I’m here at this fabulous 60th birthday party for Barbra Streisand, my favorite singer in the whole world. Everybody at this party loves Barbra; in fact my dear friend the host, Victor, won an award for his Barbra impression of “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” I made two memento boxes for the hosts by using a collection of Barbra photos and images of her album covers. Inside the boxes I put the series of E-mails that we were all sending each other getting ready for the big night. I also included an invitation a friend sent me of a Barbra party being held in Los Angeles. Look at Barbra’s special birthday cake! It’s been made to look like a gigantic stick of butter, complete with the Land O’Lakes foil wrap. It reads, “Happy birthday Babs, you’re not getting older, you’re getting buttah.” One guest got ahold of bootleg videos, and we’ve been watching for over four hours already. I’m sure there are thousands of parties like this going on all over the U.S. I even heard about one in Italy. I communicate with this guy who’s part of the Donna Summer fan club there, and he sent me a note about it. You know Barbra did a fabulous Italian version of “Evergreen”? Have you heard it? Shall we play it for you right now?
–Steven August Papa, writer & creative strategist