Sundance Diary: Walking many miles in Katherine Heigl's moccasins

Another day dawns here at Sundance, and I stop by the EW photo studio to write up the blog item I didn’t write last night because I ran out of time. Yesterday, I think I hit a wall, and when — after two parties, a discussion with EW’s masterful Greg Kirschling about the News & Notes story he’s writing on the first weekend of Sundance, a check of my e-mails, and a viewing of the last hour of Hear and Now – I finally got to turn off the lights, I was out. For all of an hour and a half.

Part of the problem was that I had to get up this morning to attend a foreign policy breakfast pegged to No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson’s documentary about the mismanagement of the Iraq War. I’ve heard the movie is great — An Inconvenient Truth for the "war on terror" — but I haven’t seen it, and 7:30 a.m. is not the time to ask me to think about the parallels between Iraq and Darfur, or whatever. At 7:30 a.m. I am pretty much prepared to think only about ponies. I ask you, PopWatchers: Where are the damn ponies? (Luckily, I don’t need to interview Mr. Ferguson until later in the day tomorrow, so I should be fine.)

But as I sit here and listen to EW movie critic Lisa Schwarzbaum do a video blog for us in the other room, I am thinking, a) that Lisa Schwarzbaum is brilliant and b) that she’s right when she says you have to get into a rhythm. I mentioned something about that yesterday, which then turned out to be the day my rhythm fell apart. For example, I didn’t see a movie. I slept until about 10 a.m. (sorry about that, Grace is Gone), got up, came in here to blog, interviewed Heather Graham for Adrift in Manhattan, interviewed the cast of Smiley Face (Danny Masterson and the incomparable Anna Faris, pictured), stopped in to the Fred Segal swag shop and picked up the VERY SAME PAIR of Earth Shoes clogs that Katherine Heigl snagged (OMG IT IS LIKE I, TOO, AM FAMOUS), interviewed Billy Baldwin, ran into my friend Josh Bearman (whom I didn’t recognize at first because, you know, why in the hell would Josh Bearman be here?), ran into EW’s Missy Schwartz and stopped into the Gibson lounge to hear some open-mike performances (a chick did a really nice acoustic "Take On Me" that I plan to steal), came back to the photo studio, typed Billy Baldwin’s blog item, transcribed my interview with Smiley Face director Gregg Araki and sent it to the Kirschbomb, went back to the hotel and dropped off my Heigl clogs, checked my e-mail, and scheduled some interviews for later in the week.

Notice that nowhere in there does it say "ate food."

So yesterday was hard. And today, with my hour and a half of sleep,promises to be even harder. I am very happy that I’ve scheduled myinvestigative exploration of the American Eagle massage spa for thismorning, although I think I might smell really bad since you’ll alsonotice that nowhere in there does it say "showered," and I apologize inadvance to my masseuse, whoever he/she may be. If I can just make it totonight, I can sleep. Or maybe I’ll avail myself of one of the Netflixbeanbags up here in our lounge to take a nap. I feel that Netflix wouldwant me to.

And I STILL haven’t told you guys about the parties. Look.Basically, they’re all the same: crowded, assorted finger foods, booze,and all the stars leave about 45 minutes in, which is right about thesame time that the snow bunnies start dirty dancing in the center ofthe room. (As Missy said yesterday, as we walked into a party around 10p.m. that took place in the same building where we’d also attended aparty at 4 p.m.: "If it wasn’t dark outside, I’d think this was thesame party.")

The only party that was different? The awesome, mind-blowing EWparty on Saturday night, which I will tell you all about in my nextpost, because those Netflix beanbags are calling my name and I don’thave to interview anyone for 20 minutes. Disco nap!

[Insert sound of cat falling out of tree here. Are there any inspirational posters with the cat passed out on the ground?]