The loneliness of the Hiltons

The Chronicle's Leah Garchick -- not your mother's gossip columnist, she has a keen sense of the absurd, especially when it comes to celebrities -- went to last weekend's SF Ballet gala. Her column today is priceless. She opens with one of the funniest images I've ever read in a newspaper, set in a department store fitting room:

On the first floor of Saks on Wednesday afternoon, where women bent over like Diego Rivera farmworkers at harvest time bore the weight of garment bags stuffed with ball gowns...

Then she goes on to discuss one Paris Hilton, with whom she sat at table:

Paris Hilton, who had told Ellen DeGeneres on TV that she was working to change her image, was demure, soft, shimmering, dewy-skinned, malleable, amiable, a pink-and-white fairy princess. Or perhaps a lox.