The good news is, I finally got my finances in order… just in time for summer travels!!! I’ve paid off all my debts, so now it’s time to dial back on work, and crank up the adventures — that’s right, it’s time to knock some shit off my Bucket List!!! I already got my Burning Man ticket (yaaaay), and before then I also plan to visit the Sturgis biker rally, the Daytona NASCAR Race, and Ireland. What else should I do?? Is there some amazingly kooky event in YOUR area I should come check out? Let me know!

Sadly, however, I’m still no jet-setter — I remain a broke-ass hack, so that means my adventures must be financed the old-fashioned way: by working. Boo! I sat down and tallied up my monthly expenses, and figured out it costs me $40/day just to subsist. Subsist! (If you call having high-speed internet, a smartphone with unlimited data, a gym membership and $10/day for food “subsisting.” There are plenty who live for less.) But if I want to be able to save anything (and fatten my adventure fund) then I have to make $60/day. So I’m still a-hustlin’. To wit:

By far the best gig I did lately was film this giantess video. A guy I know makes weird custom fetish videos with pretty dramatic special effects, and he just stepped up his game even more by getting a studio with a green screen. So now when he does a giantess video, instead of using camera angles and action figures and other hokery to make me look ginormous, he can make it seem much more realistic. I went in and filmed my part — sitting around in a bikini, pretending that I had shrunken my boss down to action-figure size and was making him clean my high heels and do my homework. Then when I left, they had this guy Dante come in and film his part against a green screen — so that when they put it together, he actually looks like the tiny little man scrubbing my shoes and then trapped between the pages of my schoolbook (which is, astonishingly, the fantasy of a certain demographic). FUN!!! I can’t wait to see the edited results!

Alas, however, not all my gigs were this fun and easy. The weather has started warming up a little, so photographers are starting to come knocking again, wanting to go out into the desert for outdoor photo shoots. I set up a shoot with these two Italian guys, and they wanted to go all the way up to Gold Point — the ghost town where I did an amazing two-day shoot back in October. They had read about it on this blog, and really wanted to go, as it seemed the essence of Americana to them. So, even though it’s a 3-hour drive from Vegas, they carted me up their in their BMW, while I slept in the back. When we arrived, the Italians were totally smitten: “Mamma Mia!” “Bellissima!” “Molto bene!!!!” They almost jizzed in their pants when they saw all the rusted out Airstreams and stuff.

Unfortunately, Sheriff Herb Stone was ghastly ill and holed up in his cabin…but Deputy Walt (the bartender) was around, and after we shot outside for awhile, he let us into the saloon, where it wasn’t quite as cold….though it was still pretty fucking freezing. But thankfully, we should only have a few more weeks of this nonsense, and the warm spring weather will FINALLY be here again. I can’t wait!

Aside from modeling, I also put in three grueling days as a mascot for this local shoe store, which involved standing on the street waving at cars, wandering around the store high-fiving kids, and dancing to the shitty music provided by a local radio station that had set up a remote broadcast outside.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t had to be there so early — but I had to work at the nightclub until 3am the night before, so I was pretty hung over in that mascot suit…and NOT in the mood to deal with snot-nosed, fat-assed brats!!!!

Speaking of the club, I am pleased to report that I got a promotion. Now, instead of just dancing all night, I get pissed on as well! YAY!!! The stage manager decided to use us go-go dancers in one of the performance acts that go on every half hour or so, so now we get to go onstage and lay around like we’re afterhours club kids at 5:50am, half passed out but still high as kites. One of the performers gets the bright idea to piss into a champagne glass, and before you know it, there are three people pissing on us, and we’re drinking it up like Moet. GOOD TIMES! (Seriously…it is fun, in a sick and twisted way… and it beats just dancing all night.)

Now, speaking of dancing…as I’ve mentioned before, my job is to dance around onstage and try to get the crowd going. Most nightclub go-gos are up on pedestals or platforms, above the crowd…but where I work, the stage is open to everyone and anyone, and in fact it’s part of our job to try and get people to come onstage and dance with us. It’s fun and easy, but the later it gets, the drunker the guys get…and before you know it, there’s some d-bag glued to your ass, grinding his dick into your asscrack like there’s no tomorrow. We call them “butt humpers,” and they attack every night.

The worst part is, we all wear skimpy costumes that aren’t much more than panties, garters and stockings, etc. I’m usually OK because I wear a gigantic Marie Antoinette wig that is decorated with flashing lights, flowers and feather dusters…and the bulk of it kinda keeps the butt humpers from grinding too closely. But all bets were off on Super Bowl weekend!!!

Apparently, Super Bowl brings to town a bunch of amped, testosterone-fueled bros who don’t get out much otherwise. They end up drinking too much, getting completely wasted, and then hitting on everything in sight — including chicks in 15-pound Marie Antoinette wigs! Not once but three separate times did I have to forcibly remove a random dude’s fingers from inside my panties!!! We’d be innocently dancing, and next thing you know the guy graduates from butt-humper to aspiring gynecologist. WTF! I have a high tolerance for that kind of stuff, so I just gently swatted their hands away each time…but seriously, it got annoying!

The worst was this one super-drunk guy who had been tipping one of my colleagues for dancing with him. She let me in on the action, so I allowed him to grind his boner into my ass for a few minutes because I saw he had a $20 bill clutched in his sweaty fist, and I assumed it would be mine. After about five minutes he said, “So how much?” I figured he meant “How much do I owe you?” but when I asked him to clarify, he said, “How much for a blow job??!!” Seriously!!

Even worse was this other kid from Chicago — a real wholesome, sweet-looking Ferris Bueller type who was there with a bunch of his boys, partying at a table. For some reason, this kid became obsessed with me, and his crotch barely left my ass the entire night. I kept trying to politely break it up by turning around to dance face-to-face with him, so we did chat a little and he was actually a pretty nice kid. But the later it got, the drunker he got, until finally he joined the ranks of the amateur ob/gyns. But I finally had enough of his shenanigans when he said, “My friends all say I should have sex with you… but I’m not going to, because I respect you too much.”

LMFAO! Aw, gee. Now you’re making me blush!

It was around this time that one of the security guards threatened to throw him out (they do look out for us), and my shift was about over anyway, so I took off. I had to be up super early the following morning to work this Super Bowl party I was booked for, anyway. A local Italian restaurant (Casa di Amore) throws a ginormous Super Bowl party every year, and I had been hired to work as a showgirl, just sort of roaming around and schmoozing the crowd. I have my own showgirl costume, which I made myself, but since it’s red and gold colors, I figured I should make some sort of fan or something in purple and black, in case there were any Baltimore supporters who wanted a photo. So I ended up making two fans, one for each team, and then held up whichever one they wanted in the photo. It worked great!

But the BEST part of the party was, I was outside in the beautiful sunshine, working the line waiting to get in…when I recognized the same group of drunken bros from the club the night before!!! The Ferris Bueller kid wasn’t with them, but I recognized his friends. Of course, they didn’t recognize me, being as I wear heavy theatrical makeup and a giant pink Afro wig at the club…so I had a reeeeeally good time fucking with ’em: “Hey! I know you guys!”

“Nahhhh….no way.” They thought I was just goofing around, until I started naming names: “Yeah, I do! You were at the club last night…your boy Ferris was humping my ass all night long…security almost threw him out.”

Omg, they almost died laughing. Apparently, young Ferris was still back at the hotel, since he had a massive hangover and was having a “rough” morning. But he was on his way, they assured me, and we cooked up a plan to really mess with that kid’s mind.

So about an hour later, I went by their table at the party, and sure enough, there was young Ferris…a little green around the gills, sipping on a hair of the dog. I plopped down next to him: “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!” He kinda smiled pukily, and you could tell he had no idea who I was. Meanwhile, his boys were sniggering uncontrollably across the table, and you could see he was wondering WTF was up. My plan was to string him along for the whole party, finally revealing myself at the end…but his buddies spilled the beans early on. To his credit, Ferris was very embarrassed, and apologized profusely for his behavior the night before. But, it just goes to show: you never know who you’re going to run into. So be nice!!!!

After the Super Bowl, I was pretty well wiped out…but one of my best friends was in town, and we had made plans to go carousing most every night he was here. One night we went over to the new Senor Frog’s bar/restaurant at Treasure Island, where I inhaled a plate of nachos so big it swelled my belly up like a zeppelin — and then I had to go to work, and strap myself into a corset!!! It was awful — I felt (and looked) like one of those giant balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Blehhhh!

Another night, we ate magic mushrooms and went over to check out the Penn & Teller show. It was all right, but then just about any show would be great on shrooms. My top choice would have been the Beatles/Cirque show LOVE, but my friend had already seen it on shrooms….so we had to settle for Penn & Teller. Everything was going along all right until Penn made some remark about red meat and apple pie, which I thought was a laugh line, and I guffawed REALLY loudly into a totally silent theater. Apparently, he was being serious (???)…so I got an angry shusshh! from the miserable old biddy in front of me.

Incidentally, here’s my list of Top Shows to See When Under the Effects of Self-Induced Food Poisoning:

1. LOVE (all the psychedelic music, lights and acrobatics are intensified) (or so my friend says)
2. Absinthe (crazy acrobatics, weird props, crazy characters, and a very intimate/cozy setting where you are close enough to touch everything. I can personally vouch for this one)
3. The Act (really more of a nightclub, but they have bizarre-O performances every 30 min or so, and lots of kooky characters roaming around. Plus, the club itself is decorated super-bizarrely, with patterns and textures and weird statues and stuff)
4. Fremont Street Experience (not really a show, either…just a big pedestrian mall full of weirdos in costumes, drunk tourists, and a giant lightshow with music every 30 min on a giant screen overhead. This is a BLAST on shrooms! You never know who — or WHAT — you’ll run into down there.)
5. Criss Angel (I’ve never seen it, but I can only imagine how awesome it would be to see something awful and schlocky while super high)

One other show I should add to that list is Donny & Marie (as in, Osmond…yes, they’re still kicking around the fringes of the entertainment world). They’ve had a show at the Flamingo for years now, and it always struck me as the worst kind of excruciating schlock — like the same demographic that goes to see Terry fucking Fator. Well, one of my gigs is writing brief reviews of different shows around town for a travel website, and guess which show they assigned me recently?! That’s right — only, I totally forgot about it, since I set it up with their PR person weeks ago…and due to the hectic nature of my schedule, I completely spaced out.

I was sitting in the parking lot of my gym, putting off the inevitable (I hate lifting weights, but I make myself do it once a week for an hour) when my editor emailed me: “Hey, when are you going to see Donny & Marie?” Thanks to his reminder, I checked back through my emails and realized I was supposed to go that very night! He reminded me just in time — I barely had time to post an emergency Facebook status update seeking a date for the show before running in, lifting my shitty weights, then dashing home, changing clothes and racing over to the Flamingo.

By the time I got there, I was stressed out and in a very grumpy mood. I fully expected the show to suck ass, and since the site only pays $25 per review, it kinda seemed like a colossal waste of time. Worse, my friend and I were sitting way in the back, and couldn’t get a drink to save our lives!! There was only one waitress working the entire room (I guess all the old Mormons in the audience don’t drink much), so things weren’t looking too good for the drinking game we intended to play, to make the time pass.

But then the show started…and everything changed!!

I’m here to tell you, I never in a million years thought I’d be writing this, but…Donny & Marie are better than Prozac!!! Their relentless cheer and enthusiasm come across as genuine and charming, and their self-deprecating humor is actually funny! They basically revel (or wallow) in the fact that they are cheesy as fuck, and don’t try to hide it or be something they’re not. Totally unpretentious show, to its immense credit — and I was thoroughly entertained, and cheered up! Before long, I was grinning like an idiot — especially when one of the ushers came up and in a move of showbiz Deus ex Machina, moved us to a front center booth, along with this sweet older couple (everyone in there is at least 99 years old). Now the drinks were flowing, the view was unparalleled, and my face like to split from all the smiling. GOOD TIMES!

My favorite part of the show was some weird hard-rock number the Osmonds did back in the day called “Crazy Horses.” It was far fucking out, maaan! Wailing guitars, thrashing dancers, screaming horses… all I could say was “What…….the…..fuuuuuuuck???!” I had never heard of this amazing anthem before, but it was awesome! The rest of the show was fan-fucking-tastic, too — so much so that I actually didn’t want it to end! (!!??? What is happening to me??!!)

To be fair, this was Donny & Marie’s first night back after a long hiatus, so they were well-rested, freshly Botoxed and likely in better spirits than normal. But I’m willing to bet that this, too, would be an amaaaaaazing show to shroom at. Even sober(ish), it was great!

Anyhoo, aside from all that, I’ve only done one other thing of note lately. A friend (who must be seriously misguided) invited me to participate as a panelist on this new fashion roundtable discussion show she’s producing for local TV. Sin City Roundtable features local personalities including me, a local radio DJ by the name of Gooch, and a local restaurateur named Mingo, along with Patty Barba, the proprietress of a chain of consignment boutiques, as we sit around and talk shit about what various celebrities wore in Vegas over the past weekend…over drinks, of course. We filmed the pilot episode the other day, and it was so much fun — if there’s one thing I love, it’s talking shit about celebrities. And if there’s another thing, it’s drinking. And if I can do both of them together, on local TV…even better!!! My only challenge was coming up with something fashionable to wear for the pilot — all my outlandish outfits are best suited to warm weather, so I ended up freezing my ass off in a sheer Mrs. Roper caftan (I told you they were misguided to invite me on a fashion show, LOL). Anyway, look for it soon on a TV channel near you!

And on a final note…….one of my fabulous neighbors hooked me up with a motherlode of extremely rare, discontinued Hostess Sno Balls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ve been wanting these forever, because I have and idea for a fabulous photo shoot with them. So now, my dream can become a reality. YAY!!!!!!!!!