Knight of the Round Tables

Big little Johns big little night

Cut your tether, dress in leather, carrion together," read the invitation to the joint New York birthday party of the modest Kennedy, John, and his fellow Brown alumni Santina Goodman, Christopher Harty, and Toni Kotite. This Xeroxed invite, illustrated with a "Far Side'' cartoon of three vultures in sunglasses and a Walkman captioned "Birds of prey know they're cool," went out to 150 chosen nighthawks. They flapped their wings to Elvis classics, devoured White Castle burgers and Cracker Jacks, and got birdbrained at Southern "Funk" Cafe, on West Forty-second Street. John, twenty-seven, roosted at one of three pushed-together tables with his girlfriend, Christina Haag, a Juilliard Theater Center graduate, and a migratory flock of Brown buddies, including young Bill Mondale, who'd swooped up from Washington.