should be aware of the discrepancies in income and plan accordingly, but as we all know this is not always the case and it's easy for people to forget the difficulties of a really limited income. Then too, even the best-laid plans at the most modest restaurant can go up in a blaze of wine snob/"let's-all-share-starters/why not get champagne/let's try all the desserts!" glory at the hands of one enthusiastic bon vivant. One cheapskate throwing a $10 on the table and sitting back smugly, or somebody who didn't realize a place was cash only, costs everyone extra — and there's always one such person.

The only solution is to not go; create a prior engagement and suggest a dinner a deux at a later date. Alternatively, come late in the evening, after people have eaten. If such subterfuge goes against the grain, I can only say, people who want to make a big celebration of their birthdays as an adult (and I sort of fall into this) tacitly hold to the childhood rule that a birthday person is somehow special and should not be judged or confronted on an arbitrary date designated for self-celebration. And it must be said: there are certain infantile individuals who regard a disinclination to spend and show and duly worship the birthday person as a breach of friendship and tacit protocol. Obviously no one should be friends with such a person anyway (even though we all have been at different times) and if a friendship ends over such a trifle, well then, so much the better. Here is what we can do. Every one of us, individually, can take steps to stop this pernicious trend. I propose a new one: the brisk birthday walk. If necessary, the walk can take one through a supermarket that offers samples. They will probably be playing music too! Specify no gifts, and at the end of the evening pass a hat around — let's call a spade a spade.

Happy Birthday, You Bastard [Slate]

Earlier: This Is Not Chick Lit: A Q&A With Writer Janelle Brown

While waiting outside, this Dorothy walked around and checked out the crowd.

You forget how much of fashion week is just spent waiting in line. It's like an amusement park. After half an hour I forgot what I was waiting for. At least I was in the shadow of Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick's Cathedral.

There were Ruby Slippers on the sign in the elevator!

Once inside, I was mesmerized by the shoes. The special Ruby Slippers were all under glass.

You can see the "yellow brick carpet" here.

These shoes were going to be in The Wizard Of Oz but… Oh, just read the text:

Okay so, on to the partying. So weird to be drinking around shoes. Expensive designer shoes. Gucci, Louboutin, Dior. But! It's all about the celebs, right?

Josh Radnor plays Ted on How I Met Your Mother. When I realized that this picture had no flash, I asked him if I could take another. That's when the mini burgers went by.

So when I did get a better shot, he was gleefully holding a mini burger. Josh was there "with" Lindsay Price from Lipstick Jungle. I say "with" because it was less like a date and more like she was the only person he knew there or they had the same publicist or something.

This is Paige Davis from Trading Spaces. I forget why we were so psyched.

Next I saw ProjRun alum Santino Rice, who insisted on taking this picture himself and declared it "sweet."

Another ProjRun alum: Kevin Christiana. He questioned whether he should be holding the crabcake in the photo but I said it was fine.

Again, from ProjRun: Jack Mackenroth.

It was really hard to get close to Nigel Barker. He was swarmed, then a whole bunch of young kids wanted their pictures taken with him. I think he thought I was with the kids. Anyway. My pic of him turned out crappy.

But he was very gracious and very tall.

The truth is, some of the best people at events like this are the non-famous peeps:

(Well, Patrick McDonald is regionally famous.)

Eventually, something was telling me "There's no place like home."

As I left, I made sure to get a shot of the store windows…

Then I clicked my heels three times… and took the subway.

Earlier: The Power Of Ruby Slippers
Patricia Field For Payless: Shoes, Booze & Drag Queens

• Resort Dressy: Think Ralph Lauren, uptight WASPS in movies who need to have their minds blown by free spirits.
• Wild Chic: "Wild" is always horrible code for "cheetah print." Think "Miami divorcee."
• Safari Chic: The hosts may envision 70s YSL, but they'll get Khaki. Animal prints optional. Looking stupid mandatory.
• Ferrari Hot: Red, slits, cleavage. Basically, "Italian mistress."
• International: "It's a Small World"
• Creative Black Tie: "Creative" is code for "stupid vests." Possibly whimsical chapeaux, too.
• Festive: This always evoked those holiday Express-style outfits, like pencil skirts with little red angora sweaters. Sequins may be involved. This also emcompasses "teacher sweaters."

  The following are dress codes we would like to see:

• Monopoly Chic
• Staten Island Festive
• Appalachian Hot
• Munchkin Land

  Uncreative Black Tie, Please: The End of Goofy Dress Codes [Wall Street Journal]

MEGAN: Happy week-before-the-convention! When everyone in DC is on vacation or checked out anyway!

SPENCER: How is it possible that I am still hungover from Saturday night's bout of drinking?

MEGAN: Well, I assume you at least drank well into Sunday morning... Just say you're hungover from Sunday and keep pounding the water.

SPENCER: Red Bull is powerless against the force of this hangover. Let's talk about something.

MEGAN: Ok, not that this will resolve your headache, but we can talk about McCain and Obama's churchin' time.

SPENCER: So neither of us actually saw the debate, but the mystical forces of the internet allow us to comment on it. Jonathan Martin has something that seems significant:

"I am saved and forgiven" [said McCain]

MEGAN: Well, good to know! I guess he got some time on the God phone from GWB.

SPENCER: Where's everyone's bullshit detector? McCain is admirably reluctant to discuss his religion during the three years he doesn't run for president, and here he goes doing this kind of thing to the "agents of intolerance." You're Catholic (the Jewwiest of Christians) and I'm a Jew, so the question we probably can't answer: do evangelicals really fall for this kind of snake oil?

MEGAN: I do not understand the whole "saved" thing, and everything I know about "saved" and that whole brand of Christian theology, I honestly have from Mrs. Chant's 10th grade English class when we discussed Calvinism in regards to The Scarlett Letter. But, yes, I think plenty of evangelicals do. They buy it from candidates because they buy it from their pastors.

SPENCER: Times like these I want to play them "Leper Messiah" off Master of Puppets. I mean, these can't all be stupid people. I guess I like being pandered to as much as the next guy so maybe I shouldn't find it so inexplicable. But here's an idea that I'm stealing from a friend of mine on a secret journalist listserv: everyone figured McCain won, but didn't Obama win just by showing up in a forum that's de facto a base-vote for McCain? Like if McCain spoke before an antiwar crowd or a MoveOn audience, you'd have to say he won by proving he can interact with people who disagree.

MEGAN: I don't think so, because it wasn't just watched by those people. I still don't understand why Obama gave a boost to Rick Warren, though.

SPENCER: 'splain.

MEGAN: Well, so, like if the only people who watched the thing were the evangelicals and the pundit class, then I would sort of agree with you. But it's ended up being like the first debate between the two, and most undecided people aren't going to view it in the way you suggest. They're going to view it as just another debate, and the relatively unfriendly audience — or the more enthusiastic support of McCain, say — is going to be viewed in that way.

SPENCER: But in August, with the Olympics on, did anyone besides evangelicals and punditclassers watch it? I mean, you and i were too drunk/preoccupied to see it, and this is our job, you know?

MEGAN: Hey, I wasn't drunk! I got drunk loooong after it ended. I was eating Thai food and putting away the dozen pairs of shoes that were under the coffee table. I can see the point about that he gets bonus points for showing up, I just don't see with whom. Like, maybe the evangelicals that vote against him won't hate him quite so much once he's in office?

SPENCER: ok, well, one person the McCainvangelical magic worked on was... Sally Quinn. This is a column whose subtext rebels against its thesis.

When I was little, I had a recurrent dream that there was a terrible earthquake. My father, his body a horse with wings, swooped down from the sky, kneeled so I could jump on his back and flew away just as the earth cracked open beneath me. It was my most comforting dream. I want to live in that world again. I want to live in John McCain's world.

UMMM. Now, she says that she thinks we actually live in Obama's world, but still:

By the time McCain finished his interview with pastor Rick Warren at the Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, Saturday night, part of a forum that also featured Barack Obama, I was curled up in a fetal position in my chair, wrapped in a mohair throw, practically sucking my thumb.

UMMMMMMMMM.

MEGAN: Why does it matter that her throw was mohair?

SPENCER: That's what they call 'color' in this business! she, she's a professional. Bloggers can't touch prose like this.

MEGAN: Oh, see, so, like, I should say to you, "Why, Spencer, I feel so inspired to write Crappy Hour, sitting here cross-legged on my leather sofa with my fleece blanket on my lap!" tomorrow? Good to know.

SPENCER: Give that woman a WP column! Also write about dreams involving your father.

MEGAN: Most of my memorable dreams involve falling or losing my teeth. Yes, I am a control freak.

Sally does seem to have managed to put one thing in relatively sharp relief that other writers have hinted and and no one came out and said:

He talked directly to Rick Warren as though they were having a real conversation, whereas McCain played to the audience, rarely looking at Warren.

Who's trying to be a great orator, now, John McCain?

SPENCER: That goes back to your warren point, right? But I want you, Anonymous Lobbyist, to interpret all the lobbyist stuff that we'll check out next week in Denver at the Dem convention.

MEGAN: Well, now, I actually kind of completely love this story. So, if you'll recall in those halcyon says of January 2007, Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues were going to "drain the swamp" that lobbyists had made of Washington by treating people to lunches, handing out coffee mugs and hosting lavish receptions and crap because several GOP Congressmen had taken actual bribes and most Americans viewed PAC and campaign donations as legalized bribery. So, they did nothing about campaign finance reform and wrote some very non-specific language about parties AND particularly about convention parties. Fast forward to Summer 2008 and in the rule-making process, most of the namby-pamby legislative language has been gutted and so, like in 2004, the biggest and best parties will still be hosted by lobbyists in Denver and Minneapolis. Presto-change-o, there goes the "reform." It looks a lot like the pre-reform days except lobbyists file their disclosures 4 times a year instead of 2. Doesn't the swamp look drained to you?

SPENCER: Yeah, but this year, you & I are pigs at the trough! We benefit from the country's lamentable decline! Bring on the ice sculpture that urinates vodka. Yeah, well, Obama will magically change everything.

MEGAN: But only if it's Grey Goose or better!

SPENCER: You can totally have my ice-sculpture vodka, Ican't drink that stuff.

MEGAN: More of a bourbon man?

SPENCER: Exactly. Your grandfather didn't drink no vodka!

There were shoes everywhere. Literally everywhere. The hired help was encouraging you to try them on.

Moe kicked off her Marxist-issue flats and tried on some gold pumps.

They looked good.

This young lady encouraged me to try on the mules she was wearing. I told her I wore a 9. "You should go one size down, it looks better," she said.

Maybe it looked good, but it did not feel good. By the by, this pic is fuzzy because Moe has no focus. Kidding!

Yeah, I need a bigger size. Please do not look at my cracked heels.

This is Theo from the Lunachicks (now of Theo and the SkyScrapers) trying on the pumps. The woman assisting her had on the cutest little retro swimsuit.

Theo is kind of gorgeous.

The pumps also come in electric blue.

There are also flat sandals which maybe would hurt less.

And glittery ballet slippers.

We ran into Claw Money. Moe asked about her eyeliner and Ms. Money informed us that it was Wet N Wild. "That seems appropriate," Moe nodded.

OMG Andre J! He was willowy and gorgeous, making me feel like a large troll next to him. You may not be able to tell, but I was thrilled to be in his presence. Moe asked him what size shoe he wears and he was like "Honey!" with a raised eyebrow that meant he would never tell. Moe said, "Well, at least they have it." And he said, "Exactly. I love you."

He embraced me.

Pat Field was in the center of this clusterfuck.

Please note the crystal-covered kitty attached to this gentleman's shoulder.

The legendary KennyKenny worked the door.

Patrick McDonald. He's always in the New York Times.

You can't see it in this photo, but this woman had dark, thick, bushy, luxurious armpit hair which she pretended to lick for some guy filming.

This is what party people eat.

The after-party was at Pat Field's house down the block. I want to live here so badly. Like, on a scale of 1-10, my desire is hovering around 37 million.

Yes, it does have a bar.

This is Pat Field's Emmy!

There was sparkling vodka at the party. Sparkling. Vodka. WTF.

These girls were cute and had cute accents. We've seen this shirt before.

I don't know where to begin. So many things, starting with the knee-high boots.

Patricia Field is so awesome. Sure, she's the woman responsible for the damn flowers Carrie always wore. But she's also a gay woman of a certain age with Manic Panic hair and a fierce career. I wish Sex And The City were about her and her glam tranny friends instead. That would be amazing.

As we left, Moe and I found an abandoned wheelchair on the street. We could have left it there, or we could have drunkenly pushed each other home. What do you think we did?

Patricia Field For Payless [Payless Shoesource]

Um, luckily for me, I have a brother who works for the German embassy, with whom I was able to confirm the existence of this festival, and he has a fiancee who lives, for the moment, in Cologne. She is pictured at left in a picture he apparently found at this news website.

Why is it Germans are so full of mirth and joy this time of year? What are they smoking? Also: Can I have some?

Related: Women Revellers Create Mischief In Germany During Carnival Celebrations [Daily Mail]