Month: October 2011

The Goddess vs. the Grape

This week, I got an exciting new gig as a model for Footmode.com…one of the Internet’s oldest foot fetish websites! I’m particularly stoked about this gig because a) it’s ongoing — they shoot twice a month, every month and b) it’s EASY! All I did was pose for a series of still photos, pretending to kick another chick’s ass, and then making her worship my feet (i.e. suck my toes and lick my soles, etc.). Easy! Because I was new, they didn’t make me do any of the toe-sucking…just the ass-kicking. But next month, I’ll probably have to do both :-/ Still….I’ll gladly suck a freshly-washed toe or two if it means being able to eventually quit my job.

Because, you see, that’s my plan. Lately it seems like my dumb-ass job has been getting in the way of all kinds of fun stuff I want to do, namely travel, party and booze — so I’ve formulated a plan to permanently ditch the rat race in favor of going full-bore Bohemian. It’s a Five-Point Plan:

1. Get rid of my house                                   I’ve been working on a loan modification on my fabulous estate for THREE YEARS, and I’ve finally come to the reluctant realization that it’s not worth it. I don’t want to be chained to a mortgage, even on a badass house like mine 🙁 I have a mediation hearing tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens…

 

2. Move into a shitty apartment                This part sucks, because I really don’t want to live cheek-to-jowl with hookers and crackheads…but I have no choice. I have to wait 6 months after surrendering my old house before I can buy a new one.

3. Buy a cheap shitbox in downtown Vegas   Anyone who’s read this blog knows how much I love downtown Vegas, so I might as well live closer to the action. Once I quit my job, I won’t even need to acknowledge the lame-ass tired old douchefest known as the Strip…except for the occasional mushroom-fueled nighttime barhopping foray!

 

4. Buy a new trailer                                           My pop-up camper has served me well through 2 Burning Mans, but if I’m serious about becoming a traveling gypsy, I need an upgrade. With a Casita or Scamp fiberglass trailer, I can go anywhere, and make money modeling along the way! I can’t afford not to buy one!

5. QUIT MY JOB                                               The only bummer about this is, I won’t have health insurance. Because some jackass psychiatrist diagnosed me as bipolar, it counts as a pre-existing condition that prevents me from buying personal coverage…but I figure by eliminating the SHIT and TORTURE I endure on a nightly basis, I won’t need a doctor anymore, anyway! I can scare up enough cash to finance my adventures by modeling and doing assorted gigs around town.

So anyhoo, look out: the adventures of Wonderhussy will only get better over the next year! Meanwhile, I tried to distract myself from my current shitty situation by keeping busy as follows:

After my Footmode shoot, I went down to check out the monthly Wonderground event over at the Olive Mediterranean restaurant. Wonderground is sort of a Happening involving artists, dancers and magicians, plus lots of food and booze. It’s good times! I’ve met a lot of cool people there, and have even been bodypainted at the event a time or two (as in the pic at left, when I was painted by Suzanne Lugano for a benefit they did for Japanese tsunami victims).

Anyhoo, everyone at Wonderground was all a-buzz talking about the upcoming annual Bonedance ritual out at this fertility temple in the desert. I remember wanting to go last year, but was unsure as to whether or not I’d be welcome — it’s a real ceremony, with no booze or electronic music, for people who identify as Goddess-worshippers, Wiccans and whatnot (they make up a sizeable percentage of the Wonderground crew). I realized how serious they were about it at the annual Witches’ & Wizards’ Ball last year — the annual W&W Ball is also held at the Olive, the day after the October Wonderground. I looooove a good costume party, so last year I went with some friends and dressed as Glinda the Good Witch, since I didn’t have a regular witch costume (shocking, I know). Well, imagine my embarrassment when I arrived at the party to find that it wasn’t that kind of witches’ & wizards’ ball…it was full of people who seriously believe themselves to be witches and wizards!! Can we say faux pas??

So anyhoo, I decided that this year, I must attend the Bonedance…Wiccan or no, booze or no. One of my photographer friends gave me the info, and after work on Saturday night I raced out to the desert to join in the revelry. IT………WAS…….AWESOME!

First of all, it’s at this kooky little fertility shrine way out in the desert north of Vegas, out in the middle of nowhere. The only thing nearby is Creech Air Force Base, a/k/a the place Sgt. Peanut blows people up with remote-controlled airplanes. It’s about an hour out of Vegas, so it was almost midnight by the time I made it out there…but I was totally glad I made the trip! In addition to their “no alcohol” policy (WTF!!!), they also had a “no photos” policy. If there’s one thing I HATE more than a “no alcohol” policy, it’s a “no photos” policy. FYI guys: at my house — and indeed anywhere else I happen to be — booze and photos are ENCOURAGED! Nay, MANDATED!

Anyhoo, I didn’t want to piss off any witches, so I didn’t take photos of the action…except from a respectful distance.  I’m including a few daytime pics I took once on a Harley ride with Muscles Manischewitz, so you can see what it looks like (it’s TOTALLY badass!), but try and imagine how DOUBLE-badass it was at night, under a million bazillion stars, lit only by firelight. Truly magical! Because I wasn’t able to take pics,

you’ll have to use your imagination — like the old days. But it’s worth it, I promise!!

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I brought along my drum just in case they had some tribal beats going on. And just in case I had misunderstood the booze policy, I brought a flask of wine. Having learned my lesson at last year’s W&W Ball, I dressed in a sort of neo-tribal Burning-Man-meets-Mexican-Funeral ensemble… but it was pretty cold out that night, so I also rummaged through my closet for my witchiest-looking hoodie…which was this:

I got it from a hippie nutcase I worked for one year at MAGIC (the fashion tradeshow)…he had a line of funky hippie clothes and he let me buy what I wanted from him at wholesale. I bought this hoodie in both red and black, and thought nothing of wearing it around town until one of my friends asked me if I was in the Klan. WHAT??! Nooooo! I never thought of it as a Klan thing — it looks like a Wizard hat to me. Does the KKK have the exclusive rights to pointy headgear? I mean, it’s BLACK, for Pete’s sake — if anything, it’s the ANTI-Klan! But my friend made me paranoid — I don’t want to piss off any black people, so nowadays when I wear it, I kind of bend the top point over — TOTALLY LAME, but less offensive, I guess. What do you think, reader??

So anyhoo, I donned my carefully bent hoodie, hid my wine flask in my bag and grabbed my drum…and headed out to the desert. Like I said, I was kinda hesitant…but as soon as I saw all the cars and tents camped out near the temple, saw the glow of a bonfire through the trees, and heard the sound of drumming, I knew I’d made the right call! I crunched up the gravel path and entered through a sort of canopied gate-type structure they’d erected, where a wizard waved a handful of smoldering sage across my body to sort of bless me or anoint me or whatever. I crossed through the gateway and found myself in an open area before the temple, where a hundred or more people were chanting and dancing counterclockwise around a huge bonfire, while a group of drummers beat a furious tribal tattoo off to one side. I joined the drummers and proceeded to BEAT the FUCK out of my drum — I loooooooooooooove me a drum circle, and this was one of the all-time best! They had all these drums and gongs and weird percussion instruments laid out for everyone to share, and it was REALLY cool. The only thing that would have made it even cooler is if I’d had a buzz…but as it was, I only managed a few furtive swigs from my flask 🙁 Hardly enough to get a good buzz going!

Behind us was the temple itself, which had another, more contemplative fire going inside where you could just sit and be mellow and reflect on the Goddess and the Blood of Your Ancestors and whatnot. About 100 feet away there was a secondary fire area, where witches and wizards were gathered to nosh on Doritos and drink water ($@%*#^!!!!).

Then, off to one side there was also this amazing beautiful red pavilion with an altar inside, where you could write messages to the departed on pieces of red fabric (I left a message for my dad). All in all it was a very serious affair, not really a party but not really somber, either.

In between bouts of drumming, I joined the caped masses in circling the bonfire, chanting and singing stuff like “Die to be Reborn!” and “I am Bones, I am Fire!” (Not exact quotes, but you get the idea: Manson Family meets Bilbo Baggins.) Every once in a while the chanting would stop and random revelers would extemporaneously spout stream-of-consciousness gibberish about the Goddess, the Fire, and the Spirits. One fur-clad reveler with the light of either religious ecstasy or insanity in his eyes told a sort of rambling, Castaneda-esque fable that reminded me of the Boring Prophet from Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and various Priestess-type women got up and sang/chanted prayers and the like.

Then, this old couple came out who were like the Elders of the local Witches and Wizards: a ginormous woman swaddled in quilts watched through glowing, narrowed eyes as her husband, a wizened old man with a long white beard, skull-printed fleece jammie pants and a glowing LED wizard’s staff, came forward to address the gathering. He waved a little book around and gave an impassioned incantation about Samhain and the Blood of our Ancestors, then flicked the book open so that it belched flames!!! Dramatic!!!!

After awhile the Wizard Elder went back and changed into one of those one-piece skeleton bodysuit costumes, and then danced around the fire waving around a huge scythe (I’m pretty sure it was the same man; I saw tie-dye and long grey hair peeking out the back of his bodysuit). Meanwhile, at least a hundred other people danced around in their furry, sequined, mirrored, feathered tribal best, and it was FABULOUS! The only downside was that one of the Steampunk-infused Priestesses kept yelling at the drummers that we weren’t drumming appropriately lugubriously…apparently she wanted something more funereal and dirge-like to accompany her Goddess-droning.

After about 3 hours I started to get cold (even my witchy hoodie wasn’t enough) and tired of all the spiritual mumbo-jumbo, so I packed up my stuff and drove home for a 4am glass of wine. So sue me — I prefer to worship the grape, not the Goddess. But all in all it was a FANTASTIC time, and I definitely plan on going again next year. I guess the real point of it is to drum and chant til sunrise…and it would have felt more healing and therapeutic if I’d done so, but I had no idea, and came underprepared. Next year for sure!!!

So after Bonedance, I pretty much slept all day and then went in to work Captain Fantastic’s last show of the year — his engagement is over, so now I’m looking at four weeks of a performer I’ll call Mullet McWartface — a gravelly-voiced legendary Scots womanizer who is popular with cougars and various other know-nothing Baby-Boomers. Seriously, where the fuck do they drag all these old zombies out of?! It’s ridiculous!

In between Captain Fantastic and Mullet McWartface, we had one solitary night of REAL music in the showroom — none other than Paul Simon came in to do a concert! I’m a huuuuge Paul Simon fan, so even though I knew I wouldn’t make any money off that room full of musty old Prius-driving intellectuals, I was totally stoked. I figured I could do like I did when Bob Dylan and Captain Fantastic first played, and find someone with an extra ticket who would let me sit with them (that’s how I met my friend J.R….at the Bob Dylan show). Accordingly, I loitered around the front orchestra section, chatting up single people and hoping for an invite that never came. Thankfully, one of my usher friends hooked it up for me and I was able to sit in one of the box seats, sandwiched between two grumping and grousing old couples, and watch the entire show. My friend even gave me a free drink ticket for a glass of wine, so it was allll good…and the show was great! I just loooove Paul Simon, but even better was watching the crowd: a room full of old white people getting down. I was particularly enamored of one portly, bearded old man, who looked to be a cardiologist or surgeon in real life, who’d had a few to drink and was jamming in the aisles to “Cecilia.” Too cute!!

So anyhoo, now I gotta go and get ready for my date tonight…I’m meeting up with a kook who used to work in the photo lab with me about 10 years ago. He was the manager, and he was one of those people who’s always full of these amazing, unbelievable stories that you just figure are B.S…but then improbably turn out to be true! Like he was always bragging about how he used to be a concert violinist, blah blah blah….until one night I came in and he was playing the violin (beautifully, I might add) in the squalor of the photo lab in the basement at the MGM Grand. We’ll see if any of his other stories are true…..

Channeling My Inner Man, Name That Tune Redux, and Mixing Garlic Olives with Blueberry Yogurt

Halloween is almost here, and it’s a very stressful time of year for me. Which costumes to choose? And which parties to attend??! I can’t BEAR the thought of missing anything really cool, so please let me know if there’s anything I should know about. My only solid plan so far is to make the 2nd Annual Las Vegas Halloween Parade downtown…everything else, I’m open. (And DON’T say Fetish & Fantasy Ball…I went last year, and that thing sucked balls. Highly overrated!)

Anyhoo, in keeping with the spirit of the season I decided to do a “Día de los Muertos” photo shoot with my dear friend Randy Fosth a/k/a Shutterbug-Studio. If you don’t know, Día de los Muertos is a Mexican celebration on the day after Halloween, where they remember their dead by painting crazy and colorful skulls…kinda like my makeup in the above pic. (Side note: I TOTALLY dig the crazy Mexican aesthetic…all the crazy colors and creepy religious iconography is right up my alley!)

Anyhoo, I underestimated the time it would take me to do the makeup, so I was around 2 hours late to our shoot. But thankfully, Randy was so taken with my look that he didn’t mind. We shot a few different looks for a couple hours, and it was fabulous. It always is!

But that wasn’t the only photo shoot I did this week. I also went downtown Sunday night to the Brass Lounge, which is right across the street from my new favorite hangout, the Heart Attack Grill (more on that later). Anyhoo, every Sunday night there’s a big modeling party at Brass Lounge, and they invite a bunch of scantily-clad “models” and put up lighting equipment and a stage on the balcony overlooking the Fremont Street Experience (the covered pedestrian mall area).

Anyhoo, you know how it is: it was Sunday night, I was tired from a long day, and I had just eaten a ginormous burrito for dinner. I did NOT feel like strapping myself into a sexy outfit and going down there! But I really like the people who run Brass Sundays and I wanted to support them, so I made myself get up and go in my closet and rummage around for something to wear. As you can see, I came up with this sexy Slash ensemble. Back in the day I was a huuuuge Guns ‘N’ Roses fan — my poor, long-suffering mom had to take my sister and I to see them play one time at the Oakland (CA) Coliseum, along with Metallica and Body Count (I was only 15; it was my first concert, LOL).

Anyhoo, my enjoyment of Slash in particular has been tempered somewhat over the years, especially since I saw him at the freaking CELINE DION show one time about 7 years ago. Slash, no!!!!! You just killed your rock-n-roll cred! But I still dig his look, and thought it would make for some cool pics. So I slapped it together and headed downtown.

The way it works, is they have some scantily-glad go go dancers bouncing around on the stage on the balcony, and while photographers blast away taking pics, the others wave and holler at passers-by, trying to get them to come up and do a photo shoot. All are welcome, and it’s a genuinely fun time! They’re having a Halloween party on Sunday the 30th…guess I should attend that, too!

Anyhoo, I channeled my inner Man for this shoot and asked all the go go babes to come up and pose with me. Now I know what it feels like to be a man — and I LIKE IT! Fuck that subservient weaker sex shit — I’m changing teams…when I save up enough money, that is.

Meantime, I’m still a woman…and alllllll woman, at that. I haven’t shaved or even groomed my bush since returning from Burning Man…and boy is it ever gnarly! Any photographers who wanna shoot some old-school 70s porn nudes, hit me up! It looks FANTASTIC! So fantastic, in fact, that the other day some random guy invited me to an ABC party, to be held at the “sick” mansion of some local porn producer. I didn’t know what “ABC” stood for, but after I’d already left the house I learned that it means “Anything But Clothes…” as in, costumes. Since I’d already left my house for the day, I figured I’d just borrow a pair of giant 70s sunglasses from work (we use prop glasses when we shoot the Captain Fantastic show)  and go nude, as a 1970s porn star. Boy would THAT have freaked out those porn poseurs!!! Alas, however, the flaky douchebag who invited me never texted me back with the address…until I had already gone home, eaten a medicinal cookie and changed into my PJs. There’s no WAY I’m going out after that! WARNING: if you want me to attend your party, GIVE ME THE DETAILS IN A TIMELY MANNER! I’m a busy woman; I don’t have time to sit around waiting.

Anyway, back to the highjinks at the Brass Lounge. Since I was down there anyway, I stopped in at the Heart Attack Grill to say hello to Dr. Jon and Nurse Tracy, two of my new favorite people. Their restaurant has been open almost a week now, and they hired all these young waitresses in slutty nurse dresses…but not to be outdone, Nurse Tracy (the head nurse) altered her own comfy scrubs into short-shorts!! LOL! She’s got the legs for it, too.

Anyhoo, business was booming, but that didn’t stop Doktor Jon from inviting me in for some shots and conversation. He’s a great host! He also invited me to the Today Show’s live taping down there Wednesday morning at 4am…he said I should dress in one of his nurse costumes or something and just be crazy in the background. As much as I want to be on the Today Show (America needs me), 4am is a brutal calltime. Still, I told him I’d do it if he really wants me to. I will sack up for that!

I hung out with Doktor Jon for quite awhile, but around 1am I had to head out — I’d had a loooong day! It started with me rolling my groggy over-medicated ass out of bed around 11am to head out to suburbia, to film new videos for my medical fetish website. I’ve spoken of this site before — it’s insane! The work is fairly easy, but to get to the guy’s house I have to drive ALLLLLLLLLL the way to the edge of the world — he lives way the fuck out on the southern edge of town, nearly in California, in this super-upscale gated community of McMansions and golf courses. Driving there is like riding the Stepford Wives ride at Univeral Studios — everything is overly manicured and well-kept, totally at odds with my beloved downtown Vegas. But it’s interesting all the same — and if the neighbors only know what was going on, it would be a scandal! And I looooooooooooooove me some scandal!!

Anyhoo, this time we filmed some stuff with me hooked up to all kinds of EKG electrodes (see pic above), doing sit-ups and holding my breath and whatnot. WEIRD! Then, for the belly-noise fans, we did a clip of me recording my stomach gurgles. For these clips, the more growling and gurgling the better…so the webmaster/videographer/silent partner in the site offered me the contents of his fridge. I decided to eat a couple of garlic-stuffed olives, which I figured would digest loudly when paired with a carton of blueberry yogurt and washed down with a cherry Coke Zero. Success!! My stomach went BALLISTIC!!! Can’t wait for the downloads to start rolling in….

After updating the medical fetish site, I next cruised clear across the valley over to the far western reaches of Red Rock Canyon, where every Sunday afternoon a bunch of local hippies hold a drum circle — excuse me, a “spiritual music circle” — in this little grove of trees near Oak Creek. I *LOVE* me a good drum circle, and I’ve been to some doozies! The best was probably that one I participated in at Burning Man this past summer (it was held at the Temple, at sunset on Friday night; if anyone has pics and/or video, please let me know)! I also went to a REALLY cool one on Baker Beach in San Francisco one time about 10 years ago. But this Vegas drum circle is pretty freaking sweet, too!

To get there, you drive allllll the way out west past the last casinos, out past Red Rock National Conservation Area (an area of astonishing natural beauty; if you happen to be visiting Vegas you should definitely check it out). You park at the side of the highway and then hike down a gravel trail toward this grove of oak trees in the shadow of the towering red rock mountains. The scenery is mind-blowingly beautiful, like a movie or something. But the best part is the SOUND — at first, all you hear is the crunch-crunch-crunch of gravel underfoot…but as you get closer, the drumming gets louder and louder… until you finally come upon a gathering of kooks and bohemians banging away on various percussion devices, in a circle under a tree. There’s usually a few didgeridoos, flutes and shakers floating around adding to the din, and without fail some half-baked weed-addled hippie will get up at some point and start chanting/moaning/throat singing/wailing. IT’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOD TIMES!!!! I have a video of the action, but I couldn’t find it on my hard drive and I couldn’t figure out how to upload it from my Facebook page…so you’ll just have to take my word for it that this is BAD ASS. Anyone ever wants to go, hit me up…I’ll take you!

So anyhoo, after breath-holding and drumming all day, I went and ate the aforementioned ginormous burrito (I <3 Chipotle!), drank a bunch of wine, and was ready to pass out…but I MADE myself get up and go do that Brass Lounge and Heart Attack Grill stuff! So you can see why I was so tired that day. And even then, I missed out on a bunch of fun stuff I wanted to do. There’s only one of me, but so many parties…. 🙁

Now speaking of busy days, I had another one last week, with one of my all-time best friends, my journalist pal Phil Connors! You might recall how a few months ago I went on “Name That Tune” at the Imperial Palace, a live stage version of the old game show where you can actually win $10,000. As you may recall, I came THISCLOSE to winning, having beaten everyone else in the theater to be the final contestant, at which point they give you 60 seconds to correctly identify 15 songs. But thanks to some bum advice from the audience, I lost 🙁

Well, a transvestite friend of mine gave me some free passes for the show, so I could go back and try again. I waited a suitable length of time, so they wouldn’t remember me, and even considered wearing a disguise…but then someone told me that it doesn’t matter; you can play as many times as you want! So I asked Phil, who is usually up for wacky shit like that, if he would accompany me. He used to be a rock music critic, so he knows music more than most people I know — I figured he could play, too, or at least be a solid lifeline in the event that I became stumped again. Thank dog, Phil agreed at once!

Well, everything went according to plan. We got there and signed up, and the P.A. in charge of the waivers remembered me right away and wished me luck. Then, when the hosts of the show came onstage (Zowie Bowie and Marley Taylor), singing their schlocky little intro song, Zowie Bowie saw me out there and busted up laughing in the middle of his song! He broke character to welcome me back, saying that I made his day by being there. Woohoo! (As you may recall, I ended up flipping everyone off at the end of the last time I played…evidently very memorable!) They were also totally stoked to see Phil Connors, as they have been interviewed by him before for his column in the paper…and they are ALWAYS on the lookout for more publicity!

Anyhoo, like I said, everything went according to plan. I blew through all the rounds, vanquishing the opposition with a carefully calculated combination of strategy and knowledge, and then it was me again, alone onstage facing a huge 60-second timer. The pressure was on! This time, you could tell the game show peeps were totally rooting for me — they really WANTED me to win that $10,000! So far, since they’ve started doing the show, only ONE person has won — so they reeeeeally wanted to give me that ca$h! I got the first 4 or 5 songs right off the bat, but the 5th or 6th one was tricksy — I had no idea, so I asked the audience again. THIS time they were more reliable — one guy said it was “Sentimental Lady” by Joe Walsh…but ANOTHER guy said with an equal degree of certainty that it was “Sentimental Woman” by Joe Walsh. Arrrrrrrgh!!! I vacillated back and forth, biting my nails in agony…but finally went with “Sentimental Lady” because it just sounded more 70s.

CORRECT!!! WOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOOO! I screamed and yelled and made a general ass of myself, and the game went on. I ended up having to use my “pass” on the 8th or 9th song (some Justin Timberlake b.s.), but amazingly (and with the help of the game show staff) I kept getting right answers! I even pulled a Hail-Mary Moody Blues song out of my ass at the 11th hour — I had to grab the mic from Zowie Bowie and sing the entire first verse to remember how the chorus went, and then the title came to me: “The Story in Your EYES!!!!!” CORRECT!!!!!!

But alas, I finally tripped up on the 12th song — some shitty shit by some shit-ass band of shitsters called 30 Seconds to Mars (?!?!?! WTF!). I was desperate, looking out into the audience for clues — but even Phil Connors had no idea. Fuck! So I lost, AGAIN, with only 3 more songs to go! ARRRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everyone was freaking out from the excitement, though, and it was a lot of fun. After the show, Zowie Bowie asked me when I’m coming down to party and “sing” with them at the lounge show they do every weekend at another casino…I said, “Sing?! Are you NUTS? I’ll clear out the entire lounge!” So he amended his invite to simply “party,” and I told Phil Connors we should totally go! But Phil covers the nightclub beat nowadays, so his nights are mostly taken up trolling the depths of endless lame-ass douchey clubs down on the Strip. Boo!

Anyhoo, after the excitement of Name That Tune, Phil and I went next door to the Flamingo, where Jimmy Buffet just happened to be celebrating the grand opening of his brand new Margaritaville Casino (not to be confused with his Margaritaville restaurant, which has been here for years). Now they’ve built an entire CASINO around his laid-back barefoot boozer shtick.

To celebrate, some PR genius decided Jimmy should pour the World’s Largest Margarita into a giant novelty cup in an alleyway between O’Shea’s and Margaritaville, which they block off every year for the Jimmy Buffett block party. Thanks to Phil Connors’s media juice, we got a sweet spot atop the press dais, overlooking all the hijinks. It was crazy! I’m not a huge Buffett fan…but I do dig his fans. They sure know how to party!

Anyway, after that Phil and I went next door to O’Shea’s, this shitty little dive bar/casino that caters to the college crowd and is somehow centrally located at the Four Corners of the Vegas Strip, right next to the Flamingo and across from Caesars Palace. Such prime real estate can’t be wasted on Beer Pong, cheap drinks and punk rock lounge bands forEVER…so of course, the dumbass Caesars corp. is tearing it down to make way for some stupid new retail/dining promenade with the re-cock-ulous name of Linq. WTF?! I LOVE O’Shea’s!!! I’m not big on frat mooks and beer pong, but I AM big on cheap drinks and unpretentious atmo — and O’Shea’s has ’em both in shades! My friend Brian, the #1 Little Person in Vegas, works out front as a leprechaun, and there’s a badass punk rock lounge band with a SMOKING HOT bass player (yoo hoo!) in the bar area. In sum, it’s a fan-fuckin-tastic place to party…so if you’ve never been, get thee there ASAP before it’s gone!

I’m so fired up over the impending loss of O’Shea’s, in fact, that I Tweeted about it: something to the effect of “I’ve had it with corporate greed! We must stop the corporations from tearing down my favorite dive bar… #occupyosheas!” Of course, that just pissed off the serious Occupy Wall Street protesters, who gave me some flack on Twitter over it…but the good people of O’Shea’s appreciated it, and even re-Tweeted it for me! I think it’s a GREAT idea…all us hippies ain’t changing shit down on Wall Street, so we might as well form a human chain around a dive bar.

Now, speaking of the #Occupy movement, they had another protest down here on Saturday afternoon. You might recall that last week I went to the big Occupy Las Vegas protest march on the Strip…and felt mixed emotions. Well, this time they took the protest to my beloved Fremont Street downtown (!!), so of course I suited up and dragged out my sign again. This time, instead of dressing down in jeans, I decided to strike back at claims of anti-Americanism among the protesters by wearing an American flag halter and snow-white Daisy Dukes. What could be more patriotic than THAT? I called it my Ass Offensive — ya can’t reason with ’em, but maybe they can be swayed by succulent asscheeks.

Anyhoo, this protest was a LOT more fun than the one on the Strip — the crowd of tourists down there is more blue-collar/trailer park, so they weren’t as hostile toward our anti-Man ranting. Plus, the setting was 100X more surreal — I’ve seen the news footage of the protests in New York, Rome, Santiago, etc….but did any of THOSE protesters carry plastic footballs full of piña colada? And did any of THOSE protesters have to weave and dodge wackos in Elvis costumes, while fat tourists whizzed overhead on a zip line? I didn’t think so!!

The best part was marching past Glitter Gulch, the tacky topless bar down there that always stations one or two beat-up Eastern European whores out front to lure in customers. One of the whores was leaning on the doorjamb in her corset, chatting bemusedly with one of the big, beefy security guards as they watched us pass. It was like a scene straight out of Deadwood!

The march went on and was pretty powerful — moreso than last week’s effort on the Strip, for sure. Some nutty drummers from the drum circle crowd brought a big-ass bass drum, which they pushed on a cart, beating in time as we all chanted “Banks got bailed out — we got SOLD out!” (I did join in the chanting this time, as that aforementioned slogan is one I can more or less endorse without laughing.) Anyhoo, everything was going along swimmingly until the Fremont Street Experience (TM) cops had enough, and drowned us out by blaring “Funkytown” on the PA. People come downtown to party, not to politic!

The best part of the march was this one über-hot young Commie stud marching next to me, Che Guevara pins on his backpack as he fiercely strummed a ukulele covered in anti-Man stickers. He was like the downsized Bob Dylan, LOL!!! Occasionally, he would pull an air horn out of his back pocket, and give everyone a wake-up blast…but I was already wide awake, and drunk on his pheromones. Anyone knows who he was, let me know!

So anyhoo, lest you think ALL I did this week was party, there you have it — I protested, too! Also, one afternoon I went down to the Las Vegas Museum of Natural History, where a friend who works there gave me a personal tour of the amazing grounds and collections. That’s actually a BAD ASS museum! It’s one of those musty-smelling old places full of taxidermied wild animals and stuff, and it would be reeeeeeeeally fun to get baked one rainy day and go down there. The best part was the new Egyptian wing, cobbled together out of leftovers from when the Luxor hotel de-Egyptified itself (how does a pyramid un-theme itself, I ask you? Nonetheless, they tried to re-brand themselves in a hipper, more anti-family vein. Arrrrrgh).

The tour was awesome, but I had to leave after a couple hours because I had a hot date at the tiki bar with another writer I just met on a dating site. We had some drinks and shot the shit until it was time for me to go shoot the real shit, at the Captain Fantastic show, where I’ve been toiling all week taking souvenir photos, in between all this other stuff. No wonder I can’t sleep — I do too much fun stuff!!!! But I can’t HELP it! How can I turn this shit down?!

Oh, and one other thing. In my travels this week, someone invited me to be their dominatrix! I won’t say who, but a prominent local figure told me that he was tired of being the boss and telling everyone ELSE what to do…so he more or less invited me to abuse him and boss him around! Nice! This isn’t the first time that’s happened to me — I once did a fetish shoot with a lieutenant from Metro, who said the same thing: he’s respected and feared all day, so he finds a little belittlement therapeutic now and then. Weird! Domming is big business, though…I even thought about building a dungeon in my basement once, and taking clients. But then I realized I wouldn’t want these people knowing where I lived…so I gave up. Maybe I should get back into my boots and rethink it!

 

 

 

 

 

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Musical Dildo and XXX Karaoke (among other, less titillating things)

Last Saturday night I faced a veritable Sophie’s Choice: should I hit up the Renaissance Faire afterhours party, or go to a secret underground warehouse rave downtown? Hitting up both was not an option, since a) I didn’t get off work til 11pm, b) the Renaissance Faire was waaaaay out in the boonies this year, and c) there is no outfit on the face of this Earth than can go from Rave to Ren Faire. Torn between two parties!!!

As mentioned, last year I got into the afterhours jamboree at the Renaissance Faire due to a genial drunken pirate friend who had an extra wristband. (Only people in registered “guilds,” a/k/a hardcore dorks, are allowed into the Ren Faire grounds after they close for the evening…so they allocate a certain number of all-access wristbands to each guild.) The pic at left was me last year, drumming and dancing and swigging Charles Shaw from the bottle, and having an all-around awesomely badass time…until the haters in the Parks & Rec department received a “noise” complaint and made us shut down around 11pm. Booooosauce!

I have since learned, through the Ren Faire grapevine (some steampunk friends of mine, specifically), that the “noise complaint” was filed by none other than Wayne Newton. If you’ve ever flown into Vegas, you’ve seen his sickeningly expansive estate, Casa de Shenandoah, which covers around 20 acres just to the east of the park where the Renaissance Faire is held. His grounds are full of ostentatious displays of wealth, and apparently the cannon fire from the Ren Faire bothered his delicate thoroughbred Arabian horses…..and since Wayne Newton apparently runs Vegas, his displeasure was enough to get the Faire banished to the farthest reaches of Hendertucky, into a depressing suburban softball field near Sam Boyd Stadium. LAMESAUCE!

Anyhoo, my kooky pirate friend was out of town, but ANOTHER kooky guildmember friend promised to get me into the party, if I wanted to go. I vacillated between Rave and Ren Faire all night long…but in the end, I eschewed both in favor of going to bed early. Shocking, I know! I did hit up the Renaissance Faire the following afternoon before work…and it was LAME! A buncha fat half-assers waddling around a softball field in sweaty cloaks…no, thanks! Look at the pic to the left — I somehow doubt they had electric fatty scooters in Merry Olde England (although if they did, Henry VIII would surely have owned several). The only cool thing that happened to me there was when some half-naked fatso dressed as Pan came bounding up to me, bleating in my face. I had a quite lengthy one-sided conversation with him about the new location of the Faire, and when it would move back to the old location at Sunset Park — one-sided because he could not/would not talk other than bleating “Mehhhhhh!” in various goat-y intonations. But I totally understood him!

Alas, I heard from friends that the afterhours Ren party was SICK — fire-spinners and bellydancers and lots of mead and whatnot. DAMN!!! I knew I shoulda sacked up and gone. But I was soooo tired. Why, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you!

The reason I was so tired on Saturday night was, my day had started at 5AM!!! You heard me — 5am, the time I’m normally just going to bed! I got up at that ungodly hour to do a gig as a certain furry kids’ TV character at a PBS fundraising event (stop laughing!). Since my face would be covered by 100 pounds of red fur, I didn’t bother with makeup but rolled straight out of bed and headed over to the local PBS station, where I donned my costume and proceeded to entertain the shit out of hordes of excited children…after being schooled by my corporate master on the Do’s and Don’ts of this particular gig (DON’T pose with anyone holding booze, or with any obviously “Vegas” landmarks in the back…bad for the family-friendly corporate image, you know).

It was actually really fun — the little kids would get soooo excited, and run up and give me these huge hugs, which was very cute. Even better, though, were the kids who were FREAKED THE FUCK OUT, but whose parents shoved them in my face anyway: “Say hi, Taylor!” (Taylor: “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”) The only bummer were these snarky Cub Scouts, who were too old to care about my character, and one of whom tried to knock my head off. Also, a Somali-looking smartass kid kept grabbing my ass. But other than that, it was actually really fun!

After my mascot gig ended at 10:30am, I had to hurry home and get ready for my next gig, as Poison Ivy in this sexy Batman-themed photo shoot downtown at this fabulous, kooky new bar called the Lady Silvia (theladysilvia.com). One of my photographer friends had lined up a sexy Batgirl, Catwoman, Robin, Joker and some weird latex Harlequin-clad villainess…and he asked me if I could do myself up as Poison Ivy. Could I ever! I went to Sally’s Beauty Supply and got a $3 can of red hairspray, and went to town, using a photo of Uma Thurman on my laptop as a reference. The results came out pretty damn good, if I do say so myself! I can’t WAIT to see the photos!

Then after THAT I stopped at my beloved arepa stand for a snack, and then had to go to work taking photos at the Captain Fantastic show…so by the time all of it was over, you can understand why I was too tired for the Ren Faire or the rave. Oh well, there’s always next year….but arrrgh, how I HATE missing a good party!

Anyhoo, after my busy weekend, it was time to get down to business and take care of all those annoying little day-to-day tasks…like renewing my prescriptions. There’s only one prescription I really care about, and it’s one that my regular doctor won’t fill…so I had to go across town to a special, progressive doc who was simpatico enough to understand my situation and fill my needs for the low, low price of $100. I’ve had a prescription for this particular medication since 2010, but the State law here requires that you renew it every year. What a SCAM! Aside from the $100 doctor’s visit fee, you also have to shell out $200 in application fees, plus pay to be fingerprinted and have your application notarized. All in all it’s a $330 ordeal…but more than worth it to me, since I will soon be in possession of a state-issued patient’s card that I can wave in the face of any and all nay-sayers. I love being legal — TAKE THAT, ASSHOLES!

Seriously though, it’s all such a fuckin’ farce that I could hardly keep a straight face. I actually DO use my medication as it was intended — for pain relief, and not recreationally (you probably don’t believe me, but it’s true — I should be the poster child for this program)…but the whole process of GETTING the prescription is a joke. The doc gave me a cursory physical exam, wasting disposable plastic thermometer caps and ear-examiner-thingy caps in the name of giving me a genuine “physical,” complete with blood pressure and reflex checks…and the whole time I was like, can we just cut the bullshit and get down to brass tacks, Doc? But I know how it is — so I bit my lip and played along. My facade only cracked once, when a bearded old hippie who was a fellow patient winked at me in the hall. Pedro’s not here, Man!

After taking care o’business, I went home to bake some special medicated cookies, and then got dressed and headed back out for a little Pornstar Karaoke (karaokexxx.com) — a local karaoke night hosted by porn actresses (dreamed up by a verrrrry smart karaoke DJ). I’d been wanting to check this out forEVER, so I met some friends down at this divey little lounge on West Sahara near the World’s Biggest Souvenir Shop, and joined in the fray. Since it was XXX karaoke I sang “I Touch Myself,” by the Divinyls, and got a decent reception from the crowd of frat mooks, C-list porn stars and assorted fanboy perverts. Seriously, THAT was a funky crowd! In addition to the likes of “Claudia-Marie, the Big Tittied Southern MILF” (pic at left, taken last year at another event), I also ran into my friend Kid Dynamite, a seasoned fetish performer and professional “sub” who is known in the biz for being able to withstand all manner of CBT (that’s cock-n-ball torture, to you normal folks). Kid told me about one of his recent shoots, where a dominatrix covered him in Saran Wrap and then lit his balls on fire. Wow, and I thought *I* did some fucked-up stuff to pay the bills!

Meanwhile, besides all the porn “stars” there were also a bunch of regular weirdos and perverts in attendance, including this one really creepy, silent older white man who sat in the corner gazing at his iPad all night, only breaking his reverie to get up and sing a Backstreet Boys song. WTF! Then, at midnight, they got the crowd going by starting a game of Musical Dildo — five of us were chosen to get up and toss a rubber butt plug around, and whoever was caught holding it when the music stopped, was out. Well, no big surprise — I was the last man standing. But instead of letting me keep the buttplug (ouch!), they gave me the choice of either a t-shirt or a “mystery grab bag.” OF COURSE I went with the grab bag, which was just a little resin piggy bank shaped like a hippo. But still! It makes a nice memento, and I can use it as a swear jar or something 🙂

I didn’t stay out toooooo late at pornstar karaoke, because I had made plans to go hiking the next afternoon with my little 18-year-old friend Samantha. We hiked up to the top of Sunrise Mountain, a local behemoth that looms over east Las Vegas like Jabba the Hutt, and it was a HARDCORE hike! It’s one of those super-duper uphill-all-the-way hikes where you’re scrabbling and slipping and sliding over treacherous mountain passes like a crazed Taliban foot soldier looking for the lost caves of Tora Bora. (Read my review of the hike here.) It was awesome!

Once at the top, we enjoyed the FABULOUS view (you can see Lake Mead on one side, and all of Vegas on the other), and I mooned the city just to show ’em what I thought. By that time it was getting late, and Samantha and I decided to head back down and go downtown for Quadruple Bypass Burgers at the Heart Attack Grill, which was supposed to finally open for business that day.

Fortunately for us, some Southwest Gas employees were just finishing up some repairs to the electrical towers up at the summit, and they offered to give us a ride back down in the back of their pickup truck. YIKES! Was that ever a bumpy ride…the road was so steep and the gravel so loose, I thought we were gonna careen over the edge several times. Some of the hairpin turns were so tight, they had to back up over and over to make them. But they made it! We got back down to the parking area safe and sound, and now we can look up at Sunrise Mountain from anywhere in town and go, “Oh yeah, I’ve climbed that.” The only bummer was that I couldn’t find the guest book or register they supposedly have up there…I wanted to leave a Wonderhussy sticker in there!

 Anyhoo, we went downtown to the Heart Attack Grill…and by that time, we were STARVING! Alas, they still hadn’t opened….but that nutty Doktor Jon was there, and he let me climb back in through the window, although this time we didn’t do any body shots. He wasn’t even wearing his doctor’s outfit this time, because they were in the middle of boring-ass training class for the sexy nurse waitresses he’d hired. But the good doctor did tell me that he had checked out this very blog, and he really enjoyed “reading my articles.” You know how men always say they read Playboy for the articles! But anyway, he seemed really sincere, and said I seemed like a really interesting person. AND he invited me to come down and be the guest bartender one day! Uh oh…..me as a bartender is like having a fox guard a henhouse. Watch out, Fremont Street!

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Protesting on the Strip, and Belly Shots at the Heart Attack Grill

This is a two part blog. The first part is about boring mortgage-related stuff. The second half concerns my drunken hi-jinks (as pictured at left). So read whichever part you like!

Yesterday was the big #OccupyLasVegas protest down on the Strip. As most everyone knows, Vegas was/is one of the hardest-hit areas in terms of real estate depreciation and unemployment…so people here were pissed, and took to the streets to protest. Naturally, I joined in the fray.

I’m on the fence about the whole Occupy Wall Street thing — I hate the cronyism of greedy plutocrats as much as the next naked bimbo, but it seems like the protests are a tad disjointed and, dare I say, scatterbrained. I like a movement with a tangible GOAL — like “Free the West Memphis Three” or “Welease Bwian!”  But this movement is all over the board, railing against an ill-defined array of vague evils and boogeymen: “End the Fed!” “Stop Corporate Greed!” “War is Evil!” The photos look like it’s a lot of kooks and shit-stirrers who just wanna cause a ruckus…and wear wacky outfits while doing so.

Speaking of wacky outfits, I considered wearing my showgirl costume for the Vegas protest march…but the weather here just took a turn for the shitty, so I just wore jeans. Besides, I felt that if I dressed normal, didn’t rant and rave, and had an articulate sign with a legitimate beef on it, I might lend a touch of credence to the march. So I made a sign, and joined the river of angry/bored crazies down in front of the New York, New York. Now to be fair, at least half the crowd looked to be “regular” workaday people. There was even a Marine in full dress marching beside me. But the other half were wacko stereotypes: hippies and fired-up punk-ass emo kids. What are all these kids so pissed off about?!? I guess maybe they just don’t see a future for themselves? I’ve never known the apathetic youth of today to get so fired up about anything other than the launch of the latest iPhone!

Compared to the grungy (relative) gravitas of the Wall St protests, the OccupyVegas march was downright weird. I guess you could say it was a protest, Vegas-style: the same hundreds of angry people, only these people were shuffling along, nursing beers, dodging street hustlers in Barney costumes and porn leaflets proffered by bemused illegals. Seriously, some of the porn slappers (those beleaguered guys who hand out cards and flyers for escort agencies on the Strip) are apparently so deep in the Zone that they don’t even look at whom they’re handing stuff — they just shove ’em in the face of any and all oncoming warm bodies, whether they be drunken frat mooks or angry, sign-wielding socialists. As the protest grew bigger and eventually overwhelmed the sidewalk, the porn-slappers finally gave up and just stood by watching. It would have been cool as hell to see them actually JOIN the protest…but the last thing those illegals wanna do is get arrested.

I found it hard to keep a straight face — and impossible to join in the chanting of the impossibly earnest grunge-sters shouting “Banks got bailed out — we got sold out!” and “Hey hey! Ho ho! Wall Street banks have got to go!” Like I said, I’m on the fence — I don’t know enough about it to propose a solution, so I just kinda kept my mouth shut and marched in grim silence.

Why did I march, then? Because I am pissed, about my own financial mess. I KNOW it was 100% my own decision to sign that mortgage, so I blame myself first. But I have to question the apparent lack of regulation that would allow a bank to approve a $340,000 loan to a camera girl who makes $35,000/year. The person who approved my loan was either dumber than me, or greedier — knowing full well that I’d end up defaulting, meaning they’d get X amount of money out of me (I did put 10% down) and then a write-off on the loss, to boot. I guess you might say all’s fair in business, and buyer beware…but I’m still pissed! And you should be, too — even if you’re one of those smart, responsible homeowners, now you’re faced with foreclosures on your street, bringing down your property value. You can and should be pissed at the dumb greed of us losers who initially signed those loans…but you should be equally pissed at the clever greed of the banks who approved ’em!

My own situation is this: at the time I bought my house, I had been living with a guy for about 2 years. He was a casino host — basically he lured high rollers into town and earned a commission off how much they gambled, win or lose. One of his clients was a high-stakes roulette player (Hello!! I should have known right then and there this guy was full of shit — who the hell bets $5k per hand on a game with zero strategy?) with a colorful past — originally from Haiti, he had been an arms dealer down there before escaping to L.A., where he and his brother went on to become the West Coast’s leading ecstasy suppliers. After getting busted for that, and almost being sent away for life (but saved by a good attorney), they started their own mortgage brokerage. (I Googled these guys’ names, which are very distinctive, and found articles in the LA Times to verify all this info.)

These guys, we’ll call them Vlad and Edens (because those were their actual names) told my ex-boyfriend that if he ever wanted to buy a house, they could get him approved for anything up to $500,000 — no problem. So naturally, now he wanted to buy a house.

So did I, to be fair — this was in late 2007, and house prices had already dropped sharply, so it seemed like a good time to buy. I wanted a funky little house in downtown Vegas, but my ex vetoed that notion — he was always somewhat of a social climber, and insisted on something bigger. We ended up compromising on my current estate — a funky old house near downtown, around 2600 sq feet and on half an acre of land. It’s a really cool house and we both dug it immediately — it was built in 1933, so it’s gotta be one of the oldest homes in Vegas. That predates the freaking Hoover Dam! Aside from that it has many charming, eccentric features like a basement (very rare here), a laundry chute and a secret hidden room under the basement stairs.

Anyhoo, the listing price was slashed from $500,000 to $400,000 (it was a short sale)… and they ended up taking our offer of $380,000. I thought that was a good deal — hahahahaha! I knew nothing about buying a house. NOTHING! No one in my immediate family has ever owned a home, so I had no one to turn to for advice — except for my ex, Vlad and Edens, who were all insisting it was a great deal, and more or less twisting my arm to sign the papers.

Now, my ex made really good money as a casino host (he’s a real go-getter), but since he was fresh out of college (he was 7 years younger than me…LOL) he didn’t have enough employment history to get a loan. Meanwhile, I’d been slogging along as a freaking camera girl for 7 years at the time, making an average of $35-40,000 per year…and I had excellent credit. So I had to be the one to get the loan. And there’s where my trouble began!

I’m normally a pretty sharp person, so I can’t for the life of me explain why I signed off on this stupid loan. I think I literally didn’t understand what I was getting into — I knew the monthly payment was gonna be $2300, but between my ex and I that was no problem. I was still fairly wary, but Vlad and Edens and my ex all soothed my fears and assured me everything was fiiiiiiiiiiiine. I had been hearing a lot in the news about adjustable rate mortgages, so I did stick up for myself and insist I didn’t want one of those. So what did they get me? An adjustable rate mortgage! But they rushed to assure me that it was a hybrid ARM, and gave me all this gobbledygook mortgage talk to explain why it was a great deal for me. Like a CLUELESS DUMBASS, I allowed myself to be talked into it. I have no idea how they pushed that loan through — any sane banker would have denied me. I just know my mortgage brokers were shady as hell, and they both literally disappeared after all this went down. Disappeared!! As in, their phones were shut off and they were never heard from again.

Meanwhile, I put 10% down ($38,000), plus around $13,000 in closing costs, and started making my $2311.63 mortgage payment every month. At first it was fine, but after about 6 months my ex and I drifted apart and split up…and he moved out and left me holding the bag. Arrrrgh!

$2300 is an overwhelming amount of money for me to come up with each month, which is why I started nude and fetish modeling. Some of this stuff I’ve actually come to enjoy, but a lot of it has been torture. Do I WANT to be hogtied and mocked in a room at Palace Station so some jagoff in sweatpants can videotape it and jerk off later on? NOT SO MUCH 🙁 But I did it, because I took full responsibility for signing that stupid mortgage agreement. I’m not one to welsh on a debt, so I spent the next 2 years hustling and struggling, having my toes sucked by creepy perverts and flashing my snatch to horny GWCs. Gooooooooooood times.

After about a year, I was desperate. I had contacted my bank about getting a loan modification, but I didn’t hear anything back despite repeated, dogged attempts. In retrospect, it’s obvious — as long as I was still paying, why would they help me?! But SEVERAL PEOPLE at the time told me I should do anything in my power to keep paying that mortgage. Mother Jane (the meddlesome biddy at work who loves to give me advice) insisted I keep paying, to preserve my credit. My boyfriend at the time told me it was my moral obligation to keep paying. And even a housing crisis counselor I visited told me it was my duty to keep paying however I could.

Thankfully, someone finally convinced me to miss a payment — and I saw IMMEDIATE results. Within a few months my bank had offered me a trial modification, which I still have. But every “trial” payment I make goes to a loan servicer and not my lender, and thus counts as a missed mortgage payment. So my credit is fucked. My lender finally came around and offered me a permanent deal — they would reduce my interest rate from 6.6% to 5%, and extend the term of my loan from 30 to 40 years. No reduction in principal. SOME FUCKIN’ DEAL!

As my sign says: I have put $125,869 (down payment plus all my monthly payments) into a house that Zillow.com currently values at $91k…but I still owe them $355,692.91. REALLY?! On a house worth $91k, you want me to pay you a total of  $481,561? I made a stupid financial mistake once — don’t ask me to make another one!

Anyhoo, I have a mediation hearing in two weeks, where my lender and I are supposed to arrive at a compromise. I have serious doubts it’ll work out, but we’ll see. But I’m telling you all this to demonstrate the shitty, shady, unregulated mess that was our mortgage industry. In general I am opposed to government interference…but left to their own devices, most people are GREEDY sonovabitches that will fuck everything up in the blink of an eye. So it seems to me that some regulation is needed. And that’s what I was pissed about at the protest march.

But what I’m really pissed about is the inability to articulate what I’m pissed about! I’m mad that the top 1% knows the ins-and-outs of the tax code, and I don’t. Knowledge is power, so I suppose my time would have been better served reading up on the IRS website than marching around the Strip with a sign…but whatever. At least it was a therapeutic was to vent my frustration.

Either way, it was really weird to be protesting all earnest and angry, marching past crowds of drunk tourists who stared in bemusement from the sidelines. Some tourists actually mocked us, and who can blame ’em? For years people have been coming here and paying $12 for a beer and $400 for a bottle of Grey Goose, so we Vegas parasites could make our $2300 mortgage payments. I’d be pissed at us, too!

One frat-boy type mook came up alongside me and called me out — “Why did you sign that mortgage if you couldn’t pay for it?” I admitted my stupidity and then went into my spiel about deregulation causing unfettered greed…to which the mook replied, “You’re hot! You can make money, easy!” Then he high-fived his buddy. Hyuk!

Arrrgh, anyhoo, enough complaining. One of the main reasons I look so fried in those protest pics is that I was up til 5am the night before, partying my balls off down on Fremont Street. Let me tell you about it!

A girl I used to work with (doing promotions for this retarded “nutrition drink” called Neuro…it’s disgusting and overpriced, don’t bother with it) was coming to town and wanted to hang out and have crazy adventures. Here we go again — people seem to think I have a “crazy adventure” tap I can turn on at will, and let the good times flow. Well, it doesn’t work that way! This shit has to happen on its OWN! Well thankfully, this time the good times flowed freeeeeeeeely.

I suggested we meet up down on Fremont Street, since there’s usually some kind of wackiness going on down there. My good friend Phil Connors (the journalist) met us for a few drinks in the East Fremont area (the part of downtown that has been reclaimed from the crackheads, and taken over by assy hipsters)…but I grew tired of the loud music and annoying atmo, and suggested we head down to the REAL Fremont St, the touristy part covered by the light-show canopy. This is my go-to party spot: it’s covered (and thus protected from the weather), closed to vehicle traffic (so you can stumble around in a drunken stupor without fear) and populated by costumed freaks, wandering crackheads, street performers and low-end Vegas tourists who can’t afford the Strip. MUCH more fun than the Strip!

Anyhoo, we were walking along and passed by the soon-to-open Heart Attack Grill. You may have heard of this place — its anti-Nanny-State shtick features fattening foods only, with names like the “Quadruple Bypass Burger,” served by sexy waitresses in nurse costumes. I think it’s originally from Phoenix, but what better place for a new branch than Vegas — and downtown Vegas, at that?! Patrons over 350 pounds eat for free, so it should do a brisk business.

Anyway, as we approached we could see there were a few people inside, setting up for their official opening next week. A drunk man in a doctor’s outfit, apparently the proprietor, opened the window and invited us in. For some reason he had a microphone (I think they were testing the in-house PA system), so everything he said was broadcast to the world: he and his wife, Nurse Tracy, had already invited a ginormous bouncer from across the street to climb in (I don’t know why we had to enter through the window; it made sense at the time), and they were about to weigh him on the giant novelty scale in the center of the resturant. If he weighed 350 pounds or more, it was free drinks for the ladies!!

Well, OF COURSE the bouncer clocked in at around 360 — so Nurse Tracy poured free shots of Jack Daniels for everyone! By “everyone,” I mean my girlfriend and I, plus Phil Connors, the fat bouncer, Nurse Tracy and the Doctor. No one else was in the place. Surreal!

Thus fortified, I noticed a pile of nurse costumes stacked up in a cart — uniforms for their waitstaff. I asked the doctor if my girlfriend and I could try them on, and he thought it was a great idea. As the Doctor ran drunken commentary over the P.A., my friend and I suited up and began to party in earnest! The restaurant has floor-to-ceiling windows, affording an awesome view of the fun to all the passing tourists and crackheads, so we kinda horsed around for awhile, putting on a show. Whenever a particularly interesting-looking crackhead passed by, the Doctor would open up the window and do a little Crackhead-on-the-Street interview…fun!

Once were suited up, the Doctor made us lie down so that everyone could do body shots out of our belly buttons. Then he found out my friend and I spoke German, so he started rambling on the microphone in German, with us berating him back in German, and beating on him with the belts from our nurse costumes. I ended up riding him around like a horse, beating him with my belt and yelling at him in German…and he really seemed to get off on it, particularly when I grabbed the mic and began snarling seductively, singing the only German song I know (“Grieschicher Wein”).

Anyhoo, this all went on until about 3:30am, astonishingly. It was like we had stumbled into some bizarre theme camp at Burning Man. But we were hungry, and the Heart Attack Grill’s kitchen wasn’t fired up yet…so we finally bid the good Herr Doktor Auf Wiedersehen and went down to the Four Queens for late-night breakfast. Yum!!! (We had to climb back out through the window, of course.)

Anyway, here are a few more pics from that astonishing night. I haven’t had that much fun in ages! The Grill is set to open for reals next Tuesday, so I already made plans with my little 18-year-old girlfriend Samantha to go there for lunch next week. I bet Herr Doktor won’t even remember me…until I hiss in his ear in German!! I’ll let you know how it goes!

PS This all goes to show, AGAIN, why I want to live downtown. Downtown Vegas is where it’s AT! You could never be bored hanging out down there……

REALLY?!

Jumping on Ye Olde Bandwagon….. but really, I didn’t realize how FUCKED I was until I started adding up the numbers to make this sign. REALLY???

Fucking bloodsucking greedy bastards!! I hope Jebus comes back to Earth soon and smashes all the moneylenders into miserable smithereens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#occupywallstreet

#occupylasvegas

#FUCK!

Jerry Springer, Part II

Time for the latest installment of All My Children…which is what my life has felt like lately! This week’s episode is brought to you by Charles Shaw Vineyards: when your life is a mess, Two Buck Chuck makes it allllllllllllll seem manageable 🙂

After posting my last week’s blog, I got a very long, sincere, heartfelt apology/explanation from Sgt. Peanut. The gist of it was that he was truly sorry to have gotten me involved in all this, and that he had in fact broken up with the “girlfriend” (the slightly off-kilter Asian woman who approached me at the bar, wept, and then lavished me with excessive praise and flattery) back around New Year’s…but she was having trouble letting go.

This was all totally plausible, and the more I think about it, I believe him. She’s nuts. However…literally about 15 minutes after posting that last blog, I got a Facebook message from ANOTHER woman: “I hope you don’t find my contacting you odd, but I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now…and I am also dating Sgt. Peanut!”

WTF! A few email exchanges revealed that this third woman, we’ll call her Nancy, had been dating Peanut on and off since last year. According to her, they didn’t really do much at first, since she could tell he was still entangled with the nutty ex, and Nancy herself was still sort of mixed up in another dying relationship. But supposedly, around New Year’s, Peanut informed her that he had officially broken up…so they began dating for real.

Nancy said she knew the nature of their relationship was casual, and not exclusive — she suspected he was dating other people, and then too she knew he was a swinger, since he took her to some swinger parties in town. She said he had a regular swinger couple, in fact, with whom he “played” on a regular basis. (At the risk of offending all the swingers out there…I find the whole “lifestyle” of “playing” smarmy and creeeeeepy…I’ve spent a fair amount of time at swing parties and clubs, and it’s just not for me.)

Anyhoo, around the beginning of summer, Nancy felt that Peanut was growing distant and less available, so she spied on his Facebook page and saw “Sgt. Peanut ‘likes’ Wonderhussy” (you should all “like” it too, incidentally). Curious, she clicked on the link and began reading this blog. The more she read, the more she realized he was dating me and her at the same time (as well as others, she suspected…plus the “play” couple).

She said she never contacted me because she already knew the nature of hers and Peanut’s relationship was casual, so she didn’t feel like it was her place to get involved. Supposedly she loved reading my blog, though, and as time went by she realized I was liking him more and more…so she broke up with him. Not just because of me, though — apparently he got back into it with the nutty ex sometime in the spring, and the whole scene was just too complicated for Nancy to stomach.

So they broke up, but had lately been talking about getting together for dinner sometime to hash things out. They had ended up arranging to go out last Thursday — but with all these new developments (the events of last weekend), Nancy wasn’t sure if she should still go meet him.

I said ABSOLUTELY you should go meet him — and let me know where you’ll be, so I can show up either in disguise (to spy on him) or in my Wonder Woman costume (to kick his ass). But apparently, Peanut ended up cancelling the date — he suspected a setup, only he thought it was the nutty ex behind it and not me. They ended up rescheduling for Friday night, and that was the last I heard…Nancy mysteriously stopped emailing me, after a virtual barrage of long, heartfelt, “just between us girls”-type emails. WEIRD!

The last missive I got from her was after Peanut had called her to cancel their Thursday date. Supposedly they talked on the phone, and while she didn’t mention having talked to me, she told him she’d been reading my blog, and what the hell was up? According to her, he admitted to her that we HAD been seeing each other…just in a very casual way. He told her I was dating other people, too, so he hadn’t thought  it was a big deal.

She said he spoke fairly highly of me, and she thought he really was truly fond of me…and she said she’d fill me in on the results of their dinner date. But she never emailed me again, so I have no idea what happened.

After thinking things over, I’ve come to realize that this whole fiasco was caused by one thing: lack of communication. Peanut assumed I was dating other people — rightly so, since most of my friends are men. But I don’t sleep with any of them — and that’s the crux of my problem. Remember when I said I was “a whore in public, and a lady in the bedroom?” Well, that’s my curse — people think I’m the swingin’est whore of Babylon that ever lived, but in reality, I’m just a niiiiiiiiice girl 🙁 I know it’s my own fault, because I enjoy shocking people, running around naked and otherwise pissing on the moral code of the bourgeoisie…but I can’t help myself. I don’t want to change.

Meanwhile, all along in the back of my head I suspected/knew that Peanut was seeing other people — ever since the amateur porn party, I had him pegged as a true freak. But I guess I was too lazy to really think about it, and how it made me feel…so I just kept chugging along, figuring things would work themselves out one way or the other. I suppose what I SHOULD have done was have one of those awful, awkward “Sooo, what are your intentions for my daughter?” kind of talks…but being the passive puss that I am, I hate that kind of stuff and avoid those confrontations whenever possible!

Either way, the nutty ex showing up like that REALLY fucked things up. Because she took me by such complete surprise, I completely believed her entire story. I wouldn’t have been so upset to find out that Peanut was dating other women at the same time as me (as mentioned, I already suspected as much). It was “finding out” that he was in a committed 2.5-year relationship with someone, and talking kids and marriage, that freaked me out!!!

So now, with a week’s perspective, I see it all as a massive failure to communicate, and not really anyone’s fault. HOWEVER, it was DEFINITELY his fault to bail on me in the middle of a date like that, and not bother to explain anything that was going on! He basically threw me to the wolves. Nice! And I still think there’s more to the story than any of this weird cast of characters has been telling me. If he really “broke up” with the nutty ex around New Year’s, why did he get back into it with her in the springtime? Or did Nancy just make that up?

Arrrgh, it’s all very confusing, so I am washing my hands of the matter and moving on. Dating in Vegas is a real bitch….especially for someone like me. The old biddy at work who’s always giving me advice (“Listen to Mother Jane!”) just gave me a stern talking-to about the way I present myself — she said I give up too much information up front, and that I need to keep an air of mystery about myself or no “nice” man will ever want me (she’s a firm devotee of that dumbass book “The Rules”). Apparently I’m supposed to string a guy along for a few dates, being coy and demure, and then when he starts to really like me, THEN I can spring the whole naked-godless-bohemian-iconoclast shtick on him. In theory, by then he’ll be so smitten and hooked, he won’t mind.

Meanwhile, my friend Muscles Manischewitz also had some advice for me: no guy is ever going to accept me as a naked, godless, bohemian iconoclast. They will at first — just to get in my pants. But according to him, no man wants to seriously date a naked, godless bohemian iconoclast…after awhile, they’ll either move on or expect me to change.

Well, gee. I guess this means that I’ll be staying single — because there’s no way in hell I’m changing myself that drastically. I’d rather be alone and be myself — I learned that the hard way, when I was with my one ex-boyfriend (the one I bought my house with). He was much more conservative than me, and made me keep all my “kooky” stuff (art supplies, mannequin, costumes) in a room in the basement. Boosauce!

Sooooooo, Wonderhussy 2.0 is back on the streets, looking for action. It didn’t take long for me to set my sights on a new target: these two hot Croatian cellists who play in the band at the show I’m working at. As you know, I am a souvenir photographer at a certain ginormous showroom in town, and a new headliner just began a 3-year engagement — a 1970s gay piano-playing icon we’ll call Captain Fantastic. He played Vegas a few years back, at the height of the economic boom, and back then times were faaaaaaabulous — we made assloads of money, hand over fist, photographing showgoers posed at this little red grand piano out in the lobby. We’d dress ’em up with feather boas and kooky sunglasses, and it was genuinely good times — the only time, in fact, when I truly loved my job.

Well, now the bitch is back…but alas, this is 2011. The crowds are nowhere as lavish with their spending, and the show itself has been toned down considerably. The old show was totally over the top — inflatable boobs and bananas all over the stage, with exceptionally lurid, fantastic videos by my hero David Lachapelle playing on a giant screen behind everything. Meanwhile, the crowd was totally over the top as well — people were busted doing drugs, masturbating, having sex and pissing in the aisles during the show. GOOD TIMES! (I’m being serious…I loved that crowd, and would take it any day of the week over the roomsful of dour, humorless Quebecois attracted by Sally Dingdong.)

So anyhoo, the new show is basically the same as the old show, sans inflatables and lurid videos. Instead of Lachapelle vidoes, a series of fairly cheesy CGI animations play on the screen — stuff like morphing curlicues and cartoons that would be of interest mainly to stoners and heroin addicts. However, there are a couple of FANTASTIC additions to the show — one being an AMAZING percussionist who rocks the SHIT out of an array of crazy instruments. And the second being these two smoking hot Croatian cellists.

I first saw these two guys on the Ellen DeGeneres show about 6 months ago. I was running on the treadmill at the gym (the only place I’d get caught dead watching TV) and almost fell off the treadmill when I saw them, so I went home and looked them up. Little did I expect that 6 months later, I’d be up close and personal with ’em. Alas, however, a VIP insider friend at the showroom told me they’re gay…but I’m not sure, because they ARE European, after all… and sometimes it can be hard to discern: Gay or European?

Anyhoo, the new show just started last Tuesday, and thanks to my VIP insider friend I scored a free 5th-row ticket for opening night. Without the inflatables and the bananas, though, I must admit to being pretty bored with the show — I almost wanted to bail after the first few songs. But then the cellists came out, and gave me something to watch! It ended up being a pretty good show, especially during the latter part, when they invite people up onstage to come dance with Captain Fantastic. I was one of those lucky people, and danced my ass off with nothing more than a velvet rope separating me from Captain Fantastic and his piano. Unfortunately, I was so swept up in the moment that I focused all my attention on the Captain, and forgot that a mere  5 feet behind me were two smoking hot Croatian cellists 🙁 Damn! Valuable flirtation time, wasted. Still, I saw them again the next night out in the casino, and was at least able to kick them a little game…although my gay suspicions were confirmed by the company they were keeping.

Speaking of gay, Captain Fantastic is well known as one of the world’s most outspoken advocates for gay rights, so he attracts a hug gay following. Opening night was wall-to-wall well-heeled homos and fag-hags, with a few celebrities and other notables thrown in for good measure. In fact, none other than Doogie Howser, M.D. aka Neil Patrick Harris was in the crowd. Fabulous!! I gotta say, even though the crowd this time around isn’t quite what it was last time…I still really enjoy shooting this show. Yay for not being miserable at work!!

Aside from work, I also went topless kayaking with my little 18-year-old girlfriend, this super cool chick I work with we’ll call “Samantha.” Her dad has been chainsmoking Marlboros for years, and they saved up so many “Marlboro Miles” that they got a free kayak out of it, which we took out to Lake Mead for an afternoon of fun in the sun. Neither of us wanted tan lines, but I wasn’t sure if she’d be comfortable going topless in front of me, so I brought her a pair of pasties I’d gotten from one of the topless pools, and for myself just used a couple squares of duct tape. Of course, the first thing that happened to us was some pervy old nudist in a stretched-out Speedo who was picking up trash on the beach came over and chatted us up. I’m used to this kinda thing — I thrive on conversations with pervy old nudists and other nuts — but Samantha was like, WTF! Especially when he pulled down his Speedo to show his “tan line,” thus exposing his nasty-ass shaved dick-n-balls. I mean, seriously?! Did I NEED to that plucked-chicken-neck-looking thing, good sir???

After kayaking around the lake all afternoon, we went back into town to go check out this awesome haunted house one of my actor friends is working at, playing a vampire. I met this guy at the mascot convention thing that I worked awhile back, and he’s basically a full-time actor — he was even in Pirates of the Caribbean as some sort of bit-part scurvy knave! He’s super nice, and he got Samantha and I into the haunted house for free, and it was really cool — especially when he busted out a surprise “Birthday-Party-in-a-Bag” he’d made for me after reading about my shitty-ass birthday. It was too cute — he stuffed a gift bag full of b-day stuff like a card, gift, cupcake, hat and noisemaker. Too cool! After we went through the haunted house, I went downtown with him and his wife and friends to celebrate his birthday, which happened to be that day. His friends were very cool people who all work at the Natural History Museum together, and get together for these crazy godless holiday parties: they burn a Yule Goat at Christmas, and eat turducken and qua-duc-ant at Thanksgiving, among other crazy traditions. They invited me to their parties this year, and it’s enough to make me wanna stay in Vegas for the holidays! Normally I go home to California every year — I find the idea of staying in Vegas for Xmas extremely depressing. But my newspaper reporter friend Phil Connors says his best Xmases EVER were in Vegas — dinner at the Peppermill followed by holiday lap dances at the OG strip club. Then again, he’s Jewish, and thus used to weird holidays…so I dunno.

Anyhoo, while I was downtown with my new posse of museum friends, I realized once again how much I LOVE downtown Las Vegas. Really, anyone who’s ANYONE prefers downtown to the Strip these days. I’ve long preferred the seediness of Fremont Street to the sanitized corporate behemoths on the Strip, but lately there’s been somewhat of a hipster renaissance down there and now EVERYONE goes downtown. It’s kind of annoying — all my old parking spots are now taken, but the trade-off is there are more cool bars, restaurants, art and events down there.

I’m not even just talking about Fremont Street (the tourist zone that’s covered with the light show ceiling). I’m talking about ALL of downtown! I stopped for a snack at this new little kiosk on the street corner across from the OG strip club called “I Love Arepas,” and it is FANTASTIC! Arepas are these weird little Venezuelan corn pockets stuffed with various fillings — I had some down at a bus depot in the Venezuelan hinterlands back in ’09, but these were 100 times better! (They don’t like Americans down there, so someone probably pissed in my Arepa at that bus depot…which would explain it.) Anyhoo, “I Love Arepas” sells a buncha different type arepas for $3.50 each, and they are AWESOME! Plus, you get to sit right out on the street while you eat, and watch the weirdos go by. As mentioned, it’s right across from a strip club, and also near a dive bar and an all-night drugstore populated by pimps, prostitutes and crackheads. It’s GREAT!

As I drove down to Fremont St. on my way to meet my museum friends, I passed all the aforementioned nuttiness, plus a number of crazy boutiques, pawn shops (including the one from Pawn Stars), peepshows and wedding chapels full of tourists in prom wear. Then I saw a homeless man with a long white Santa Claus beard, shuffling drunkenly down Fremont St. in a t-shirt printed to look like a Santa suit. What a nutty fucking city, I thought — the perfect place for me! It’s rare that I feel any sort of fondness for Vegas, but downtown does it for me. And now I wanna move closer to the action!

My current humble estate, Villa Sinvergüenza, is technically considered to be “downtown,” but it’s probably a mile or two from the actual epicenter. And while I love my house (enough to bash my head repeatedly against a wall for the last 3 years, struggling with my lender to modify my awful unaffordable loan)…I am finally coming to the realization that I wouldn’t die if I had to move out. I bought the place for $380,000 and zillow.com currently values it at $91k. WTF! Meanwhile, I found a genteel hovel in the middle of downtown for $60,000. It’s nowhere near as nice as my current estate — faaaar from it, in fact — but it’s sixty thousand dollars! I could pay for it, CASH, and never have to make another mortgage payment for the rest of my life. Which means I could stop posing for stupid lesbian photos and kissing tourist ass!

I have a mediation hearing on my current loan coming up on Oct. 26th. At this meeting, my attorney and I are supposed to sit down with my lender’s representative, plus an impartial 3rd-party mediator, and hash out a deal that’s amenable to all parties. But I have my doubts. All I can really afford to pay on a mortgage is $1000 per month, and thanks to my friend J.R.’s amortization calculator I found out that means that for my $340,000 loan, they’d have to give me an interest rate of 1.8%. HAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The other option, of course, is for the bank to write down my principal to what the house is actually worth. I don’t think $91,000 is an accurate amount — zillow.com valued the boarded-up abandoned marijuana grow house next door, which has sat empty for over a year, at $150,000 — so obviously these numbers need tweaking. I’d say my house is worth more like $150k too. But it’ll be a cold day in hell before the bank cuts my principal IN HALF 🙁

Soooooooooo…I am completely and utterly lost. HELP! When this whole fucking mess started — when my ex-boyfriend left me with this insanely ill-advised, no-doc, robo-signed, fraud-ridden mortgage, I should have just walked away then and there. Why didn’t I? A sense of moral obligation, reinforced by my second ex-boyfriend (“You signed that loan, you should honor it”), Mother Jane (“Whatever you do, don’t ruin your credit”) and even one of those free consumer credit counseling services (“Your moral obligation is to honor the agreement you made with your lender”). FUCK!

If I had walked away then, I’d be richer, happier, and probably able to sleep. As it stands, I’m a hot fucking mess. I weep just about every day, because I’m so utterly confused and alone in all this. What I need right now is to blow a Senator or some other corrupt fucking good-old-boy in a position of influence, and get them to work out a special deal for me. OR, I just need someone to buy me this other $60,000 house. I’ll pay you back within 6 months, I promise!

Or, I need Jebus to come down and smite my enemies, and make everything better. But that doesn’t seem very likely, either. Arrrrrgh!

P.S. My depression this week was so deep that I wasn’t even able to enjoy a trip to the annual Las Vegas Bikefest with my friend Muscles…although while there, I did pick up this pair of metal testicles for my keychain. Next time someone’s trying to push me around, I’ll use them as my magic talisman…a reminder that despite my anatomy, I DO have ballz and I will not stand to be fucked with! Not by bankers, bosses OR boyfriends!

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