Photo via @ChelseaClinton

The Clinton Millennial Foundation shindig at the Hamilton on Monday, dubbed “A Night Out with the Millennium Network,” kicked off in the style of a Jeff Foxworthy joke.

“You might be trying to court the nation’s youth if…”

If… they’re playing a remix of Daft Punk’s “Around the World” when you walk in.

If… the “hors d’oeuvres” being passed around on trays are slices of pizza covered in potato chips that make your hands so greasy, it looks like you just crawled out of that weird otherwordly goo at the end of Poltergeist.

For an event trying its damndest to appeal appeal to the hip and with-it, no one in attendance looked particularly representative of that desired demographic.

Twenty-to-thirty-somethings abounded, yet everyone looked like they’d trekked there straight from work, wearing starchy, snugly fitting, single tone dresses and suits like what you might dream people dressed like if you’d never lived in D.C. but had merely seen all of The West Wing.

The Clinton Foundation has been doing a bunch of these kinds of mingling and boozing events for the past year, hyping Honorary Chair Chelsea Clinton as a dynamic leader in her own rite (and, one imagines, sweetening her own prospects as a candidate someday).

Different cities get different performers and high-end personalities in the package. An event last year in Chicago featured Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and Ben Harper.

With the $150 general admission price (or $250 for “preferred viewing”; at any rate, my ticket was free), we were promised Bill and Chelsea, plus Book of Mormon star Josh Gad, and that pixie of radio ubiquity Carly Rae Jepsen.

Did I mention the open bar?

Things started slowly. After about a half-hour of music straight from a Zumba class playlist (one does wonder how Bill Clinton has become so svelte in his 60s), we were treated to our first live performer, a Matchbox 20-y, Soul Aslyum-y singer named Taylor Carson (apparently a local), whose backing band played the kind of music the cast of Beverly Hills 90210 would hear at the Peach Pit.

“I’m distracted by the really good looking guy on the TV,” Carson bantered, akwardly and obviously referencing himself. Pause. “He’s wearing the same outfit as me.” Still nothing.

In other handsomeness news, reports that Gerard Butler was in attendance set everyone ablaze for about two seconds. (He was somewhere in the $250 section, likely doing research for his next Katherine Heigl pairing about two Capitol Hill lobbyists who hate each other at first but are brought together by hijinks.)

A big screen behind the stage flashed various factoids about the Clinton Foundation, and pictures of the Clintons out and about in the world.

As we approached 9 p.m., Gad came out onstage, waving hello to “this political mosh pit.” He quipped something about how the Shahs of Sunset were sorry they couldn’t make it, so he turned up instead.

Then he made a bunch of jokes about the millennial generation that were clearly not aimed at millennials. Like how the 1960s got The Graduate, but we have Madea Goes to Jail. (Apples, oranges, I say.)

Also from Gad: “They invented computers. We invented hacking computers.” And dragon tattoos!

Finally, Gad introduced the Clintons, and the work they’re doing, as “beacon of hope in a world rattled with despair.”

And out strode Chelsea, who looks so strikingly like her mother at her age, accompanied by her famous father, who—for a man who definitely loves to chatter in the spotlight—spent much of the 45 minutes they were onstage sitting down, beaming over at his daughter while she talked, ever the vision of fatherly pride.

It wasn’t an immensely structured speaking engagement. They mostly responded to questions submitted via Twitter (see? Hip! With it! Millennials love to tweet!).

Some highlights:

• When Chelsea Clinton mentioned that one of her father’s greatest lines is, “It’s always better to get caught trying.”
• When Bill Clinton plugged his NEWLY VERIFIED TWITTER ACCOUNT and made a Justin Bieber reference.
• When Bill said, “I would love to have a meal with Gandhi” and talked about Einstein’s brain.

OK, with all due respect to Chelsea, who did talk with great poise and concern about everything from teachers to the astounding statistics about children who die from preventable or treatable illnesses, Bill is so hard to top.

But back to the open bar, which managed to run out of gin and Johnnie Walker in less than three hours.

And then there was Carly Rae Jepsen, whose bangs are almost—almost—so fabulous as to nullify complaints about her high-pitched squeal and tendency to write one song after another that sounds like that unstoppable earworm “Call Me Maybe.” (Here’s a fun activity: Sing “Barbie Girl” on top of anything Jepsen does. It’s like that Pink Floyd Wizard of Oz synch!).

Next time, perhaps they’ll be able to book Corgi Rae Jepsen:

The Millennials demand it.