How I Got Into A Fancy Oscar Party With Hands Covered In My Jeep’s Engine Oil

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I didn’t belong there, really. Not in my Target suit, not with my complete lack of film knowledge, and above all not with my grease-covered hands. Still, I did my best to blend in; nobody could tell which brand suit I was wearing, I knew some of the movies, and people don’t look at each others’ hands, right? Who does that?

The party in question was “Oscar Night At The Museum,” held at the Academy Museum in downtown LA. I was going because my girlfriend — whom we’ll call Elise (my favorite human-car name) from now on since I keep reading comments from folks complaining about me continually referring to her as “my girlfriend” — needed a date for her work event (she works for a company that has a partnership with the museum). To be honest, I was excited to attend; not only do I love hanging out with her in social settings (I think she shines in those environments), but I’d never been to an Oscar party. I really didn’t know what to expect.

But upon arrival at the event that a layperson would have had to spend $450 to attend I found myself surrounded by glamour the likes of which I had only seen a few times in my life. It was a party that combined the swankiness of a Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance party with the fashion and energy of a Gawker Media party in Lower Manhattan. I was clearly out of my depths.

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The outfits I saw at this event were unbelievable. There were capes, there were huge hats, there were sparkles and wacky colors and all sorts of clothes that take up a volume at least twice that of the person wearing them. I didn’t know anyone there; I didn’t really know a whole lot about which movies had been nominated; I could barely identify the food at the buffet. The truth is: Between the six years I spent in middle school/high school in Kansas and the nearly 10 years I lived in Michigan after college, I’d become a bit of a country boy. Yes, I went to college in Charlottesville, and I worked for a New York City-based media company that flew me out every now and again, and these had taught me a few things about fancy city shindigs, but this still clearly wasn’t my scene. But there’s no reason for me to even point this out, because it was painfully obvious by the state of my hands.

 

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I had just spent the previous three days wrenching my arse off with Dustin, an Autopian reader from Wisconsin and also the man who really got my whole 5-speed Jeep ZJ “Holy Grail” obsession going. I’d bought a parts Jeep to use as reference and for pilfering parts, and then the two of us (later joined by Autopian reader Jack) began trying to get the ZJ — which hadn’t been on the road since 2016 according to the Virginia inspection sticker — running.

The previous owner had told me that there was an issue with the fuel system, hence why he yanked the manual transmission to put into his own Jeep, and why he sold me the leftover carcass for a mere $350. There was an engine of unknown status, a few years ago Dustin and I had installed the transmission from his old ZJ, and the suspension and interior were mostly present. We were basically trying to get a vehicle that was literally about to be sent to a junkyard back up and running, and it didn’t go well.

 

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More on this later, but the point is that just an hour or so prior to attending that swanky party, I was draining this gas tank that I bench-pressed out of my ZJ (and that was indeed filled with slime, as the previous owner had alluded to):

The result was that my hands looked like this:

Screen Shot 2024 03 10 At 9.09.50 Am

I used my patented Dawn Dish Soap/Original Gojo/fingernail brush technique to get my hands as clean as possible, but no matter what, I couldn’t get my clean in time for the Oscar party. So, as you can see in that video towards the top of this article: I just rolled with it. Check it out: It’s Elise and me:

Screen Shot 2024 03 12 At 11.33.10 Pm

And here’s me thanking everyone for the Oscar I got for Trade-In-Tuesday.

 

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I don’t think anyone noticed my filthy hands, and the truth is, I’m not sure I really care if they did. I’m a hard-working man! I bench press varnished-gasoline-filled high-density polyethylene gas tanks; I remove cylinder heads with broken exhaust studs; I extract sludge from oil galleys.

Why would I be ashamed of that? When I was an engineer at the Chrysler Technical Center, dirty nails were a badge of honor. Surely that’s still the case in the fancy Oscar-Party circles of LA, right?

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40 thoughts on “How I Got Into A Fancy Oscar Party With Hands Covered In My Jeep’s Engine Oil

  1. This is a fun article, but I’d appreciate more detail in exactly how you interacted with these people you don’t know and who wear jeans that cost more than everything in my closet combined. I’d bet there are more than a few of us here who’ve found ourselves in somewhat similar situations who could use some pointers!

  2. Elise seems like a good sport.

    And DT cleans up (mostly) well, but the puddling of fabric at his ankles made my eyelids twitch. David, please get those pants tailored.

      1. I DID get the sleeves taken up, and because it was expedited, it cost more than the Target suit jacket itself.

        Alas… good thing nobody cares what I look like!

  3. “When I was an engineer at the Chrysler Technical Center, dirty nails were a badge of honor.”

    When I worked on a Ford engine production line in the late 1970s, dirty nails were the one thing I couldn’t stand. Scrubbing with any kind of brush couldn’t get them really clean, so I used to pare them back to the pink bit and keep them that way. I still can’t stand them to grow much more than about ½ mm before paring them back again.
    On the other hand, the grime I could never get rid of was the sort of tide mark separating the skin on my palms from the skin on the back of my hands. That area is full of micro-cracks that are invisible normally but got stained by blackened oil and grease like a sort of shallow tattoo, which no amount of scrubbing could clean up.

  4. A Target suit?

    I get it.
    I’ve bought and returned too many ties there.
    If people I know would just stop dying or getting married I wouldn’t have to bother with these uncomfortable, archaic accoutrements.

    Keep the receipt and warm up that iron.

  5. That suit looks fine to me. You went to an event full of people you don’t know and will likely never see again, so that’s a nice low-pressure introduction to your new Hollywood lifestyle. You can always step up to a Kohl’s suit in the future if the Target suit falls below your sophisticated tastes.

  6. Can’t even notice it next to Elise’s black dress. Mr. Tracy, you are punching well above your weight class with your S.O. Keep bench pressing gas tanks.

  7. I didn’t know anyone there

    Based on what I hear from people in the industry who live in LA, a fun game at LA parties could be to go around pretending to know people. Some of them have so many social connections there that they can’t remember a good chunk of the people they’ve met and spend quite a lot of time at parties pretending to know who they’re talking to. See how many you can convince that you’ve met before. 🙂

    Mind you, I would never actually do that myself because it would involve holding conversations with people I don’t know and I’m pretty sure that was one of Dante’s circles of Hell. If not, it should have been.

  8. Target has suits? I’m surprised I don’t own one yet.

    Two years ago I was forced to acquire a suit for a wedding, and managed to find one on Amazon for 100$. It was size LARGE. No separate jacket size, pant length, waist size, just LARGE. I gambled on it and it paid off.

    In other news, sometimes you need to do some fish-out-of-water stuff. I find the contrast between Shower Spaghetti DT and Hollywood DT to be entertaining.

  9. Wait, David’s still alive? He survived the RaptorRanger event? Hooray!

    Also, Elise looks familiar, she looks just like one of the buttons on my phone.

  10. From now on, everything you do is Für Elise. 🙂

    Given that lots of people there had made interesting sartorial choices, what if you started wearing a set of posh driving gloves to such events?

    They would cover your hands and would be tied, at least tangentially, to your profession. (Autopian branding optional) And being driving gloves they would likely be made of thin material so you would still be able to drive a knife and fork, manipulate finger food, and hold stemware.

    PS Congratulations on the Oscar nomination! 😉

  11. When one of my closest friends got married, we were summoned to his mother’s house the morning of the wedding where our hands were inspected for cleanliness and we were told in no uncertain terms that if we worked on cars between then and the afternoon wedding, she would kill us.

    1. At my actual ( legal: not the show my wife put on for relatives) wedding, I did have greasy fingernails: had been up late the night before changing trans fluid & filter in the baby car I’d had to buy. Also barefoot, shorts, tie-tied tshirt—and I had a beer in my hand

  12. I think Elise is a perfect name, elegant, refined, good on the curves, auto related and will leave you crying in the end.

    I truly wish you best of luck and accolades. I know major life change is not easy and you really seem the better for it. I think Detroit was holding you back. Congratulations.

      1. Since I’ve assumed she bought her place in Santa Monica with profits made shorting stock in Rustoleum, Liquid Wrench and the like before it became known on Wall Street that David was moving to Los Angeles, I’m guessing she’s okay with it.

  13. How I Got Into A Fancy Oscar Party With Hands Covered In My Jeep’s Engine Oil (NEEDS TOP)

    David, if you’re looking for a top, this may not be the best place to be searching.

    But I am glad to see you taking in some sort of culture that isn’t car culture. Maybe you’ll even recognize some sort of popular media soon!

    1. …this may not be the best place to be searching.

      An Oscar part most definitely is not the place to look for one, but he’s got a girlfriend anyway.

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