Miami _____

Advice: I don't know how other writers wrestled with the many-tentacled beast that is Miami Art Basel, but here's my approach, for what it's worth: I carried around a digital point-and-click and dictaphone. (My pass permitted me to take photos. But it seemed that plenty of people were snapping away, so it must not have been all that difficult to sneak a camera through the doors.) Today I'm faced with the irritating prospect of reconciling images with memos, but that's a hell of a lot easier than taking and transcribing notes and then hunting down images by professional photogs. And we're getting closer to the tricorder everyday.

Ice: A friend of a friend gave me passes to an exclusive gala held by Maxim. The lad magazine—not exactly name number one in cultural commentary, right? We skipped it in favor of a ludicrous Vanity Fair bash (at which, I swear to/at god, I paid $30 for two drinks). Much to K.'s chagrin, we learned too late that Maxim was hosting a Balenciaga runway retrospective. These $100K leggings might be the only accoutrement in Miami priced to compete with (complement?) the art. Unrelated: More robot dresses, please (fastforward to 4:23).

Vice: It turns out, I'm a celebrity pessimist—I need concrete proof before I'll buy that someone loping around is in fact Someone—so I missed out on my chance to (speak to? take pictures with? bask in the glow of? cut?) Chuck Close, Leonard Nimoy, and Kanye West. And the Sartorialist, whom I mistook for Matthew Barney, then Lance Armstrong, and finally just some guy.