OPC Is the Talk of the Town

The New Yorker

The New Yorker reports this week on the OPC tchotchke party held at OPC board member Minky Worden and husband Gordon Crovitz on March 3 for the club's first ever Tchotchke Night. The idea was for members to show-and-tell knick-knacks collected during their foreign travels.

Ben McGrath of The New Yorker writes: Allan Dodds Frank, the president of the Overseas Press Club of America, stood before several dozen foreign correspondents in a penthouse apartment high above Nassau Street recently and held up a gnarled two-foot-long stick. “I don’t think we’re going to have to gong anybody, but, if we do, does anybody know what this is?” he asked.

“Penis bone!” someone called out.

“Yeah, it’s a walrus penis,” Frank, a former Anchorage Daily News reporter, said. “If somebody’s gone on too long, I’ll start waving it around.” And so began the O.P.C.’s inaugural Tchotchke Night, an élite form of war-zone show-and-tell, which prompted questions from participants like “At what point is it looting?” and “Who else has stolen the ashtray from the Rex Hotel?” (in Saigon).

Read more "Show-and-Tell" from The New Yorker >>