Belatedly (oops), one of our spies revisits the gift bag from the Domino party with a more jaundiced eye:

Your tipster's intel on the gift bag's contents was good, but what they didn't take into account was the quality of the stuff. The bag itself was as chic as advertised, with the only "domino" logo appearing on a tiny tag - perfect for Fire Island this season. And it was indeed heavy as hell, due to some sort of bubble-wrapped candlestick we left on the curb as soon as we saw what it was. Being a boy, I kept the tape measure, along with the big bottle of liquid hand soap (from Restoration Hardware. Huh?) There was one candle (whatever) one bottle of Teany iced tea (whatever whatever) (RS.- and it tasted like watery Tang) and plenty of other stuff hit the trash right away: the mascara, breath mints, pot holder, etc. The "fancy" spatula is orange, plastic, feels weird in my hand, and supposedly won't melt below 500 degrees. (We'll see about that.) My girlfriend squirreled away the best stuff: the pillowcases from Dwell (not the NMA-winning magazine); the towel from Lintex; the apron (in her bag before I knew what it was) and the pretty big bottle of Paul Mitchell Tea Tree shampoo. All in all, it beats the gift bags they gave away at the Cargo launch party a year ago (because, as far as I know, there weren't any).

Our breath-mint-eschewing, secretly-mascara-wearing source also received StriVectin-SD eye cream (for "Orbital Area Application"), coasters, facial masque, and a big bottle of watermelon mix that tastes great mixed with this sparkling water they sell at the store. More breathless accounts of the lavish, Condé-studded affair from Rachel after the jump.

FISHBOWL arrived at Skylight Studios on Hudson expecting to fight our way through a phalanx of clipboard-wielding gatekeepers keeping us from the appetizers but we were waved on in with an exhortation to have a good time. We were told that we'd see Daisy Fuentes, Marcia Gay Harden, Queer Eye's Thom Filicia, Isaac Mizrahi, Mariska Hargitay, Jules Asner, people from The Apprentice, and Malcolm Gladwell, who everyone knows is wild about home furnishings.

(Okay, we'll drop the we.)

After snagging some prosciutto-and-parmesan wrapped asparagus, mini-beef Wellingtons, Vietnamese summer rolls and delicious mini-latkes (potato pancakes with applesauce and sour cream, for you non-kibitzers out there), FISHBOWL wandered around checking out the divans, ottomans, satiny pillows, plush rugs and nouveau chandeliers and feeling like she always feels in Crate & Barrel - like she can't afford anything and would probably spill on it anyway. In the background, fun '90s music played, filling the space between renditions of that ol' Van Morrison classic, "Domino" (whoa!).

Ignoring her own warning she drank several glasses of champagne and made pleasant small talk with a fact-checker from Us Weekly and some guy from Newsweek before spying Canadian Malcolm Gladwell chatting with domino EIC Deborah Needleman (wife of Slate's Jacob Weisberg), resplendent in a pretty sparkly black top and winter-white skirt (Deborah, not Jake). They were chatting with a vaguely-familiar looking woman. FISHBOWL immediately bounded over to say hello, having met Malcolm and his hair at a not-overly-recent Canadian event.

FISHBOWL: Hi, Malcolm! It's me, Fishbowl, the Canadian!
MALCOLM GLADWELL: Oh, right. Hi.
FISHBOWL: Sorry to interrupt, but he's Canadian! I'm Canadian. I got excited. (extending hand to the vaguely-familiar looking woman) Hi, I'm Fishbowl.
VAGUELY-FAMILIAR LOOKING WOMAN: Hi, I'm Marcia. Marcia Gay-Harden.

FISHBOWL had never met an Oscar winner, unless you count that time she stood really really close to a car Matt Damon was getting into and willed him to notice her. She sensed it was prudent to excuse herself.

FISHBOWL also met Mike Albo, the hilarious author of "The Underminer" who relayed the story of the other Mike Albo who starred in some films that FISHBOWL blushes to type just now but you can rent on your own goddamned time, and who used to randomly call our Mike Albo at work, just because they had the same name.

By this time the party was winding down and the editorial assistants who had been scurrying about with headsets like cast members from "Rent" were released from active duty (though the champagne by this time had run out). FISHBOWL wandered over to the silent auction area, where, inter alia, a huge jacuzzi was up for grabs, and someone made the obligatory guess-I-could-put-it-on-my-fire-escape joke. It was time to leave, especially since they were running low on those delicious key lime and banana-chocolate mousse-filled tartlets.

The final frontier: the gift bag. FISHBOWL had been smart and gotten hers early, leaving it with a friend who working the event, but others were not so lucky. According to said friend "at least a few hundred people didn't get gift bags" because they ran out of gift bag tickets in the first two hours of the party. FISHBOWL felt smug; not only had she gotten a gift bag, she didn't have to go to the bathroom once.