Don’t get me wrong, I like my rural retreat far from life’s hubbub. But there are times when I pine for the sophisticated pleasures of Manhattan nightlife. From The New York Times’ Home & Garden section on the trend toward environmentally-friendly parties:

Perhaps the greenest party this year wasn’t billed as such. Deitch Projects was the host of a do last February for the publication of the photographer Jason Schmidt’s book, “Artists.” The décor was supplied by Gelitin, four male Viennese conceptual artists who wore high heels and buckets on their heads but no pants, and who spent the evening building a plywood structure over the bewildered guests’ heads. Anthony Roth Costanzo, a countertenor, sang a 16th-century melody called “Flow My Tears.” And then the Gelitin members, along with three Icelandic artists, also men, from a collective called Moms, took the buckets off their heads and urinated — with dead-eye accuracy, said Dodie Kazanjian, a Vogue editor and one of the events’ hosts — into one another’s pails.

Good to know that, on the New York Times party beat, nothing is beyond the pail.

(via Tim Blair)