Jay-Z and Beyoncé hosted a huge bash for Mary J. Blige after the 2018 Oscars, and apparently, my invitation was lost in the mail ... or maybe it was the huge snowstorm that hit the East Coast this weekend that caused the delay. It was a balmy 69 degrees where I live, but there must be a reason I didn’t get an invite. Probably the Mueller investigation.
Anyway, Us Weekly reports that Hov and Queen Bey turned the garage at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles into an old-school Hollywood glamour lounge for around 150 guests who were sworn to secrecy, which upsets me even more, because I’ve always wanted to go to the Chateau Marmont.
Honestly, I have no clue what the Chateau Marmont is, but had my invitation not been stolen by kids in the neighborhood, I could have found out. (Just so I won’t get in trouble here, I think I might have dated Chateau Marmont Wilkins during my sophomore year in college, but those years are pretty fuzzy.)
The party was so secret, Mary J. Blige had to throw people off the scent. When asked on the red carpet if she was doing anything to celebrate her Oscar nomination, the R&B diva told Entertainment Tonight: “The fam is doing something big for us tonight. I feel really blessed to have people that care about me that much. I care about them that much, and it just feels really good.”
According to Page Six, the guests had to walk up a hill, go into a kitchen and enter a secret walkway that took them to the party. The guests didn’t even know who was throwing the party, as the staff was told to refer to Jigga and Sasha Fierce only as “the host and hostess,” which makes me feel better because If I was invited to a party by an anonymous stranger, I’m sure I wouldn’t go. I’d assume it was “the feds” or the infamous “they.” I don’t even know who “they” are. All I know is that “they” work closely with the feds and “them people” in the Department of Shit Black People Don’t Fuck With.
“All of black Hollywood was there,” according to one source. They inadvertently cut off the part of the sentence that said “except for Michael Harriot,” but you know how “they” do.
No press or photographers were invited, but a few pictures managed to leak, including this one of Dave Chapelle, Jordan Peele, Jay-Z, Kobe Bryant and Anthony Anderson:
I am told that Dave Chapelle was whispering to Peele: “Have you seen Mike Harriot? I know he’s here somewhere. There’s no way he wasn’t invited!”
Also, notice that the bar in the background is stocked with Jay’s Armand de Brignac Champagne because you don’t reach $800 million in net worth by passing up branding opportunities. I’m sure that’s what he would have told me during our little private chat in the VIP section as Beyoncé told me to come out to the house one weekend to see the kids, and I told her I was very busy this time of year but that I’d try to make it out in the fall.
Then she would have told me to bring Chateau out with me, and she would have looked all sad when I told her that Chateau and I broke up years ago. Then Bey would have reached out to rub me on my shoulders, looked wistfully into my eyes and said: “I thought you two were going to make it. I really did.”
Celebrities like Stevie Wonder, Rihanna, Danai Gurira, Drake and Jamie Foxx were all left wondering where Michael Harriot was as I eschewed expensive Champagne for a plastic Solo cup filled from my refrigerator’s water dispenser before going to bed at the Chateau Harriót.
But the word is that this will become an annual event for the Carters, so I suspect I’ll be there next year ...
Weather permitting.