Project Runway

(AP Photo/Danny Moloshok/Mary Altaffer)

The Slug is a pop-culture blog and not really a celebrity blog mostly because there are already plenty of great celebrity bloggers out there and, well, we just ain't into that sort of thing. To us, "Lost" and reality TV are more fascinating than Brit Brit's latest antics. We were reminded of this last night while attending — as a guest, not a reporter — the celebrity-soaked grand opening of Runway, a glitzy new nightspot here in New York, for two reasons:

1. At one point during the evening, there were two large puddles of vomit adjacent to the bar. We didn't see how they arrived, but they were definitely there. The bar was open and the booze was freely flowing, but we firmly believe that's no reason to indulge so much that you throw up in a wonderfully decorated new club. (One club wall was painted to look like houndsooth. Neat.) There was already nowhere to sit down in Runway. After that, there was nowhere to stand. This sort of thing doesn't happen at The Slug's neighborhood watering hole.

2. Upon seeing this gross display and unfortunately stepping in it a little, we decided we'd rather go home and watch our DVR'ed episode of "30 Rock" than continue to party with the kidz. (That Kenneth is so funny!) While waiting for our jacket at the coat check, out of nowhere a security guard slammed us against the wall to make way for Ashlee Simpson, who was just arriving from the chaos of the red carpet outside.

For a couple of minutes, as we both stood at the entrance, there was nothing between us but her bodyguard's arm. She took our breath away — or maybe that was her bodyguard cutting off our circulation. We were pinned against the wall. It was shocking just how different Simpson acted and looked up close since the last time we stood next to her in 2005 at Cosmopolitan magazine's Fun Fearless Male Awards (pictured above on the right; that's Simpson at this year's Grammys on the left) when she had no bodyguards in tow.

Yeah, we know her extreme makeover isn't anything new, but seeing her with our very own eyes and not just on a blog or magazine cover made us realize something about celebrity and how it changes people. Back in 2005, Simpson was still reeling from her "Saturday Night Live" lip-sync slipup and preparing for her first tour. We briefly interviewed her. We thought she was sweet and bubbly in person. She looked like, you know, a normal girl. During last night's awkward encounter, she was like a completely different person to us. The entertainment industry sure does have a way of sucking people in and, well, puking them out.