This is what it was like at the "Animals Ball" at the Willard Hotel.

It was held by PETA, which stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

There were 300-plus people at $250 a head.

There were waiters who were naked except for aprons that said "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur." One of them, named Ben Stilp, smoked a cigarette.

"Nothing had to die for this cigarette," he said, "except for me."

There was Kim Basinger, of "Batman" and other movies. She looked better in her tuxedo than her companion, Alec Baldwin, looked in his. She stared into space and seemed to be thinking very hard about things.

"I have a horrible thing I do where I walk up to people wearing fur coats and say, `Shame on you,' " she said.

Someone pointed out that the fur coat crop this inauguration makes Republicans look cheap.

"I know," she said.

There was a guy in an eight-foot-tall rabbit suit with its eyes draining blood and pus, and a square foot of raw, rancid flesh on its back. It left you groping for words and coming up with things like "suppurating" and "chancrous." Laboratory cruelty? It handed out goodie bags filled with "cruelty-free" products.

There was: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark; Lindsay "Bionic Woman" Wagner; k.d. lang, the singer dressed in a black suit that made her look like a preacher.

It was reported that there were three members of the House of Representatives, all Democrats: Charles Wilson, of Texas, and Carolyn Maloney and Gary Ackerman of New York.

There was an easy way to tell the ordinary folks from the politicians from the stars: When somebody raised a camera, the ordinary people were afraid their picture would be taken; the politicians hoped it would be taken; the stars knew it would be taken.

There was PETA President Alex Pacheco, standing where professional dancers in 18th-century Venetian costume had just finished a strange, arm-waving Balinese style dance to the cannons and bells of the "1812 Overture."

He said: "I want to dedicate this evening to coyotes chewing off their legs in traps, and cats with electrodes implanted in their brains."

There were a lot of people who seemed out to prove that they weren't dour vegetarian socialist cranks in sandals.

There were no sandals on view.