Tara Reid Photo by: WENN / Landov
Out on the Town with Tara Reid | Tara Reid
Tara Reid says she just can't understand why she's thought of as a party girl ("What's the worst I've ever done? Dance on a table? Like, get drunk and dance on a table, what's so bad about that?" she said last week) – but we have a feeling her antics on a recent night at New York hotspot Butter didn't do much to change the perception. At about 10:30 on said evening, Reid, with a young, dark-haired man and two other couples, entered the restaurant/club, walking a bit unsteadily and sporting black makeup smudged around her eyes. While seated in a booth, Reid often rested her head on the table or cuddled with her male companion. More pals came and crowded the already-full booth, and the group of 10 erupted in loud laughter whenever Reid dropped some food – or her head – onto the table. Meanwhile, on the same night, Ashley Olsen arrived at Butter flanked by bodyguards (but not sister Mary-Kate) and was immediately whisked off to a private party downstairs.

The Hiltons' New Fan
Celebs planning to dance till dawn at Motorola's Late-Night Lounge at the Red Stag Lodge at Sundance found themselves out in the cold – literally – after a prankster pulled the fire alarm at 2:30 a.m., sending the crowd (including Elijah Wood, Casey Affleck, Jared Leto, Paul Walker, and Danny Masterson and girlfriend Bijou Phillips) into the bone-chilling 27-degree night. But even this setback could not thwart Paris and Nicky Hilton: Suddenly party-less but raring to go, the heiresses made a dash for the Cuervo & Ginger lodge, closely followed by a cigar-puffing Michael Keaton (in town to promote his film Game 6), who had been trailing the sisters all night. "I'm fascinated by the whole (Hilton) phenomenon from a sociological aspect," he told us. Right, isn't everyone?

Dance Fever
If you're in L.A. and looking for some fun tonight, Dave Navarro is playing at the Key Club with his band Camp Freddy – and wife Carmen Electra will take the same stage with her new dance troupe, the Bombshells. "We're donating all the proceeds to tsunami victims," Electra told us at Sundance. "I was like, 'Babe, I want to help – what can I do? I want to do something.' And he's like, 'Why don't you get the dancers and put together a little group and do a little show and open up for us?' So we're going to do two numbers with the dancers. I'm so excited." Electra was at the film festival for the premiere of Dirty Love, a screwball comedy written by and also starring Jenny McCarthy. "Basically, how it went down was I received a script and I read it and sometimes scripts are kind of boring, but it was awesome because I read the whole thing," Electra said. "I didn't want to stop reading it and I was laughing out loud. And when I found out that Jenny McCarthy wrote it, I was blown away. I thought she was so talented and so funny. I wish that we would have been hanging out a long time ago because she's an awesome girl."

Paying Tribute
How do comedians pay their respects to a lost fellow funnyman? With laughter, of course. And so it was this week when Jerry Seinfeld hosted a dinner at Hollywood restaurant Dan Tana's, sharing a booth with Jay Leno, Garry Shandling, Chris Rock and Bill Maher to recall the late Johnny Carson. "They sat there for three hours, laughing and talking and having fun," Tana tells us. "I've never seen so many people laughing so much, sharing their experiences with Johnny Carson." The group arrived for their 8 p.m. reservation and left at 11, with Seinfeld picking up the check. "They didn't drink at all, they just ate – and laughed," said Tana. "People were looking at them. They couldn't believe all those people were in the same booth."

• By VANESSA DIAZ, MARISA LAUDADIO and MICHAEL FLEEMAN