Losing all Chill at the Planet Hollywood Party

Mar 13, 2025

On Tuesday night, Mike and I went to the grand opening party for Planet Hollywood in Times Square, which was probably one of the funnier nights of my life. I tried to write it up for a post purely on Instagram, but the caption was too long, so rather than edit it down, I figured let’s just move it over to Substack.

Let’s start with the hosts of the party who were Alec and Hilaria Baldwin. Mike loves Alec Baldwin, which was the main reason he wanted to go. Usually he could care less about celebrity events. To illustrate how much Mike loves Alec Baldwin, two nights ago, I put my headphones in to watch something before bed and a familiar voice started talking to me. It took me a second but then I realized my headphones had crossed wires with Mike’s and I was like, “Are you really listening to Alec Baldwin before bed???” Yes, yes he was. So at 6pm on Tuesday night, when I turned to Mike and sheepishly said, “Are we really going to this Planet Hollywood party tonight?” Mike said firmly, “YES, WE ARE GOING. It’s Alec Baldwin!”

Now, if you think Alec and Hilaria are problematic, I should also add that the invitation came from the infamous Lizzie Grubman and also named 50 Cent and Boy George as special guests, so if you know anything about celebrity gossip in the 90s, this guest list is like a who’s who of tabloid headlines and Page Six items.

Next item of importance is that we needed to figure out how to get Harlow to and from dance because drop-off and pick-up were both during the party. Leah agreed to stay late so that she could take her and we headed uptown to Times Square. As we’re about to walk in to the event, we get a text from Harlow. “I think your host is going to be late. He’s at dance drop-off.” If that isn’t the epitome of raising NYC kids, I don’t know what is. Pretty sure Harlow got closer to Alec than we did at the party, because dance doesn’t have a VIP section.

Speaking of VIP sections, we were most definitely not in it. But we did get a booth next to the entire cast of every New York and New Jersey housewife. I don’t watch any of those shows so I didn’t recognize anyone (except maybe Luann) but my friend Lisa Miller (another NYC mom content creator) was FREAKING OUT. Apparently she watches the whole franchise and was particularly star struck when Melissa Gorga walked by. So then Mike (calm, cool and collected because he doesn’t know or care either) casually strolls up and tells Melissa that Lisa would love to meet her. Meanwhile Lisa is whisper screaming at me, “ILANA, GET YOUR MAN.” But Lisa got her meet and greet and a photo and Mike was officially the MVP of the night.

Well, until a few minutes later, when Alec and 50 Cent got seated in the booth catty corner to ours and Mike started freaking out. Now it’s important to note that even though our booths shared a wall, their booth was in the VIP section and ours was not, so the only way to see them was to peek over the top. Unfortunately, the booth walls in Planet Hollywood are rather high so I watched Mike actually get up onto his knees so that he could see our neighbors, you know, like a toddler might act in a restaurant. And he didn’t just do this for a second or two. He sat like this for a good portion of the evening.

But then, just as I was about to make fun of Mike, I hear some screams break out and realize Pete Davidson is sidling up to the booth. Now it’s my turn to freak out, and then much to my complete embarrassment, Lisa starts calling his name and yells “wave to us!” and I’m like “LISA STOP!!!” But then Pete looked up and waved at us, just like Lisa had asked, so she took the MVP title from Mike.

Next Mike literally bumps into 50 Cent, I make eye contact with Boy George (or so I think), Whoopi Goldberg strolls in and then, as if all this wasn’t enough, the crowd starts parting for none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger, which was honestly too much for Mike to handle.

Mike just continued to kneel on his booth, shamelessly gawking from his view over the wall, and I was like, you know what? It’s fine. No one cares. Everyone around us is acting the same. If there is anywhere you can drop the act of being a cool New Yorker, it’s at a Planet Hollywood party with a bunch of influencers and housewives.

Best part? Seeing the pics published in the Cut the next day.