Naked in Ireland

pic by SW Images
pic by SW Images

When I left off last time, I was trying kooky new therapies to “cure” my insomnia before my trip to Ireland…so that I would be able to sleep over there, without the aid of my medical marijuana — which I wasn’t going to be able to bring with me. As you may recall, my efforts failed miserably! So what did I do?

Well, I’m here to tell you that things got even WORSE! A few days before my trip, I got an email from one of the guys who had hired me for that golf tournament that I caddied — you remember, the one with all the “sexy caddy” shenanigans (in Vegas, “golf” = “hijinks involving scantily clad caddies, copious amounts of booze, and MAYBE a golf club or two”). ANYhoo, the main guy who had set up the golf event emailed me to see if I would vouch for him — apparently he was going to be in the Santa Barbara area for work, and had scheduled a photo shoot while out there, and had booked a local model who might want to check a reference.

pic by SW Images
pic by SW Images

Of course I agreed — he’s a nice enough man, and I’m sure any model would be safe shooting with him. But then he goes, “Well actually, I get the feeling she’s gonna flake on me. Would YOU be interested in doing it? I could fly you out to Santa Barbara and we could shoot on the beach at sunrise!”

Now, this was about 5 days before my trip to Ireland…and I was kinda sweating my finances. I had paid work booked in Ireland, but only enough to cover my travel expenses — I still needed to make my monthly nut to pay my regular bills back here in Vegas. My plan was to bust my ass working the week before my trip, and then again the week after…thus covering my nut, and allowing me to enjoy my time abroad as vacation.

pic by ME
pic by ME

But, inexplicably, all my usual gigs here in town dried the fuck up before my trip…so I was just sitting around getting nervous. I did go busking a few nights with Jay Joint, and made a little cash…but not enough. So I told the golf guy photographer “Why, sure! I’ll just drive out to Santa Barbara and shoot with you!” I figured I could just spend the night with a friend in L.A., then drive up to S.B. early the next morning for the shoot. I could even make a little pre-vacay vacay out of it. Maybe I’d even stop by Venice Beach in my Mary Jane costume, and try busking out there.

Alas, it wasn’t that easy. It turns out the photographer — we’ll call him “Ludovico” — had this cockamamie plan to shoot at sunset Wednesday night, AND then again Thursday morning. He was flying into Santa Barbara at 5:30pm Weds, so he asked me to drive out ahead of him and scout a good beach, then text him my location so that when he landed, he could get a car and drive out real quick to shoot me at sunset. Then, we’d both drive up to Pismo Beach, where his meeting was — 80 MILES AWAY! I’d share his hotel room, then get up to shoot again at sunrise on the beach near his hotel. Oh, and I had to supply my own camera, as he couldn’t/didn’t want to bring his own (or maybe he doesn’t even HAVE a camera…who knows?!).

Hmmmmmmm!!!!!

He assured me he would behave himself if I shared his bed, so I figured I’d just deal with it later and agreed to the plan, for the price of $500. I packed my D-70 and a bag of clothes, left Vegas around 11am Weds, and basically hauled ass to Santa Barbara, making it there in about 5 hours. I found a perfect beach just outside town, and settled in to wait for Ludovico. Of course, his flight was delayed, and blah blah blah….so next thing you know, he didn’t expect to arrive in Santa Barbara til 7:30…which would put him on the beach well after sunset 🙁

pic by ME
pic by ME

Since I was already there anyway, I made the best of it: I ran 4 or 5 miles on the beach, then set up my D70 on the timer, and took my own damn sunset nudes!!! They came out pretty good, if I do say so myself. The only bummer was, I couldn’t figure out how to set the timer to take multiple frames…I could only do one at a time. So I would hit the shutter, then run out into the water and get into position before it took the shot….then run back out, check it, and repeat. Thank Dog the beach was pretty much deserted, so there was non one around to see this naked maniac running back and forth!!!

pic by J.E. Setsaas
pic by J.E. Setsaas

After all that, Ludovico finally landed…but by the time he got his car and everything, the sun was already pretty much down, so we decided to just meet up in Pismo Beach and have dinner. We ate a great meal, washed down with gallons of wine, and then went down to the beach and smoked a bowl while looking at the stars and having bullshit quasi-philosophical conversation. Ludovico is actually a very interesting person — part Kenyan, part Indian, part British, living in Canada — so it was pretty good times. He didn’t protest too much when I insisted on sleeping on the sofa in his room instead of sharing his bed — and it was actually really cozy, right by the balcony door, which he left open to the sounds of the crashing waves right outside. I passed out in a hot minute, and slept pretty well for once in my life…

…EXCEPT for the little fact that we were shooting at SUNRISE, which meant I had to get up at 4AM to get ready!!!!!! UGH!!!!!!

pic by Shutterbug-Studio
pic by Shutterbug-Studio

I dragged my ass out of bed when my alarm went off, made some coffee, and went about my business performing my morning ablutions. By the time the sun came up I was photo-ready, and we headed down to the beach right in front of the hotel, where by some MIRACLE it was a clear, sunny morning that wasn’t too chilly. I pranced around in the sand and rocks and surf for two or three hours, even getting IN the damn water at the very end…and while I can’t exactly lie and say it was enJOYable, it was at least TOLERABLE! I didn’t freeze my ass off….yay!!

Pirates Cove nude beach, near Pismo Beach
Pirates Cove nude beach, near Pismo Beach

Ludovico’s meeting was at 11am, so we went back up to his room around 9:30 and I got cleaned up, packed my bag, took my money and headed back out onto the road. Some relatives in the area had clued me into a nearby nude beach called Pirates Cove, so I headed up there to check it out before driving back to the desert. I’m originally from California, and I do miss it dearly — the beach, in particular, and the whole fog/palm tree/eucalyptus vibe…so I wanted to hang out at least a LITTLE before I went back!

 

 

 

Pirates Cove
Pirates Cove

Pirates Cove is up by Avila Beach, just north of Pismo….and it is AWESOME!!! I highly recommend it. I laid out for an hour or so, and no one fucked with me — although there were several other people out there that day, everyone just sort of kept to themselves. It was great!!! I worked on some writing I had to do for one of the local papers, and then laid back to decide where I should go next.

The direct route back to Vegas goes through Bakersfield, so I figured I could do that and stop off to have dinner with a doctor friend I met on WhatsYourPrice.com, who lives out there. OR, I could go south to L.A. and spend the night with another fun friend. Decisions!!

In the end, I went the Bakersfield route…because I really needed to get home and finish my writing, and do some stuff to get ready for my Ireland trip. I cruised inland from Pismo, and it was a really beautiful drive. I just love California; northern, southern, coastal, inland…it’s so amazingly diverse. The central area around Santa Barbara is underappreciated; there’s this one area called Summerland, which in my esteem is like the greatest name ever. What’s better than summertime? NOTHING! I want to live in the land of perpetual summer!! Too bad it’s all rich old people 🙁

Oil field outside Bakersfield
Oil field outside Bakersfield

After leaving the coast, the highway goes inland through endless fields of yellow grass and HUNDREDS of oil derricks. I had to stop and take a pic for my friend J.R., who’s in the oil biz back east — come to find out, Kern County (wherein lies Bakersfield) produces 1/10th of the oil in the entire U.S.! Ahhh, California…is there anything you don’t have in abundance?? (Well, affordable housing….which is why I left, haha.)

Even more interesting, after passing

James Dean death memorial
James Dean death memorial

through the oil fields, I also passed the spot where James Dean died in a fiery car crash! Back in 1955, at the height of his popularity, James Dean was driving his little silver Porsche Spyder up from L.A. to a race track in Salinas, to compete in some amateur racing event…when he collided with another car in the middle of B.F.E., Cowtown County, CA. He was pretty much killed instantly, and since there’s little else in the area to draw in tourism, they milk the whole affair shamelessly. There’s a James Dean gas station, a James Dean Memorial intersection (at the exact site of the crash)…and this weird-ass memorial sculpture dedicated to him by some wealthy Japanese fan, wrapped around an oak tree outside a nearby diner. Back in 2001, my Mormon friend Turqouise and I drove down to check it out, but I hadn’t been back since. It was exactly the same!

I didn’t have much time to dally though, so I chugged on to Bakersfield, had dinner with my doctor friend at the local Elephant Bar, and then continued on to Vegas around 9pm. I rolled into town around 1am, finished writing my column for the paper, and finally collapsed into bed around 3:30am. This all after rising at 4am for that photo shoot, you may recall — talk about a loooooong day! I had tried to take a nap earlier at Pirates Cove, but I have a really hard time falling asleep more than once in a 24-hour period, so I was unsuccessful, despite how exhausted I was.

superheroes!
superheroes!

Anyway, now I was back in Vegas and I still couldn’t sleep well! To make matters worse, because my sleep is so shitty, my immune system is worn down…and I get sick really easily, so of course I caught a nasty cold. I should have stayed home in bed to rest, but I made myself go out busking Friday and Saturday nights, which only made it worse. And even WORSE, some friends had invited me to a charity fundraiser Saturday afternoon, where some half-baked women’s shelter was trying to set a Guinness World’s Record for the largest number of people in superhero costumes — so I rode my bike downtown in my Wonder Woman outfit to take part.

Now, riding a bike in a superhero cape is something everyone should do at least once — it’s great!! The wind blows your cape around like you’re really flying; it’s a trip. Plus, there was some kind of classic lowrider car show going on in the parking lot at the dive bar across the street from my house, and I rode through all the cholos, causing quite a stir: “¡Órale homes, it’s Wonder Woman!”

superheroes!
superheroes!

But once I got to the actual event, it was pathetic. They needed about 1,500 people to break the previous record (that such a record even exists is a testament to the sadness and lameness of people)…but less than 100 people showed up!! And half of them were SAD FUCKING street performers in shitty, sweat-stained Transformers costumes. REALLY depressing. I was feeling really sick and feverish, and I REALLY should have been home in bed…but I hung out and had a cocktail while they tallied up the results. The second that shit was done, I was out like a boner in sweatpants. I rode my bike home, tried to take a quick nap, then rallied for a late-night busking session. Even busking wasn’t any fun, as sick as I was. When we were finally finished, I went home and passed out in bed.

My plan was to sleep all day and get well for my trip, but since I couldn’t really sleep, that kinda fucked everything up. I tried to just take ‘er easy the next few days, but this was a NASTY, lingering cold, and it just wouldn’t go away! I went to Jamba Juice every single day, and overdosed on Vitamin C in both pill and juice form, but nothing helped. I even went to the steam room at my gym and tried to shvitz it out…to no avail.

SICK!
SICK!

So on the day of my flight, I was severely congested. Bad news!! You’re not supposed to fly with stuffed-up sinuses — you can cause permanent ear damage! I know, because I did it before….and to this day I have issues with my sinuses. I called a doctor though, and she gave me some advice to get through it: Sudafed, nasal spray, and these weird special ear plugs. This all ROYALLY fucked up my plan to eat a pot brownie and pass out blissfully for the entire flight — I had intended to get some much-needed sleep on the plane, so that I could be semi-fresh for my photo shoot in Ireland on Friday. Well, there was no way I was sleeping when I was amped up on Sudafed!!!!!

Instead, I sat awake the entire fucking flight. You know how on those transatlantic flights, they try and close all the windows and pretend it’s “nighttime” so that you can catch a few Zs and then “wake up” and start a new day when you land? Well, I basically skipped that whole night’s sleep. My sister (who came with me) and I were even angrily shushed by the guy in front of us, because we were talking too loudly (about inappropriate subject matter, no less) during the fake-night. D’oh!!

Ahhh...makeup.
Ahhh…makeup.

As a result, I arrived at Heathrow airport all groggy and nasty and pissed off…although the good news was, my sinuses were dried out. Before my connecting flight to Dublin, I sat in the airport and put on my makeup — the photographer was picking me up at the airport, and I didn’t want to freak him out by looking too ghastly. So by the time I got off the plane in Dublin, I looked semi-alive. True to his word, the photographer met us at baggage claim, and turned out to be a super cool guy — a true bohemian artist-type, with gray ponytail and beard and all, who also happens to be a SHAMAN, who runs sweat lodges out in some Irish bog!!! Hello!! I always meet the coolest fucking people 🙂

Anyhoo, he took us out to a suburb of Dublin to this bed & breakfast he had booked us, just down the street from his studio. It was one of those great old Victorian houses with high ceilings and fireplaces in every room — super quaint. The only downside was, it was freezing fucking cold!!!!! I couldn’t believe how fucking cold it was there — I’m from the desert, for chrissakes, and apparently they were having an unusually late spring, so temperatures were in the 40s or 50s or something crazy. And I was supposed to get naked!!!!! I was basically bone-chillingly cold the entire time I was in that country, start to finish.

So anyhoo, I was really in a fog at this point, but it was only about noon local time, and much too early for bed. My photo shoot wasn’t until the next day, but my sister and I made ourselves stay awake as long as possible, to try and adjust to the time difference. We went over to the photographer’s studio, located in an amazing old 1850s carriage house
(where the keyboard tracks for U2’s “The Unforgettable Fire” were laid down, incidentally) for a quick costume fitting (this photographer is into some craaaaazy, conceptual stuff…right up my alley!). Then we walked down to the seafront, and looked around in the cold gray afternoon mist. Thank Dog I brought my warmest pea coat, I tell you — it was that cold! We ended up hiking all the way up to the top of this hill to a giant stone cross, along beautiful trails lined with bluebells and gorse bushes and whatnot, and it was really cool. Then we went down to a local pub for a bite and a drink….and then it was finally 8pm, and we were able to crawl into bed!

weeping, tossing and turning in the middle of the night
weeping, tossing and turning in the middle of the night

And guess what???? I still couldn’t sleep!!!!! Of course I didn’t have my pipe with me — I could hardly clear customs with a baggie full of weed. But I did have a bag full of the last of my pot cookies, and one brownie a friend had given me. But I figured I was soooo tired, I wouldn’t need any of that, and I could save it for later in the trip. WRONG!! I slept about 2 hours, then tossed and turned the rest of the night, despite the fact that the beds at this bed & breakfast were super cozy, and that it was freezing in the room (being in a cold room is supposed to help one sleep better).

So I woke up groggy and pissed off, and that’s pretty much how the rest of the trip went. I slept miserably over there! The last time I remember sleeping so poorly was when I went on a cruise once, and couldn’t bring my weed on there, either. D’oh!! Nevertheless, I sacked up, painted on my game face, and headed down the street to the photographer’s studio. My sister took the commuter train into Dublin and spent the day looking at museums and the Book of Kells and whatnot — their museums are FREE over there, astonishingly! Meanwhile, I froze my ass off posing for really cool, conceptual, mythological photos at the photographer’s amazing old house. It really was fun, despite how cold I was; that guy is super fucking cool!

drinking cider
drinking cider

After we finished shooting for the day, he drove me into Dublin and we met up with my sis, and had drinks at some super old historical pub, where I felt obligated to have a Guinness. Now, I’ve never drank a beer in my entire life — I despise beer; like, completely despise and loathe it. The smell makes me want to vomit!!! But “when in Rome,” etc….so I ordered and drank an entire glass of Guinness. I didn’t die…but I can’t say I’ll ever drink another, either!

After that, the photographer drove us around a few more sights, then dropped us off at our B&B and we crashed pretty early. Again, I spent a miserable night tossing and turning…but it was OK, as my second day of work (I was hired for three days) consisted of just laying around while a bunch of Irish artists painted me. They all set up their easels in the photographer’s fabulous high-ceilinged drawing room, and I laid naked in the middle, with a space heater cranking away beside me. The photographer played classical music CDs while they sketched and painted, and I basically dozed off and slept the whole day, except for during our frequent tea and cake breaks. It was GREAT!! A surreal, dreamlike, very pleasant day. The artists were all super nice people, and they had nothing but kind words about how “elegant” I was, LOL. Elegant!!!!! The first and last time I’ll ever be described as such, no doubt!

on the train into Dublin
on the train into Dublin

After that, I took the train into Dublin and met up with my sis at this wacky Viking pub, then walked around and had dinner. I don’t usually like to eat much the night before a shoot, to keep my stomach flat, but it was so freaking cold over there that I just had to stoke my fires with something, and ended up eating all this heavy, hearty, gravy-covered stuff. I was kinda apprehensive, because the next day was the final day of my shoot, and the photographer wanted to do some outdoors shooting in a valley he knew of out in the countryside, that was said to be carpeted in bluebells this time of year. Well, I was all for that — I didn’t come all the way there to shoot in a studio; you can do that anywhere! But I was very leery about getting naked outdoors in this freezing land.

hiking out to the bluebell valley
hiking out to the bluebell valley

The next day dawned gray and cold, like all the others, and I headed over to the studio for the morning’s work, which would be indoors. The plan was for my sister to join us around 2pm, when we would all drive out to the countryside together and shoot at the bluebell valley. Well, by some miracle, the sun came out and the temps warmed up to around 60 or 65 degrees — still fucking cold in my book, but definitely sack-up-able! We cruised out into this amazingly beautiful valley — all green and lush and Lord of

tramping around the Irish countryside, naked under a bathrobe
tramping around the Irish countryside, naked under a bathrobe

the Rings-y, totally Garden of Eden — and we shot some more amazingly artsy, conceptual costumed stuff which I can’t wait to show you!! After shooting, the photographer drove us around the country and showed us some sights, including an incredible old monastery from around 600 A.D., and then he took us to dinner at a little country inn-type place. So much fun! He really was an amazing host.

Even more amazingly, he offered to pick

mmm...black pudding :-/
mmm…black pudding :-/

us up at 7am the next day and drop us off at the ferry terminal — we had to take a ferry from Dublin over to Wales, and then a train into London. So the next morning, after yet another sleepless night, we boarded this 3-hour ferry ride. It was actually pretty fun — we had this giant Irish breakfast, with beans and toast and black pudding and all whatnot, and then snoozed off on the couches in the lounge until we arrived in Holyhead, Wales, where we boarded a train for London. It was so much touristy fun to look out the

the ferry to Wales
the ferry to Wales

windows at the green fields full of sheep rolling by….but even more fun to look at these awful British tabloid magazines my sister bought from the snack trolley!! We spent about an hour laughing our asses off at this pictorial spread about the woodland-fairy-themed wedding party of Sir Richard Branson’s daughter’s marriage to some D-list English nobleman. Everyone was there, in fairy costumes — even Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York! The idle fucking rich…..arrrgh.

unpacking in the kitchen of our apartment
unpacking in the kitchen of our apartment

Anyhoo, we arrived in London right at rush hour, and rolled our bags through the train station like real hillbillies to the the subway, where my sister figured out how to take the underground to the little apartment she had rented us for the week, in the South Bank area of London. Now, the B&B we stayed in in Ireland was much more quaint and picturesque — I forgot to mention the fact that the proprietress of the B&B was this awesome sort of brusquely friendly 50s-ish woman named Mary, who laid out breakfast for us every morning downstairs in a formal dining room. But that being said, this apartment was the shit!! We had the heater up to about 1,000 degrees Celsius, and my sister went downstairs to the ground floor Tesco’s supermarket and bought us all kinds of supplies for the kitchen — crumpets and scones and sausage rolls and whatnot. Fabulous!!

boozing at the wine bar
boozing at the wine bar

We didn’t have time to lay around though, because after unpacking and freshening up, it was time to get back on the subway and meet up with a friend of my sister’s who lives over there. This awesome guy, we’ll call him Caleb, was a total Goth pal of my sister’s in high school — I knew him too; we used to all tramp around the California suburbs in 100-degree summer weather in velvet cloaks and shit, like real idiots, back in the day. Well, now he’s a lawyer in London, and lives with his husband in this awesome little apartment that used to be a brothel above a pub!!!!! We met up with them at a wine bar, where we proceeded to drink about 4 bottles of wine over several hours. Then we hit up a pub for a nightcap, and then my sister and I stumbled around for about an hour trying to find our way back to our apartment.

when you're high as fuck, these flowers look AMAZING!
when you’re high as fuck, these flowers look AMAZING!

When we finally found our way back, I finally ate a pot cookie (I didn’t want to eat any in Ireland, because I was afraid I’d be groggy for my photo shoots)…and guess what?? I conked the fuck OUT! I slept hard…and truthfully could have slept for about a week, but I didn’t want to waste my time in London, so I dragged my drugged, high, groggy ass out of bed and got ready anyway for a day of sightseeing. And that’s how it pretty much went all week — I slept great, but was still high in the morning, and consequently spent much of my time wandering around England in a London Fog. Because I was high so much, I took a lot of really boring macro photos of stuff like textured walls, flowers, and lamp posts. D’oh!!!

Stonehenge!!!
Stonehenge!!!

So we did all the usual touristy stuff like go to the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, etc…and then one day we took an awesome bus trip out to Stonehenge. Stonehenge!!!! LOL!!!! The site itself was cool, but even better was the bickering fights going on between the other American bus passengers –it was too fucking cold out there to look at the monument too long, anyway…although some artsy-fartsy halfwit was sitting out there with an easel, stippling away at a rendering of the stones.

D'oh!!
D’oh!!

Now you’re probably wondering about the food — is it as gross as they say?? Well, sort of. I had a steak and kidney pie one night that was pretty “offal….” but then another day I had a weirdly delicious sort of wrap consisting of French fries, lettuce and hummus in a giant tortilla. We kept seeing these signs at all the Subway sandwich shops, for a chicken Tandoori flatbread…but alas, they weren’t in stock yet, so we couldn’t try this strange delicacy. The best meal we had all week was when Caleb and his hubby had us over for dinner, and made a fantastic sort of traditional English dinner with roasted chicken and potatoes and kale and stuff, with a fabulous Victoria sponge cake with clotted cream for desert (both guys are accomplished chefs). Again, we drank a ton of wine and then closed down the local pub afterward.

hello!
hello!

Well, after all that it was time to head back to our apartment, as we had to check out the following morning at 11am. I woke up so fucking high it was ridiculous — I had eaten the last of my pot cookies a couple days before, so had eaten some of this brownie my friend had given me, but hadn’t been sure of the dosage. Holy mother of Dog! That fucking thing was strong!!!! I woke up covered in a cold sweat, trembling and clammy and nauseous and NOT feeling like packing up and heading out into the cold. My sis tried to get us a late checkout, but it was a no-go…so somehow I managed to sack up, pull it all together, stuff my shit in my suitcase and slap on a little makeup, and we headed out into the rain.

We were flying back out of Dublin, so had to do the

LOL haha etc!
LOL haha etc!

whole train/ferry thing in reverse…but our train didn’t leave til 7pm, so we basically had all day to walk around London in the rain. We checked our bags in at the station, and then slogged around town all day. My sister’s husband is obsessed with collecting silver bullion, so we went over to the Silver Vaults to buy him something…then we had some Indian food for lunch…and then killed some time in a bookstore, so I could buy something to read on the flight home. I ended up getting “50 Shades of Grey,” just to see what all the fuss is about……OMG!!! BARF! That book is awful dreck!!!

 

 

in front of a cathedral. The museums are free…but you have to PAY to go in the cathedrals. WTF!!!!

Finally we just headed over to the train station, to begin the long journey home. Our train was supposed to leave London’s Euston Station around 7pm, but when we looked at the “Departures” board, there was no mention of what platform it was arriving at. Odd! We noticed there was a crowd of hundreds of people in the station, all staring up at the Departures board…and then we figured out the shocking truth: over there, they don’t announce the platform number until the train actually pulls into the station…and then hundreds of people all RUN toward the platform, elbowing each other out of the way in a mad rush to get on the train before it’s full! WTF!!!! Where was this famous, orderly British reserve I’d heard so much about?!?!?!? Nowhere to be seen!! These people were animals!!!

So our train pulled up, we ran like the devil’s boner was poking against our buttholes, and we STILL didn’t get a fucking seat on the train!!! This despite the fact that my sister had booked our tickets in advance, and we had reserved seats! The guy on the platform kept yelling at the crowd to ONLY GET ON THE TRAIN IF YOU HAVE A RESERVED SEAT…but of course, no one listened whatsoever, and the entire fucking train car was jam-packed…so much so, that we had to stand by the bathroom the entire way, wedged in among several other travelers. It was more like Mumbai than London, I tell you! WEIRD!

booze and tabloids
booze and tabloids

But one thing I’ll say for the British, they know how to make the best of a shitty situation — by drinking!!! I guess it was the start of a 3-day weekend, so everyone was in a good mood, and our fellow travelers wedged in by the bathroom all cracked open bottles of wine and canned cocktails from the train station shop, and proceeded to merrily booze the entire way to Wales. My sister and I had bought some canned pink gin & tonics, which we enjoyed while reading more awful British tabloids, and the time passed fairly pleasantly.

The Queen was having a garden party right at this same time, on the other side of the fence. I wasn't invited :(
The Queen was having a garden party right at this same time, on the other side of the fence. I wasn’t invited 🙁

We got to Holyhead ferry station around midnight, and then had to wait in the ferry terminal until 2am, at which time we made sure to be among the first to board, so that we could find a comfy bench to sleep on before they were all taken. WRONG!!! Despite the fact that we were among the first walk-on passengers to board, we had failed to take into account the number of CAR passengers who had already boarded…and they had hogged every single motherfucking bench on the damn boat!!! So we just sat at a table and drank wine the whole time. I read some more 50 Shades of Grey, and was generally miserable the entire 3 hours, until we finally got to Dublin and caught a taxi to the airport.

Irish monastery graveyard!
Irish monastery graveyard!

Because of all the hold-ups, we barely made our flight — but once we got on the plane, it was ON. I ate half of my remaining pot brownie…and zonked the fuck out!!!!! I don’t normally sleep well on planes, but this was fantastic!! I HIGHLY recommend edibles on a long flight — it’s the SHIT! I slept for a few hours, then woke up to find a hot tray of food in front of me, which I ate in the best high-as-a-kite stoner fashion. Then I fell back asleep, and woke up a couple hours later to find a second meal in front of me! I snarfed that down, then fell back asleep again. It was a stoner’s dream!!!

Mmmmm...Wine Gums!
Mmmmm…Wine Gums!

We had a layover in Newark, so we had a couple Bloody Marys and then I ate the rest of my pot brownie, and again passed out SOLID the entire way to L.A. I even slept on the short flight from L.A. to Vegas! It was fantastic…..except for that fact that because I did not move my legs at all the entire trip, they got hideously swollen, and I had awful cankles going on for a few days afterward :-/ D’oh!!!

So anyhoo, now I was back in Vegas, and I was kinda depressed…as one is after a trip. Thankfully, work picked up all of a sudden, and I was so insanely busy that I didn’t have much time to think about how depressed I was. I did a few photo shoots, and a fundraiser  party for a clean-water awareness charity (did you know that in order to sanitize dirty water, all you have to do is place a plastic bottle full in the sun for 12 hours, and the sunlight will kill 98% of the bacteria in it??! This charity goes around Africa teaching villagers this fabulous fact) and some movie extra work, and then I got booked to work the jewelry convention.

baking in the desert upon my return. Ahhhhhh!  pic by Shutterbug-Studio
baking in the desert upon my return. Ahhhhhh!
pic by Shutterbug-Studio

The jewelry convention was pretty boring — I had to stand in the same spot for 8 hours a day, for 3 days, handing out magazines. But the attendees were an interesting lot, and it was good people watching. There are a lot of Orthodox Hasidic Jews in the jewelry biz, so you saw them running around in their hats and forelocks and whatnot. The show ran Friday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday, but because Saturday is the Jewish holy day, they all took that off and stored their jewels in a specially designated onsite “Sabbath Vault.” Then I guess they spent the entire day in their hotel rooms, praying or whatever it is they do all day on Shabbos. I can’t imagine anything weirder than sitting around a Vegas hotel room, unable to even flip a light switch, for an entire day. Religion!!!! Is there anything fucking nuttier???!!!

in the desert. Pic by Chuck Berg
in the desert. Pic by Chuck Berg

So one evening after my jewelry shift, I went out to the desert near Pahrump with a group of photography hobbyists and did a group shoot, which was great. Then the next day, I did a photo shoot in some guy’s room up at the Suncoast hotel…which was supposed to be a “sensual couples shoot.” You know, artsy photos of a couple caressing each other and whatnot — “NO SEX,” the Model Mayhem ad assured! But sex or no, I didn’t realize how fucking awkward it is to fondle and caress a total stranger, whilst simultaneously shrinking your ass and vag away from contact with his dangling penis. Exhausting!! But it brought up an interesting thought: if you ever wanted to hire a prostitute, it seems like all you’d have to do is have a 3rd party in the room taking photos…that way you’d never be busted by vice, as you could say it was all an “artistic sensual couples shoot,” haha. I mean, seriously! Where do you draw the line?!?

In the desert. Pic by Harry
In the desert. Pic by Harry

So then after all that, I got booked as a movie extra on this action movie that’s filming here in town. I despise extra work, since it’s all sitting around waiting for 12 hours while surrounded by wannabe actors and bozos…but I figured since I had nothing else booked, it was easy work and why not. We were filming a Christmas scene, so had to wear sweaters and scarves and all whatnot, even though it was 105 degrees out…OUCH! Basically, I sat around set all day from 2pm until 5:30am (!!!!!!!), and only filmed about 10 minutes or less of actual footage the entire time. I mean, REALLY??! No wonder Hollywood movies are all such grossly bloated affairs!! It takes forever to shoot one fucking scene, because they have to keep stopping every fucking few hours for meal breaks and whatnot. SO LAME! How about you wait til the fuckin’ scene is shot, then eat?? I mean, I understand the purpose of the union and all….but really. There has to be a better way!

More desert. Pic by Fit Image Photography
More desert. Pic by Fit Image Photography

To make matters worse, the star of the movie was some Australian or British manly-man-type actor I didn’t really know of, so it wasn’t even fun to watch. I spent most of the night laying around the poker room at Caesars Palace, waiting to be called out for my “scene,” during which I walked back and forth in the hotel lobby, so far in the fucking background that I don’t know why they didn’t just use a blow-up doll and save us all a lot of effort!!!!

The worst part, however, was that I had to be at the Cosmopolitan by 7am for another gig. So basically, I worked the movie all night, until 5:30am…then went home, changed, stopped by Starbucks, and headed over to the next gig. It was really easy — a scavenger hunt, not much brainpower required — but it was still exhausting. I finished up at 11am, and went straight home to sleep all day after that.

So, now I’m back and it’s really time for me to concentrate on curing this fucking insomnia. My next plan is to try neurofeedback — specifically, brain training. It costs around $3,000…but I am desperate!!! Supposedly they play all these weird tones and feedback into your skull, which “re-balances” your fucked up imbalanced brainwaves, and sets everything back to normal. My friend J.R. did it, and swears it helped him…so I’m going to look into it. The only bummer is, while undergoing the treatment you’re not supposed to drink alcohol or use drugs!!! Treatment takes 10 days, and then you’re supposed to refrain from drinking another 3 weeks!!!! YIKES!!! I’m not sure I can handle it.

This nutty German singer sent me a care package! Fantastic!!
This nutty German singer sent me a care package! Fantastic!!

One last thing I want to try is a sensory-deprivation flotation tank — basically, you close yourself up into a sort of dark coffin full of saltwater, and bob there in total silence and darkness for an hour. It’s supposed to be a very transformative, mind-blowing kind of process that simulates being in the womb or whatever…and I found a place here in Vegas that has a tank, so I think I’m gonna try it. It’s $65 for one hour, in a tank over in some random people’s house on the east side…talk about a freaky adventure!! I can’t wait to write about it!

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NASCAR, CHAMPS, the Elusive Bulldog Photo and Table Tits

don't mind if I do!Now that I’m debt-free, AND spring is in the air…IT’S ON!!!! I love this time of year for three reasons:

  1. It stays light longer (important for someone who is prone to melancholia, yet doesn’t get up til noon so frequently misses out on all-important Vitamin D)
  2. It’s finally warm enough so that my feet and hands aren’t ice bricks 24 hours a day, and I can actually run around in less than a fucking snowsuit.
  3. It’s FLIP FLOP SEASON!! I *hate* wearing sox and shoes — I like being able to wiggle my toes. Wearing closed-toe shoes is the bane of my fucking existence.

Also, I can finally get back to the business of doing nude photo shoots in the desert. I like shooting in hotel rooms fine, but the desert is really where it’s at. Photographers — call me! 

nude sunbathing on Lake MeadMy excitement of late is such that I jumped the gun a little bit — at the first sign of sunshine a couple weeks ago, my friend invited me to go out on Lake Mead in his speedboat for an overnight campout. It seemed warm enough at the time, so I threw a few things in a bag and we cruised waaaaay out on the lake, through the Narrows and down into Arizona, toward the Grand Canyon. We found a beautiful little sandy cove and beached the boat, and then my friend rigged up a sort of shade canopy over the open part of the boat where I planned to sleep (he does have a cabin with a double bed, but I’m such a shitty sleeper, and need to smoke weed throughout the night to stay asleep, that I didn’t want to bother him). Then we made a fire on the beach, had dinner, sat around and bullshitted awhile, and then climbed back aboard the boat to watch a movie on his laptop.

About halfway through the movie, though, the wind really kicked up — the shade canopy/tarp started flapping so loudly we couldn’t hear the movie anymore, so we turned it off and went to bed. But then the wind got so bad, the whole damn canopy blew off! So my friend battened everything down and made me go down in the hold with him to sleep. I was already pretty high by then, so I crawled into bed without much protest. The waves and wind were really rocking the boat around, and I was juuuust barely drifting off to sleep at last when I guess the wind got bad enough that my friend got up, started the boat, and headed off to find a safer berth. In my high, half-lucid state I was sort of half-asleep, half-worrying about what I would do if we hit a rock in the dark and I had to swim to shore in the frigid water. What can I say, I’m a worrier. It made for a VERY uneasy night.

After awhile, he ended up docking at Temple Bar in Arizona, and crawled back into bed. To his credit, he did not molest me — but I still slept miserably due to the fact that I couldn’t get high. Halfway through the night I did get up to piss over the side of the dock (what can I say, I’m a real lady) and take a quick hit, and I guess I did finally end up sleeping for an hour or two. I HATE INSOMNIA! I couldn’t WAIT for morning, so we could cruise back to shore and I could drive home to sleep all day.

arrBut in the morning, everything was so beautiful and sunny that I changed my tune. We tooled back over to the Las Vegas Boat Harbor by Boulder City and had breakfast in the awesome nautical-themed diner there, and then cruised back out onto the lake for a relaxing day of nude sunbathing. Naked in the sun at long last!!!! It seemed like that miserable fuckin’ winter would never end. It was heavenly!!

After that I had to get back to town, though, because I had a busy week ahead of me. There were a couple of big conventions going on, and I was booked solid. The first day, I worked the MAGIC show. Now, that might sound like fun, but I’m here to tell you — MAGIC has nothing to do with magic; it’s an acronym that stands for something to do with the garment/fashion industry, and I hate that fucking show. It’s all cheapass fashionistas and wannabes from New York, and I don’t normally work it because the rates are TERRIBLE. You see ads on craigslist like: “Models needed, 5’10” and above, C-cup, must be fluent in Russian, Chinese and German and must be able to write orders while standing on your head with a bottle of Krug up your ass. $75/day.” R U Serious??

Thankfully, someone contacted me through this blog to offer me a gig based on my sparkling wit and personality — for a legit pay rate! So I worked with him selling these weird little elastic band-type things you slip over a baby’s socks, to keep its socks from falling/being pulled off (I’d mention the product by name, but I’m sure those good people don’t want their product associated with a wanton hussy like me). It wasn’t the most glamorous product to hawk, but the day went pleasantly enough as the guy himself was very personable and we had a good time chatting.

sunshinejoy.comAlas, I could only do one day of that show since I had already been booked for another, lesser-paying gig at a pot tradeshow that was going on right next door. The CHAMPS Expo is officially a pipe show, but it basically caters to pot heads with all kinds of pot-related paraphernalia ranging from detox kits to salvia to 3-D tapestries — which I was hawking for a fabulous company called SunshineJoy.com. These tapestries are OFF THE CHAIN! They make all these different prints and designs, and then you put on 3-D glasses and they come alive. I’m buying a bunch of them for Burning Man — they are AWESOME! 🙂

pyptek.com

It was really interesting walking around that expo, though. First, I scored this sweet pink titanium-encased pipe off a magician friend who was working at the Pyptek.com booth. Awesome! Then I just kinda ambled around checking shit out. Some of the products on display were NUTS! One booth was showcasing a product called something like At CHAMPSMonkey Bizzness, which is basically a little flask you fill with a friend’s piss (or synthetic piss), then stash in your pants so it stays warm. A little hose comes out the end so that you can realistically piss into a cup for a drug test, even if it’s one of those ones where you’re being observed — and now you pass the drug test! What was interesting to me was that it was marketed as a “novelty urine kit.” HA!!!!!!! Novelty, my ass!!! I love the bogus shit people say to sell OBVIOUSLY drug-related, law-breaking products. Funny! But hey, it beats the way I passed a drug test for Hooters one time — I had a girlfriend piss into a Ziploc baggie for me, which started leaking halfway thru my drug test appointment, so I got her piss all over my chest (I had the baggie stashed in my bra). Either way, I passed the test — but then quit that loser-ass job after a few weeks anyway (I mean, Hooters….come on!)

pic by Tim WiseThe other thing I noticed at the pot show was the proliferation of NASTY-ASS skankbag “models” roaming around in booty shorts and furry boots, promoting various products. Aren’t there any good-looking pot heads?? Jeez! These bitches was beat the fuck up, for the most part. But it gave me an idea — I already made a showgirl costume once with red feathers and sequins and stuff; why not make another one in GREEN, with giant pot leaves instead of feathers for the headdress?? Then I can rent myself out for pot shows and events, and even pose for pics down on Fremont Street and whatnot! Why the fuck not??? I’m on it!

Right after my last shift at the pot show, my neighbor came and picked me up and took me over to the airport, and I flew out to sunny Florida to meet a friend of mine for the Daytona 500 NASCAR race! This friend of mine is obsessed with NASCAR, so much so that he even bought a hi-rise luxury condo on the beach down there, so he has a place to stay for the races every year. It was fabulous!!!!

the crashHe had a bunch of other friends down there with him, and we all spent Saturday and Sunday hanging out at the races, lounging in this VIP hospitality tent and boozing up a storm together. I was the only chick in the group, so it was like the Redneck Rat Pack — with me as Shirley MacLaine, haha. We had a pretty good time — especially when, on Saturday afternoon, there was a terrible crash on the track and this one car came crashing into the stands right below where we were sitting!!! AMAZING!!!!!!!

Of course, you know those race fans all secretly hope and pray for something like this to happen — but dumbass me made the mistake of saying as much out loud to some rubbernecking redneck beside me, and he turned and looked at me like I was Jane Fonda mixed with Barack Hussein Obama!!! So I kept my mouth shut after that, or else stopped it up with booze.

hot pass!Then on Sunday we went back to the track bright and early, and my friend gave me a VIP tour allllll around the grounds on this golf cart he uses out there. It was fabulous! We had what they call “hot” passes, which allow all access to the pits and whatnot — so we went and ogled Danica Patrick’s car and everything with all the other looky-Lous. But far more interesting to me was when we drove around through the camping area, where all the fans park their RVs for the week. We went down the row where the drivers themselves park their million-dollar RVs, and WOW! It was fantastic! It was almost like Burning Man in a way — many camps had their own little bars set up, with wacky decorations and stuff. Who knew??? (For more photos from Daytona, plus witty commentary, check out my Facebook album.)

my friend's condo complexAfter the race weekend was over, everyone went home except my friend and I. We stayed on a few more days just relaxing on the beach, drinking and getting high, basically indulging in the Jimmy Buffett lifestyle. I can totally see the appeal of Florida now — that place is fantastic!!! I could have stayed there at least a month — there were so many things I wanted to see, but didn’t have the time. There’s supposedly an amazing nude beach nearby that I didn’t get to, and I also heard about a fabulous tiki bar in Daytona proper, as well as a super-skanky strip club that I want to go back and check out sometime. Fortunately, my friend goes down there all the time, and his lavishly appointed condo has four bedrooms, a full bar and all the amenities you could hope for….so hopefully, I’ll be back soon!!

I flew back into Vegas just in time to head to work, and what a shocker that was — coming from balmy, humid Florida and then going into a dry, dark, smoky nightclub. UGH!!! Still, it’s all worth it — gotta make money to sock away in my adventure fund for the next trip. Speaking of which, my next big adventure will be a whirlwind tour of the British Isles in mid-May — this fabulous photographer invited me over to do a photo shoot, so I’m bringing my sister with me and we’re hitting up Ireland, Scotland and England over the course of 10 days. I’m super stoked — I’ve always wanted to go over there, and besides…this photographer is truly exceptional!!! Check out his work here: dougrossart.com. It will BLOW YOUR MIND!!

But meanwhile, I’m languishing in Vegas. You might wonder how I spent my Valentine’s Day, incidentally — well, I’ll tell you. An extremely kooky math-genius/professional gambler friend of mine took me to dinner in exchange for my helping him clean out his storage unit full of crap, that has been collecting dust for the last 16 years! I had an ulterior motive in helping him, of course — somewhere in there, he claims, is a photo of my ex-boss (from the shitty-ass photo company where I used to work)’s wife fucking a bulldog!!! He’s “not sure” which box this photo is in, but I vowed to help him go thru every single one until we find it, by golly!!!

floridaUnfortunately, it was kind of an emotional expedition for my friend, since a lot of the stuff in his storage unit used to belong to his dearly departed mother, a world-famous golfer and ballerina, whose untimely passing left my friend really emotionally bereft. Everytime we found something that used to belong to her, he got misty-eyed — it was heartbreaking. Astonishingly, he said I can have all her old costumes (!!!) — but so far the only thing we unearthed was this awesomely funky old turban with a fabulous big jewel on the front, which I took home and washed right away. Score!! I’m keeping her memory alive!

Anyhoo, we only got through about 1/10th of his stuff before he was too emotionally exhausted, and called it a day. The bulldog photo remains elusive, but I did find photos of another bitch ex-coworker topless, and of another ex-coworker posing provocatively in lingerie. HA!!!!!!! Anyhoo, we’re going back next week for more, and I can’t wait! My crow’s eye already spied something red and sparkly and feathery in the very back corner which I can’t wait to get my hands on!!

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to find fun stuff to do around Vegas, but times have been kinda dry lately. One night, a girlfriend called to invite me to dinner with a well-known local nightclub impresario and a bunch of other bigwigs at the swanky new Nobu restaurant at Caesars Palace, so I got all dressed up and headed down there to see what was up. Apparently, she knew these people from having met them at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch (!!!!)…but when I got there, it was kind of humiliating — the bigwigs were all having dinner in a private room, so me and my girlfriend and these other three hags she’d invited were left out in the cold in the lounge area. Not to worry — we immediately racked up a huge tab on their dime, ordering sushi and cocktails and what-all else we could think of, but the conversation was pretty lame since the other chicks were all professional trade show models, and all they talked about was work. I can’t think of anything worse than doing trade shows for a living — unless it’s having dinner with someone who does trade shows for a living!!!!!!

pic by John Erik SetsaasBut the worst part was when the bigwigs finished dinner, and came out to say hello. Turns out they had a couple of A-list bimbos with them, who had dined at the main table — so I guess we were essentially the B-listers. D’OH!!!!! Those two were a real piece of work, though — they made the trade show models at my table look like Nobel Laureates, let me tell you. Where the fuck do guys find these women?! And what the fuck do they get out of being around them?? After two seconds listening to their drunken blather, my eardrums were bleeding, my brain was atrophied and my soul had withered up worse than Celine Dion’s uterus! JESU!!!!! Get me out of here!!!

Then another night, I faced a real quandary: I had scored free dinner at this new Gordon Ramsay burger joint and tickets to Cee Lo Green’s new show at Planet Hollywood, which I was pretty excited about — UNTIL my fabulous friend Fabian showed up. You might remember Fabian as the guy who wore the white unicorn suit on Halloween, whose back I rode into that shitty Elvis contest at the El Cortez. He’s basically one of the most fabulous, fun, interesting people I have ever met, but he’s been down in South America for the past several months, so I haven’t had the chance to hang out with him. Well, he’s back!!!!

aerobics time!He showed up at my house to store a few things in my garage, and while he was over he casually asked what I was doing that night. I thought I had a pretty good answer with Cee Lo…until he casually replied: “Oh, bummer…we’re going to this German techno rave out at a shack in the desert in Wonder Valley…I was hoping you could come!” Apparently, these crazy Germans go out there every spring and throw this great rave, near some kind of lean-to they stay in, and it sounds fabulous! ARRRRRGH! Why can’t there be two of me?

from when I ate shrooms the other week and went to Penn & TellerTo make matters worse, Cee Lo’s show was the worst tripe imaginable! I was all fired up expecting it to be unabashedly fabulous — the show is called Loberace, and it’s made to look like an over-the-top-fabulous spectacle the likes of which have not been seen in Vegas since that fuckin’ tiger bit Roy. But I’m here to tell you — it sucked!!! The set design was sorely lacking, the dancers were trite and aggressively slutty, and Cee Lo himself looked and sounded like nothing so much as a giant, BeDazzled Mr. Hanky (the Christmas turd from South Park). Ooooooooooo-ooooooooooooooooh, I got some news for you: a golden bathrobe does not make you Liberace, Cee Lo!! You have some major work to do to get that mess up to par. It was horribly cruise-ship. I can’t believe I turned down a German techno rave in a lean-to for that!!!!

Not to worry, though — Fabian invited me out there tomorrow, for a dinner party celebrating the Germans’ last day in the desert lean-to. So I have to wrap this up and get to bed, cuz Wonder Valley here I come!!! I’m not sure what awaits me…but hopefully it is FABULOUS!!! I had to blow off a photo shoot for this, but it’s all good because the other day I won $500 from my credit union, for doing this contest on Twitter they were running…so I guess that buys me one or two days off, huh?

Table TitP.S. Fabian also gave me this amazing silicone Table Tit! I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of something… he makes them as gifts for friends, so hopefully I can get a few more, and make something really freaky!!!

P.P.S. Here’s a link to some exceptionally artsy B&W nudes I did back in October — these really came out great! http://jamesweberstudio.com/blog/?p=1798 

P.P.P.S. Here’s a short teaser clip of that fashion roundtable TV show I was in the other week. Check it out!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Debt-Free and Ready For Adventures!!!!!!!!!

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!

SaRAWSadly, 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!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

Sucking Adventures From the Teat of Life

Early January is always the shittiest time of the year for me, because of one thing:

ces

 

 

 

 

 

(That’s supposed to be misery, fatigue and boredom emanating from the letters.)

That’s right, the Consumer Electronics Show is the biggest trade show of them all, and every freelancer with a vagina (and many without) within a 100-mile radius is sucked into its gaping fluorescent-lit maul, in one capacity or another –usually to shill for some shitty product or another by luring unsuspecting geeks into booths, suites and exhibits to look at and lust after the latest lamentable planned-obsolescent gadgetry.

pic by Garrett WinslowIt’s a HUGE production, staged at great cost to the exhibitors, and is traditionally a great boon to our local economy. Not only does Vegas get to gouge the 100,000+ attendees to the tune of $12 beers, $400 hotel rooms and $50 long-haul cab rides all week long…but us Vegas gash also gets a piece of the pie. Since CES is by and large a sausagefest, most companies hire T&A to stand around their booths, hold their signage at the airport, and even to come mingle at their after-hours receptions. It’s a great time to have a vagina…I guess.

Now if there are two things I hate in this world, they are 1.) getting up early and 2.) businesswear — and alas, CES demands both. In addition, there’s the insane traffic, the parking nightmares, and the extreme fatigue since I usually have two or more jobs going at once during that week. In other words… FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS!

Since it’s only a four-day show, I usually just suck it up and deal with it…although the dread of CES week starts creeping into my life shortly after Christmas. I hate it that much.  Yet, as a full-time freelancer, I feel unable to turn  it down, since it’s usually a pretty good chunk of change.

YAWN!Speaking of which: people are always asking me, as a booth hostess, how much money I make. Answer: not enough! It seems like a really easy gig: stand around looking cute all day. But that’s not all there is to it, lemme tell ya!! First off, looking cute at 8am is a real chore, and maintaining cuteness under the harsh glare of fluorescent lighting in a freezing-cold expo hall for 9 hours is even harder! Then there’s the fact that standing in one place doing nothing is perhaps the hardest thing  on Earth to do without one’s brain breaking. Some clients give you busy work, like, “Hand out these light-up dice!” which at least gives you something to focus on, and takes your eyes off the clock. But I’ve had other gigs where I literally did nothing but hold a sign all day, while trying to look cute and alert….and that is torture! Then, at the same time, many clients expect you to memorize their whole sales spiel and to really care if Joe Laptop buys 10,000 units of their 2013 Widget, and make you feel guilty if they’re not making their sales goals for the show. Because I am a conscientious person, this last one gets me every time. I can’t tell you how many sad-sack Willy Lomans I’ve worked for — and bled for, in my heart.

pic by Paul Whiteman for Cashman ProBack to how much I make: I’m going to name numbers here, because people are always asking this — clients and fellow models alike. Typical booth model pay varies, but is usually either a day rate of between $150-$400, or an hourly rate from as $15-$40 (I’m sure there are higher and lower extremes, but these are the averages). If you hire a model thru an agency, expect to pay around $400 a day — of which the model gets anywhere from half to 3/4. I did one show in October that they billed the client $350/day, of which I got $245.

If you don’t want to mess with an agency, you can just book some random chippy off craigslist…and that’s usually the $150/day or $15/hour end of the spectrum. For your savings, you risk having a crackhead show up…or worse, having no one show up at all. At least with an agency, they can send a replacement!

Here is my personal CES history:

  • 2000: Before I moved to Vegas, I worked as a secretary for IBM in California, and they brought me out to Vegas one year as the receptionist for their booth. I think I used to earn $13/hour, plus they paid my hotel, airfare, meals and expenses. Since I was not hired specifically for the show, this doesn’t really count…but it’s interesting to note the price point.
  • 2005: client was Sirius Satellite Radio. I was booked thru an agency, and made $17/hour to stand in the lobby of the Bellagio and hold a sign all….day….long (to point clients in the right direction of Sirius’s meeting rooms).
  • 2006: client was Imation. I was booked thru an agency, and made somewhere around $250/day…for the same basic sign-holding shtick, only this time, I got to escort clients up to the meeting rooms instead of just stand there all day. I remember it being like a 12-hour day with very few breaks, though — that’s another thing; as a 1099 employee, I guess labor laws don’t apply, so you don’t always get a 15 every 4 hours nor an hour lunch every 8 hours. And that can be a HUGE deal when wearing high heels on a marble floor all day!
  • 2007: client was Netgear. This was a great gig, thru an agency — I made about $240/day, got to SIT at a reception desk, wearing a cozy Netgear sweater, handing out light-up Netgear dice. CAKE! I <3 Netgear to this day!
  • 2008: client was Nokia. Another great gig, thru an agency, but I found it on craigslist. We made $40/hour, plus $25 per diem, for 10-hour days which consisted of our wearing Nokia-branded track suits and hanging around out in front of the Convention Center urging passers-by to check out the new Nokia phones. It was cold, but they provided long underwear and free Nike tennies 🙂 I <3 Nokia!
  • 2009: I got wise, and bailed on CES to work the Adult Expo instead. I worked for Audigier Condoms, which paid me somewhere around $250/day to lay on a bed, in a bikini, and tell people about the condoms “if you want to.” Mostly, I just posed for at the porn expophotos. BEST. GIG. EVER!
  • 2010: Stayed at the Adult Expo to work for AVN magazine — I don’t remember exactly, but somewhere around $30/hour to hand out copies of their mag to showgoers. Easy, but boring…and standing in heels all day 🙁
  • 2011 & 2012: They moved the Adult Expo to the following week, so I was back at CES again. Both years I worked for an unnamed super-high-end audio designer for $200/day, standing in the doorway to their suite at the Venetian, urging passing audiophiles to “come in and hear some really great tube audio.”

So you can see, pay kinda fluctuates depending on the gig you score, and doesn’t seem to follow any inflationary trends. Variables such as amount of clothing seem to matter little ($40/hour to wear a Nokia tracksuit vs. $25 to wear a bikini), nor does level of comfort ($30/hour to sit on my fat ass in a Netgear sweater vs. $17 to stand around the Bellagio lobby all…day…long).

So, now you know how much booth models make. Are they obscenely overpaid? Not in my experience — it’s legitimately mentally draining work!

Anyway, as mentioned, my client this year was a group of really nice high-end audio salespeople, headed up by the inventor of their product line — a tall, gaunt, charmingly eccentric, Tolkien-esque Englishman with abominable personal habits and a fabulous disregard for the fawning of his geeky fan base. Audio nerds would come by to pay their respects, and he would sort of absentmindedly stare off into the distance while offering a half-hearted handshake and a distracted “Yes, yes, very good.” He was fabulous! One of those super-intelligent Asperger’s types. (I took this into account when he slapped my ass one day, and told me that I have “quite a good chunk of meat” on me. Those krayyyyyyzy eccentric Englishmen!)

pic by Michael MazeBut even more interesting were the high-end audio nerds who flocked to see him. Apparently high-end audio is still a really big thing, though I guess not so much as back in the day — nowadays we’re happy with our shitty mp3s, and have little need for extravagant hi-fi systems and whatnot. But there is still a segment of the population who buy $60,000 speakers, and set them a certain distance away from the walls, etc., for optimal sound. Interestingly, in my experience most of these audiophiles were Swedish and/or Jewish, and nearly ALL of them are male — so much so that there’s even a term in audiophile circles called “WAF:” Wife Acceptance Factor. As in, “These new speakers have a pretty good WAF, since they’re under $10k, have a sleek modern finish and don’t need to be set in the middle of the living room for good sound quality.” (Wives, you see, take issue with shit like unsightly $60,000 speakers sitting out in the middle of the room.)

Working the show as a sort of honeypot used to lure in passersby, I had to wonder what my own WAF was. Fairly high, probably, since this client had me dress fairly conservatively in what’s known as “business sexy,” and since I have no cleavage to display, anyway. Hmmmm, that gives me an idea — maybe I should market myself as a high-WAF booth model, an appeal to all the conservative, pussy-whipped schmucks out there in corporateland!

pic by Deep ExposureANYWAY, I basically spent four days of my life standing in a hallway at the Venetian, talking to audiophiles for 9 hours a day. As if that weren’t draining enough, the nightclub where I’ve been working was also open extra hours to accommodate all the corporate parties being thrown, so I had to put in extra shifts there, too. There were two nights that I had to dance til 2 or 3 am, then rush home, pic by Deep Exposureget to bed, and be up by 7am to work the show. EXHAUSTING! I had a feeling I’d get sick from all this rushing around, so I made sure to eat a bunch of vitamins and stuff…but my best-laid plans were put to waste by the visit of an old photographer friend of mine from California, who came out for CES but wanted to go out to the desert for some nude shots before the convention started. So the Friday/ Saturday before, I froze my ass off running around naked on the dry lake bed and out by Valley of Fire with four other models. It was good times, but way to cold for those kinds of shenanigans!! Still, that photographer is SUCH a nice man, and such a good friend, that I couldn’t say no. Plus, he took us to dinner at Fogo de Chao to make up for it 🙂 What a great guy! Then, too, my sister was in town for CES, so I spent a couple of nights hanging out with her, boozing and carrying on, which I really oughtn’t to have done if I wanted to be rested :-/ Oh, well!

As a result of all this carrying on, by the end of CES week I was E.X.H.A.U.S.T.E.D! The next day, I had to get up early AGAIN, for this weird medical conference I had signed up for. I did this once before, last summer — they basically pay you to lay on an exam table, while doctors practice their ultra-sound techniques on your various body parts. Last time I did it, they were just looking at my piriformis (ass muscle) or something, so I was able to lay face down, pass out and fall asleep on the job. But this time, since I was the only model who didn’t mind getting nekkid, they did my piriformis, my knee AND my hip flexor — so that not only was I naked from the waist down, but I had to keep switching position and couldn’t really fall asleep! I was SO exhausted that I did sort of doze off a few times with my mouth open, awakening now and then to the sight of a crowd of doctors around me poking at my goo-covered groin. Surreal!

Even better, the main doctor who does all the teaching (and most of the ultra-sounding) at this institute is totally hot, and when he saw me he said something like “So, we didn’t scare you off last time?” I said, “No, it was good for me…was it good for you? I felt like I needed a cigarette last time!” We both had a chuckle, until his wifey (who, unbeknownst to me, was the receptionist who hired me) gave him a look. He later told me she busted his chops over it, and now I’m totally embarrassed…especially since she’s the one who does the hiring! Whoooooooooooooops! There goes my WAF!

After the doctors had finished their training, I went home and passed out HARD for about 3 hours, then went in and did my last shift of the week at the nightclub. Now that my hell week was over, I thought I was free to FINALLY sleep in.

red rock loopWRONG! By now, my crazy Arkansas girlfriends were in town for the big gun show, and one of them is training for a marathon, and she somehow roped me into going for a 15-mile run with her up in Red Rock Canyon the next day!!! WTF!!!! Why I said yes, I’ll never know — I haven’t run even ONE MILE in the last couple of months, let alone 15, but I figured the adrenaline would kick in, plus the fresh air, and I’d pull it off. How wrong I was!

First off, I couldn’t drag my ass out of bed in time to get an early start, so we headed out around 2:30pm — and the temperature was already down in the 40s! As the sun got lower, it got colder and colder up there (Red Rock is at a higher elevation than Vegas), until finally by the time the sun dipped below the mountains, it must have only been in the low 30s. BRRR!

If you’re interested in running Red Rock, here’s the lowdown: the scenic drive loop is about 13 miles long — a perfect half-marathon. But the entrance and the exit are about 2 miles apart, which makes it a 15-mile trek, total. We parked at the exit, then ran to the entrance (thus saving the entry fee, haha). 2 miles down and I was already BEAT — at this point I considered turning around and running back to my truck, where I had a pillow, blanket and Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton biography waiting for me, so I could read in peace and comfort while my girlfriend ran her fool ass off.

But, my innate stubbornness kicked in and I decided that I could DO this, so I kept running. The first 4.5 miles of the loop are uphill, which REALLY made me reconsider my plan a time or two, but somehow I made it to the 5 mile marker (plus the two at the beginning) and kept on going. By now, my girlfriend was WAY ahead of me, and I couldn’t even see her any more, so I was afraid she’d get stuck waiting for me forever, which added another layer of stress. The downhill was a lot easier, but by this time I was already so tired that I thought of giving up and hitching a ride many times (many cars passed on their way around the scenic loop, so I had ample opportunity to puss out). But around Mile 10, it was getting so freaking cold, and I was soooo exhausted, that I just couldn’t go on. I tried walking, but that was too cold and took too long, so thank goodness some kind old ladies in a minivan happened by and gave me a ride to the end. I got to my truck just in time to get the heater going before my girlfriend showed up, ruddy-cheeked and frostbitten but in good spirits, the crazy bitch. She cranked out 15 miles like it was nothing!!! Meanwhile, the 12 I did almost killed me. Gah — guess all that go-go “dancing” I’ve been doing at the club isn’t really a workout, after all. Back to the gym for me!!!

Now, to her credit, my girlfriend did reward my persistence with a nice, relaxing afternoon at the spa the next day. She bought me one of those body-scrub treatments, and then I sat in the steam room for about 3 hours afterward til I was so hot I didn’t think I could stand it. But, as soon as I got out, I was already cold again. I have to face the fact that I’m pretty much freezing cold non-stop from November thru March. I HATE COLD WEATHER!

After my spa day, my kooky math genius/violin virtuoso/professional gambler friend Fred took me to dinner at this fabulous tapas place at the Aria, then drinks at the Peppermill Fireside Lounge, and I went to bed fairly early. I thought I had recovered from my crazy hell week…but guess what?! I STILL got sick! It just goes to show…no matter HOW many vitamins you take, if you work two jobs and then run a half marathon in Arctic conditions, you’ll get sick, no matter what. Lame!

at the AEEJust before the flu gripped me, though, I managed to milk two more fun adventures from the teat of life. The porn convention was in town by now, and despite my best, most fervent efforts, I was unable to score a paid gig as a booth hostess at this show. WTF!! It seems the pervs were cheap this year. Maybe it has to do with the red-blue dichotomy: in years where the Democrats win, they say the gun biz booms. In years where the Republicans win, the porn biz booms. I guess each is afraid the other will take away its cherished rights – in any case, in this year of the great Obama (and I say that with ZERO irony, haters!!!), the pornmongers were tightfisted…but I did get a casting call for the gun show (some warmonger needed booth babes).

I had just resigned myself to missing out on all the pornilicious fun, when a resourceful girlfriend called to ask if I wanted to go with her for free, and pose for photos for tips. My first reaction was “WTF??? Tips?! From those cheapasses?!” I remembered my stint back in 2009, when I posed for photos in a bikini, on a bed, alllll dayyyyy long and made not one dollar. I almost turned her down, but at the last minute decided what the hell.

pic courtesy AVN.comNow, this girlfriend doesn’t fuck around – she makes a living posing for photos out on the Strip, where she and various girlfriends don these giant angel wings, along with slutty angelic lingerie, and make a dollar here, a dollar there posing for photos with tourists. I’ve seen her out there hustling, and I’ll admit I was skeptical – until now. I met up with her at the porn expo, where her mom was hanging out helping her hustle – and that’s the secret to her success, right there!

I guess the two of these platinum-blonde lovelies moved out here from Georgia a couple years ago, and the daughter is like the mom’s meal ticket or something – Mama has a vested interest in helping Baby hustle, that’s for sure. Baby is in her very early 20s, and Mama can’t be much over 40 – a tiny, platinum blonde little cougar with the sweetest Southern drawl and the fiercest attention to detail – when I met her, she was adjusting Baby’s sparkly white bra to better show off her cleavage, and admonishing her to remember to ask for tips: “Tell ‘em ‘We like big ’uns, y’all!” This was woman was half pageant mom, half pimp…and 100% amazing. I love her!!!!

Meanwhile, Baby appeared sort of dazed throughout all this…but I’ve come to realize that it’s somewhat of an act, and she’s really keeping close score behind her air of blank blondeness. This girl can hustle! She and her Mama helped me into one of their spare sets of wings, and then Mama took off and left us girls to fend for ourselves, standing in front of the booth of this stripper-pole manufacturer, who was kind enough to let us use his space (we brought lots of traffic to his booth, let me tell ya).

no WAY!Now, I always thought I’d totally suck at photo-op hustling, because I HATE asking for money – but I soon learned the ways of Baby and Mama. If a guy asked if he could take a pic with us, we’d say, “Sure!! We take pictures for tips…is that OK?” After awhile (and a Captain & Coke) I got brassy enough to add, “And we like big ‘uns!!!” Har, har…but astonishingly, it worked!! Schmucks were emptying their pockets, right before my eyes. I made a little over $200 in about 3 hours, which by my reckoning is pretty good money. If that’s the kind o’cash this girl brings in on a regular basis, then watch out – you’ll be seeing my white ass out on the Strip in a pair of angel wings come the spring!!!

Anyhoo, after a few hours of hanging out posing for photos with porn fans, I had to bail so I could head over to this local bar that was hosting a chicken-wing-eating contest  that evening (don’t you enjoy how I went from wearing wings to eating them, all in a day’s work?!). It was a qualifying round for the finals, at which the grand prize is a sweet $5,000 at the end of the month…and knowing my prodigious appetites for everything, I figured I’d enter. I can eat a lot, and I could really use the five grand.

in the dressing room at the nude photo seminarNever one to half-ass something, the evening before, while on break at a nude photography seminar I was modeling for, I looked up some “wing-eating” tutorials on YouTube (astonishingly, these exist)…and did my due diligence, studying the best and fastest ways to down a chicken wing. I thought I had my ducks all in row…until I faced my competition: a gang of big, beefy mooks with nothing better to do than lie around all day playing video games and eating mass quantities of processed foods. Have you ever noticed how “boyhood” somehow stretches well into one’s ’30s these days? To wit: the classic 1950s “little boy” ensemble of shorts, t-shirt and ball cap is now the standard uniform for tubby mooks ages 18-35!!!!! They all look like fuckin’ Spanky, from Our Gang!

boys

Anyway, facing off against these behemoths, I was doomed. I only managed to scarf a paltry 15 wings in the allotted 5 minutes…whereas one young fellow downed thirty-six! I’m telling you, I give up. This is the third competitive eating contest I’ve entered and failed…I’ve had enough. ¡No s!

Still, I had a pretty good time. Some of my more adventurous friends came with me, and tried their hands as well: my friend Guy managed to down 16 wings, and my vegan friend Tanayaa (VEGAN, I said!) ate 8!! But since she’s vegan, I guess that’s like 64 wings in vegan numbers…ya know?? Gotta give her props for compromising her beliefs in pursuit of fun!

Anyway, I fumbled my shot at the $5,000…but didn’t really care too much, since I was pretty much in the throes of the flu by now. I went straight home and took to my bed, where I remained for an astonishing 46 hours!!! That is unheard of for me! But I really needed it. I even turned down fun and money in the form of another day at the porn expo, and a shift at the nightclub…which was REALLY hard for me to do. As a freelancer, it’s feast or famine…so I never like to let a meal slip by, ya know? But I stayed in bed, resting my poor battered body.

All this made me think of the plight of the uninsured in this country, and how it affects the rest of us. If you’re so anti-Obammy-care, riddle me this: what do you do if you’re a minimum-wage-earning member of the working poor, who doesn’t get paid sick days? You most likely don’t have insurance, so you can’t go get meds…and if you take the day off, you miss out on pay. Most people in this situation sack up and go into work, because they have to pay their bills. So they go in, and make pizzas or scrub toilets or ring up your Tampax and Trojans, all the while coughing up germs onto everything in sight, so that now, all of us get sick, too. It’s well and good if you get paid sick leave and have a good insurance plan…but what about the rest of us??

Now, as a bohemian freelancer I chose this lifestyle – I get it; I have no right to complain. I could/should shut the fuck up and work for some giant corporation who will give me paid sick days/insurance/401k, right??? RIGHT…right up until the day they find someone to do my job cheaper in India, and fire my ass at the unemployable age of 55, at which point I’m fucked. The sad fuckin’ truth is, the days of lifelong employment and rock-solid pension plans are waaaay behind us. These days it’s every man for himself…so I say, don’t be so fucking cheap, and give your minimum wage employees paid sick days, for the love of Jesus Christ. (WWJD? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm???) Meanwhile, I’ll take time off myself if I’m really sick…because if I don’t, it might develop into something worse, at which point I’ll have to take my pneumonia-having ass into your emergency room, and have it treated at the expense of your tax dollars. (I myself do have hard-won private insurance, but I’m making a point here.)

So anyway, to get off my soap box, I finally rallied enough to go into work and do a shift at the nightclub, where I somehow managed to dance gaily thru a haze of discombobulation and phlegm, all while listening to this poor Indian immigrant I was dancing with complain about his own First World Problems! It seems this poor drunken kid had emigrated to Canada on an H-1B visa (or whatever they have in Canada), and was making “reeeally good money.” “It’s oll about money, isn’tit?” he kept saying, waving his wallet around, trying to shove $20s into my garter belt as we danced. But he was unhappy, it transpired, as his parents had recently arranged his marriage to a young nurse for whom he had no affection whatsoever. Married for two months now, he felt despondent and trapped, and kept trying to grab my ass in the depths of his existential despair. After the first $40, I refused to take any more of his money (see?? I told you I’d make a terrible stripper), and tried to counsel him instead. But trying to explain First World Problems to someone so recently arrived from the Third World was weird. I didn’t want to come off as patronizing, but come on, dude! You make “reeeally” good money, and are from some uppercrust family in Kerala…yet are “unhappy.” It’s a sign of the times, bro – welcome to the fuckin’ club!!!

After that, I was ready to get back in bed and sleep another 50 hours…but a coworker from the club invited me to come over to the Hard Rock Hotel afterward, for the last gasp of the porn convention. Apparently, every year they have some big “afterparty” up in the penthouse, and it’s a really big to-do…so despite my lingering malaise, how could I say no? I still had on my costume from work, but it didn’t matter – my colleague was dressed in her “‘70s key party” wig and caftan (I love the people I work with), so I was in good company. I arrived at 3:30am to find a seething penthouse swarming with latex-and PVC-clad partygoers in various states of fitness and personal hygiene, all spanking and tweaking and fucking and sucking each other, putting literal truth to the phrase “bumping uglies.” Alors!

To be honest, I found it all kinda boring…I’ve seen it all before, and it doesn’t do much for me. I ran into a few friends I knew, so spent a few minutes chatting with them…and then retreated to the safety and warmth of my precious, beloved bed… which, incidentally, has lately been covered by this fabulous blanket made for me by my photographer friend Steve 🙂

GOOD NIGHT!

 

P.S. the haters at Old Homestead Steakhouse whined loud enough that Yelp ended up taking down my review of their lame-ass joint again. So I’m adding it to my “Banned by Yelp!” feature at the top of the page. Fuckers!

 

Elvis on a Unicorn

Last time I updated, I was fighting a deathly illness in the name of hedonism — I refused to be stopped in my tracks by a stupid virus when it was HALLOWEEN in VEGAS! As someone for whom cosplay is something of a religion (well, non-Anime cosplay, anyway)…there was absolutely NO FREAKING WAY I was missing out on the 3rd Annual Las Vegas Halloween Parade. I had such an insane amount of fun at last year’s event, that I was basically looking forward to the 2012 parade all year. I’m telling you — it’s one of the best parties in a city FAMOUS for its parties!!!

The parade is held downtown, and this year there was a big afterparty at the end of the route, just off Fremont Street. The Dancetronauts rolled their 100,000-watt soundsystem-on-a-spaceship into town, and a bunch of Burning Man artists had trucked their fabulous art cars and Mutant Vehicles down for the parade — the Soul Train was there, as well as the Magic Carpet, the Pedal Pub, the Praying Mantis and a bunch of other inordinately fabulous and outlandish vehicles. FUN! Even funner, that same night the venerable El Cortez hotel happened to be holding an Elvis Impersonator costume contest in the lounge, which is just down the street from the Parade’s end…so I figured I’d stop in there afterward and win. After all, I did just happen to get a fabulous pink Elvis costume as a birthday gift, you know! The prize was a $200 gift card to the El Cortez…which, if you’ve ever been in that hotel, you know is enough to buy the entire joint. I love seedy, down-at-heels Vegas casinos, and the El Cortez used to be one of my favorites. USED to!!!!!!

Last year, I rode the parade route on the fabulous people-powered Pedal Pub (an 8-seat bike with the seats all facing inward around a bar). It was fantastic!! This year, my friend Bam Bam invited me to ride along on his fabulous black-lit, neon-fur-covered, two-story, stripper-pole-featuring golf cart — how could I resist?! It was DEFINITELY one of the freakiest floats in the entire parade. Not only was there Bam Bam, in his magnificent top hat and glo-in-the-dark tails, and myself in my pink Elvess costume…but our crew also featured these two adorable blonde Polish raver chicks named Aga and Aneta, two transsexual strippers in little more than pasties, wigs and g-strings, and this fabulous new friend of mine who was wearing a full-body unicorn suit. Goooooooood times!

We rode “Bam Bam’s Gentlemen’s Club Car” (as it was officially named) through the streets of downtown Vegas, blasting EDM and waving merrily at all the people lined up along the parade route. Fabulously, most of the men along the route saw the giant bouncing titties of the transsexuals from a distance, and didn’t realize exactly at WHOM they were wolf-whistling — until we got up close, and then it was hilarious to watch their expressions. Interestingly, the parade rules were very strict about nudity — the municipal ordinance governing toplessness here in Vegas dictates that the entire areola and underboob must be covered in public areas. Well, these girls had on nothing but pasties!!! Their underboobs were shamelessly exposed…but no one complained, interestingly enough. I wonder if it had been real women, would they have been allowed to parade around like that? Conversely, I wonder if the transsexuals would have been able to take off their pasties without fear of reprisal?? I mean, come on — they’re still male tits (both still had penises)!

I didn’t have much time to ponder such existential questions, however, as the Elvis contest started shortly after the end of the parade. I hopped off the float and headed over to the El Cortez, accompanied by my friend in the unicorn suit, who had offered to come along and support me. A quick word about this new friend of mine — we’ll call him Fabian, since Martians are from Mars and Fabians are from the planet Fabulous. Anyhoo, this guy just moved to town to help run this fantastic new business venture with another friend of mine, and he is already one of my favorite people. First, he has a TON of body hair — including a bushy handlebar mustache. 2nd, he has a pet piglet and a pet goat — both of whom he uses in crazy, fucked-up photo shoots. 3rd, he has a TON of wacky costumes, which he ALSO uses to create bizarre photos and performance art. Basically, he’s the male version of me!  The only bummer is, he’s about to embark on a month-long motorcycle trip from the northern border of India all the way down to the southern tip, to raise money to build wells in the Indian interior, so that the poor have clean water. So I won’t be seeing him much for the rest of the year. D’OH!!!

Aaaaaaaaaanyhoo, Fabian accompanied me over to the El Cortez for this Elvis contest, which started at 9pm. We rolled in at 8:50 — just in time to size up the competition and make friends with people in the crowd, in case it was one of those bullshit “audience applause” contests (which I despise). It all looked good: there were only 2 other Elvises, aside from the host, the hotel’s resident “pro” Elvis, who was onstage doing a totally mediocre version of some forgettable Elvis ditty. Fabian and I found seats with these two AMAZING drunk old ladies who took a shine to us — they didn’t normally like people, they told us, but apparently we passed the test. One of these venerable hags was allegedly ninety-one years old — and I believe it!!!

So the contest started, and it was utter b.s. from start to finish. They called up all the Elvises in the room, and it was just the three of us:

1. “Elvis the Cable Guy,” a portly redneck in a sleeveless denim Elvis jumpsuit and a “Git ‘R’ Done” ballcap.

2. Some fat shlub in a passable Elvis jumpsuit, with the hairdo and the glasses but no TCB necklace (which as every REAL Elvis fan knows is a must-have for any RESPECTABLE Elvis impersontor)

3. A pink-haired Elvis in an all-pink bodysuit, WITH a TCB necklace, RIDING A UNICORN!

Seems like an easy call to me, right?

WRONG!!!! Those hateful old fuckers at the El Cortez don’t know a superstar when they see one, apparently — of course they had to break it down by audience applause, so right off the bat Elvis the Cable Guy was eliminated (utter bullshit, as his costume was MUCH more clever than the fat guy’s). Now it was between Fat Elvis and Pink Unicorn-Riding Elvis (of whom EVERYONE was taking photos, I might add)………and somehow, Fat Elvis won! Pink Elvis was ROBBED of her RIGHTFUL VICTORY!!!!!!!!!

I’m a pretty sore loser, and so is Fabian (despite being a man of means who could buy and sell the El Cortez 100 times over, he really wanted to win)…so as soon as I knew I’d lost, I was out of there. I was sick, after all, and had to go back to that stupid car convention the next morning at 9am. But then the host called all the contestants back up onstage for a final sing-a-long of “Viva Las Vegas,” so in the interest of not being a total asshole, I went up there — as one of the shriveled old biddy “judges” shrieked “But NO UNICORN!!” at me. Geeeeeez, sorry to make a mockery of your classy Elvis contest, you miserable old shrew!!!!!

So I rocked out the finale, as the Fat Elvis winner mumbled and bumbled along — he didn’t even know the words to “Viva Las Vegas,” for Chrissake!!! Meanwhile, I know every single word, since I sang it on American Idol back in 2004 (here’s a link, but it only works in other countries since the haters who own AI won’t let you post clips on Youtube). Now I ask you…..who should have won that $200 gift card?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!

Ahem.

Aaaaaanyhoo, running around downtown all night in a skimpy slutty-Elvis costume probably wasn’t the best thing for my health…and BOY, did I ever pay for it! I was SICK as the proverbial DOG for around 10 days — no fun at all! Meanwhile, despite just wanting to lay in bed and cry, I had to drag my ass over to that damn convention. I wanted to call in sick, but the agency who hired me is based in Florida, so they probably didn’t have anyone out here they could call as a last-minute replacement, and I felt bad leaving them in the lurch. So SOMEHOW I sacked up and made it through the rest of the show…although all I got for my trouble was bitched at, since I was 30 minutes “late” the first day (really I was on time, but they expect you to arrive 30 min early, on your own time, so that the client can school you on their business and whatnot). Hey, it wasn’t MY fault — I actually WAS early, but the stupid registration people fucked up my badge!!! Anyhow, I have a feeling the agency isn’t done bitching me out yet…and I kinda want to bring up the fact that THEY’RE LUCKY I EVEN SHOWED UP AS SICK AS I WAS!!!!

Just another reason working trade shows SUCKS BALLS!

Anyway, it wasn’t like the trade show was the only thing I had to work while I was sick — my deluge of gigs pretty much continued unabated, so I was constantly running here and there, chasing a buck in between hacking up my lungs and hawking phlegm. As mentioned in my last blog, I just got hired as a sort of atmosphere model at the most FABULOUS nightclub in Vegas — I know, you never expected me to use the words “fabulous” and “nightclub” in the same sentence, did you?! But this place is different!! As mentioned, it’s a sort of twisted/dark/bizarre cabaret-type show/club, where you party and dance and stuff like in other clubs, but every 20 minutes or so some twisted fucker comes onstage and does an amazing, kooky, subversive, WEIRD performance. Also, the place is much smaller than the cavernous mega-clubs of today’s Vegas — it only holds about 700, and was built to look like a creepy old haunted opera house or something, with ornate banisters, crazy wallpaper, meandering hallways and all these creepy little nooks and crannies. As I said…it’s FABULOUS!

This super cool alt model I know from around town is the one who hooked me up with the gig, and I am forever in her debt. So far, I’ve been working 3 nights a week: on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, I go in around 10pm, put on my fabulous makeup and costume while bullshitting with all the other arty kooks in the dressing room, then from 10:30pm-2:30am I basically dance around acting weird, fucking with people, boozing and partying like it’s 1799. Fantastique!!!! The only bummer is that I was so ghastly ill for the first 10 days on the job, so I wasn’t really able to enjoy myself much, between my hacking up phlegm discreetly behind my lace fan (all that cigarette smoke and the fog machines can’t have been good for me).

The only OTHER bummer is, I was hired as “atmosphere,” which I totally dug — all I did was roam around the club, poking my head into all the nooks and crannies and fucking with people. The mood director even told me to be “non-verbal” — so I didn’t even have to TALK!  It was great, and I came up with some very artsy, Cirque du Soleil-ish moves. But then, they decided that we atmosphere models were actually GO-GOs — so now we have to dance part of the night! I make no secret of the fact that I am the WORLD’S WORST DANCER, so if you had ever told me I’d be go-go-ing in one of the Strip nightclubs, I’d have said you were NUTS! But, here I am…and so far, no complaints. The manager did ask us to start out dancing more energetically at the beginning of the night, to get the party started….which I don’t mind (I’m ALLL about the extra workout), except for the fact that my costume entails 6-inch heels and a 10-pound wig loaded up with pearls, flowers, LED lights and feather dusters). Kinda hard to dance vigorously in…but somehow I managed! I’ll do anything to keep this fabulous gig — well, almost anything.

Seriously, I can’t gush about this nightclub enough. I tried to write about it on Yelp, but they removed my review since I admitted to working there in the first sentence of the review. Hello!!! But take it from me, it’s a really cool place. Even if you don’t like nightclubs, it’s worth checking out just for the bizarre performance art. There are some REALLY cool acts there. A lot of the performers are from New York, and find Vegas hopelessly square — which is TRUE! We *ARE* square, we just pretend to be edgy…and our bluff must be called! The boundaries must be pushed, or people won’t want to come here anymore. Get with it, Vegas!

So I slogged along sick for about ten days, and JUST as I was starting to get better, along comes this photo shoot I had scheduled out in the desert with a Canadian photographer who was visiting town for a hockey tournament. Just my luck, the weather turned miserably nasty the day of the shoot — windy and overcast and only about 58 degrees. BRRRRR!! There I was, naked as a jaybird, shivering so hard my teeth chattered and my nipples like to froze off. Thankfully, this photographer happened to be a doctor by trade, so he took pity on me and didn’t shoot the entire 2 hours, as he likely understood the stakes better than a layperson. As a bonus, I was able to pepper him with ENDLESS questions on the ride home about being a doctor in the Canadian healthcare system — something about which many Americans are very hostile. Well, I’m here to report that he LOVES his country’s system, and wouldn’t practice anywhere else. So, put that in your pipe and smoke it, you Obama haters. Ohhhhhhhhhhhh…..waitaminute…..THAT’S RIGHT! IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU THINK, BECAUSE THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN AND OBAMA WAS RE-ELECTED! 😀

Speaking of the election, it was nuts. Nevada was a swing state, so we were subjected to a terrible barrage of attack ads during the months leading up to the election — lies, pandering and worse; enough to make you want to puke. Now, in case you couldn’t tell, I’m as liberal as the day is long…so I intended to vote for Obama, but wait until Election Day to cast my vote (here in NV we have Early Voting, and can cast our ballots weeks in advance at shopping malls…but I prefer to wait til the actual day). But then I started getting paranoid — what if I ended up in the hospital, or shoved in the trunk of some traveling Canadian photographer’s car, and wasn’t able to vote come Election Day?!!

At the last minute, I decided I’d better vote early — JUST IN CASE. So on the last day of Early Voting, I decided to stop by the shopping mall and make my voice heard. The only bummer was, my boss at the souvenir photo company made me work this DOG-AWFUL Barbra Streisand concert at the MGM Grand that day. :-/ Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!! Because the MGM is such a clusterfuck (the Arena there holds 17,000 people, so traffic is ALWAYS a nightmare), we had to arrive 2 hours early, at 4:30 in the afternoon…just to make sure we could park and everything. BO-gus! There was NO WAY I was sitting around that dank, subterranean photo lab full of half-witted cholos and teenage mothers for TWO HOURS, so I went down, clocked in, and then went back up to the garage, got in my truck, and drove back over to the mall to vote. Alas, because it was a Friday the traffic was MISERABLE…but I still made it over in plenty of time. But then, because it was the last day of Early Voting, the line was ENDLESS — I never realized how many civic-minded illiterate halfwits there are! To be brutally honest, looking at the line of voters, I kinda started questioning democracy…I mean….these are people who vote for BRISTOL PALIN on “Dancing With the Stars…” and now I want them electing the Leader of the Free World??? Well, lucky for me they made the right call this time…so I guess democracy is A-OK for now.

Anyhoo, back to Babs. I worked a Barbra Streisand concert once, back in 2007 or so, and it was pretty miserable even back then. This show was no exception — the crowd was something like 20% fabulous homos, and 80% cranky, miserable old yentas. I was feeling so shitty, and had pretty much lost my voice at that point, that my boss ended up letting me go home early..so thank DOG I didn’t have to sit around all night (it was a shockingly self-indulgent three-hour concert) waiting til the end. I would have gone NUTS! As it was, I only had a little time to rest before I had to head into the nightclub, suit up in my skimpy Marie Antoinette ensemble, and dance around in a room full of cigarette smoke all night!

Speaking of the club, the very next night after that happened to be the end of Daylight Savings Time. I’d never worked a job that ran after 1am before, and had always been curious how that worked — do they make you work an extra hour when the clock goes back?? And if so, do you get paid time-and-a-half for that hour??? I fretted over it all day before going into work, at which time I was pretty well resigned to working a back-breaking 5-hour shift……only to find out from a stripper colleague that no; late-nite or 24-hour businesses set their clocks back not at 1am, but at the close of business or the end of the shift — regardless of what hour that is. So, I worked my 4-hour shift as usual. Yay!!!

 

 

So anyhoo, back to being sick. The freeeeeezing photo shoot with the Canadian doctor almost put me over the edge again, but I went straight home and took a hot bath and ate oatmeal and stuff, to warm up again…so I was OK. The following day, I was supposed to have done a fabulous shoot out on the dry lake bed on a giant chrome horse made of old auto parts — but thankfully, the photographer cancelled. Don’t get me wrong; I could have used the money….but can you imagine how cold that chrome would have been????! As much as it pains me to say, I think that the 2012 outdoor nude shooting season is officially over now 🙁 It’s simply tooooooo freaking cold anymore 🙁 I do have one more nudie shoot lined up this Friday, but after that, I’m calling it quits til March. Hotel rooms and studios will have to do until then!

Now speaking of this deluge of work, it FINALLY slowed down to a steady trickle late last week, so I finally had some time to devote to my social life again! I went for a strenuous hike down to the Arizona Hot Springs with Fabian one day, which was awesome….and then another night I went out to see the Cirque du Soleil/Beatles show LOVE another night, with this extraordinarily kooky friend of mine whom we’ll call Fred. Fred is a math genius who became a professional video poker player — that’s right; it is possible to make a living (and a decent one at that) playing nothing but video poker in the casinos. The trick is to find one with a big progressive jackpot, and then play the shit out of it for hour upon hour — up to 20 hours a day — until you finally hit it. It doesn’t sound like much fun to me, but apparently some people get off on it. The upside to spending all that time sitting at a slot machine is that you rack up CRAZY points on your players’ club card — the loyalty cards given out by the casinos that track your play amount. So Fred always has TONS of comps for food and beverage…and the other week he called to say his comps were about to expire, so let’s go out to dinner and a show.

We hit up the Japanese restaurant at the Mirage for sushi and sake, and over dinner I learned that Fred harbors a most fantastical treasure: a photograph of someone I know and loathe having sex with a bulldog!!!!!!!! I won’t go into details here, for reasons of slander and libel, but suffice it to say that he came upon these photos (there are more than one, I think) by happy accident years ago, and they have been languishing ever since in a storage unit he keeps over on the east side of town. His only caveat was that his storage unit is “a total disaster,” packed to the gills and untouched for years…so these photos are going to be hard to find. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm!!! I immediately made a sincere offer to help him clean out the unit whenever he wants…for free…as long as he lets me see those photos!

Now, I know what you’re thinking — Fred is full of shit. Well, that’s possible (he IS a total kook)…but his claim was leant credence by another, totally unrelated story I heard about a month ago from a completely different person, who swore up and down that the bulldog-lover’s SPOUSE, whom I also loathe (to an even greater extent than the dogfucker) is ALSO a huge zoophile, who was known to have sex with a pet llama!!!!!!!! W……..T……….F is going on in Vegas, I ask you?????! All I can say is, I sincerely hope these rumors are true…although I do feel for the poor, unconsenting animals. But, seriously?!

Anyhoo, Fred took me up on my offer to help him clean out the storage unit (he says he’s been meaning to for years, so he might as well get around to it now)…so sometime after Thanksgiving, I’ll be going over there and seeing for myself if this bulldog nonsense is true. I CAN’T WAIT!!!

Now, in between all THAT rigamarole, I also had to deal with the frigging U.S. Gov’t bureaucracy, since my medical marijuana card is set to expire shortly. At first I was just gonna let it expire, since it’s prohibitively expensive (~$300) to renew…but then I was heartened by the news out of Colorado and Washington State, who LEGALIZED marijuana (!!!), and decided that I should pony up the cash in the interest of maintaining my “responsible medical marijuana user and advocate” shtick. The more of us there are, the better…ya know?

My first call was to Dr. Reefer, a local doctor who is known to dispense prescriptions for a hefty fee. That asshole owes me $300 — back in 2010 I paid him for a card, but he was arrested and incarcerated before he could complete my application process…so I lost all the money 🙁 I’ve tried to get ahold of him over the past few years, even going so far as to try and get him to face off on “Judge Judy” with me…but apparently he’s been in prison this whole time, so it was all to no avail. Well, now I see his stinking billboards up all over town again, so I figured he’s back in business and I could give him a call. I’m SURE he would honor the $300 he stole from me! DO YOU HEAR THAT, PIERRE WARNER A/K/A DR. REEFER???

Alas, the lady who answered the phone said that the doctor is STILL in prison, but they are operating in his name in the meantime, and for another $300 they could hook me up. I DON’T THINK SO!!! They wanted $150 for the doctor consult, when ANOTHER lady doctor I know across town does it for only $80. Well……she USED to do it for $80; this time it was $100, and took FOREVER because she INSISTED on giving the visit a legit veneer, with a whole exam involving taking my blood pressure and temperature and checking my reflexes and all. ARE YOU SERIOUS, LADY??! JUST WRITE ME A RECOMMENDATION, ALREADY!!! To her credit, though, she was/is a total professional about it…and thankfully, my condition was on the approved list and I was A-OK to prescribe marijuana to. Yay!!!

Soooooooooo….that’s what’s been going on in MY life. How about yours???!

 

Nude Model Ghost Town Takeover!

I’m a woman on a mission!! I need to make $9000 by Dec. 3rd, and I will stop at nothing in my pursuit of this goal!

 

Why $9,000 by Dec. 3rd? Well, after I lost my other house to the vultures at Chase/Seterus, a very kind friend offered me an opportunity to start anew: he basically gifted me a cheap shitbox of a house in downtown Vegas, with the understanding that I would buy it from him over time. (You’d be surprised at how little money it takes to buy a house in Vegas these days…even a schmuck like me can afford one.) My friend was kind enough not to charge me interest on it, so since then I’ve been paying him back incrementally, bit by bit….but as it happens, I need to come up with nine large by December.

 

So I’ve been hustling like a madwoman, trying to earn the money to pay my debt off. As usual, the pursuit of money has led me down some unsavory avenues….but lucky for me, this past week I finally scored a few totally SAVORY gigs for a change!

The most savory of all was this two-day photo shoot I was hired for, out in a ghost town at Gold Point, NV. These two photographers from back East had hired four models for a sort of road trip/photo shoot, and had rented out an entire ghost town for the purpose. They were going for a classic art-nude look, and said they had a devil of a time finding appropriate models in Vegas — apparently, most models here are of the giant-fake-titted, bleached-blonde-hair-extension variety…which was not what they were looking for. But after much searching of ModelMayhem.com, they finally came up with four all-natural Vegas chicks (probably the ONLY four all-natural chicks in Vegas). And I’m pleased to report…ALL of us had a bush, in one form or another 🙂

 

Anyhoo, we all met up at the Hard Rock on Friday morning, and then piled in the car for the 3-hour drive up to Gold Point. Now, I’ve lived here for 12 years, and pride myself on my extensive knowledge of the surrounding desert…but I’d never heard of Gold Point. Whaaaaa?!!! HOW HAVE I MISSED OUT ON THIS FANTASTIC SPOT ALL THIS TIME?!!

 

Apparently, Gold Point was an old mining town near Lida, just off U.S. 95 North (I pass it every year on my way to Burning Man…D’OH!!) An old-West buff bought the town piece by piece, and after winning a $220,000 jackpot playing video poker at the Texas Station Casino, used the funds to fix up the old cabins and turn the place into a sort of rustic resort (best use of gambling winnings EVER!). Now the place is available for rent…whether you just want to stay in a cabin for the weekend, or overrun the entire place with naked chicks 🙂 For more information, check out their website.

 

Aaaaanyhoo, we all rolled into Gold Point around 4pm and were greeted by the caretaker/owner, an extremely genial, personable character named Sheriff Herb Stone. He showed us to the cabins where we’d be staying — all old-timey 1800s wooden shacks that had been completely remodeled in rustic-chic on the inside. Most of the cabins have RV-style toilets and no running water, but Sheriff Stone keeps his own bathroom open 24 hours, so you can just walk across the gravel courtyard and use his facilities when needed, day or night (just remember to keep the screen door latched, so the cat doesn’t get out :-).

 

Sheriff Stone informed us that dinner was at 8pm, so we all unpacked, got settled in, and then headed out to shoot some photos before then. As luck would have it, the weather had turned cold and nasty just the day before…so it was kinda challenging to run around naked looking carefree and blissful when your headlights were on painful hi-beam and your twat was an icicle. But, it’s all part of modeling…so I sucked it up and did my best! The photographers had brought a bunch of cool flowy white lace-type dresses and flannel shirts and stuff, so we weren’t TOTALLY nude, anyway 🙂

 

After shooting photos for a couple hours, we headed back to our cabins and changed into warmer clothes — one model even put on her Tinkerbell footie pajamas! Then we headed over to the saloon for dinner. THIS SALOON IS ONE OF THE MOST BAD ASS PLACES I HAVE EVER BEEN!!! Chock-a-block full of old-timey western paraphernalia and antiques, but also packed with a crowd of weekend warriors and rednecks, all of whom were there for a dirtbike trail ride the next day. What can I say…..

 

Roomful of rednecks + 4 nude models = HIJINKS!!!!

 

We stayed in the saloon for HOURS, eating, drinking, partying and boozing. The good Sheriff kept us well-plied with homebrewed Apple Pie schnapps, plus they have a fully-stocked bar with just about any liquor you can imagine (well, they probably don’t have my beloved, liberal-elitist Campari….but just about everything else). After a few drinks, the wood-burning stove got us gals kind of warm and toasty, so before you could say “wonderhussy” we were all nekkid, posing for photos with Sheriff Stone and Walt the bartender, as a million redneck cellphones captured the moment. GOOOOOOD TIMES!

 

Now, the photographers intended for us all to get up early and do some sunrise shooting, so I kinda kept an eye on the clock — I *HATE* getting up early, but if I’m being paid to do a job, well then by golly I’ll do it. So as the hour grew later and the party went on, I started getting antsy. I need my beauty sleep, ya know! Around 11pm or so we all finally said goodnight, and headed back to our cabins. Two of my fellow models professed an inability to sleep in late (?!?!?!), so it was agreed that those two would shoot first, at 7:30am. The other girl and I would meet everyone at breakfast, around 9am. Whew!

 

Thus relieved of our sunrise duty, my fellow late-sleeper and I decided to head back out to the campfire at one of the rednecks’ RV, where a few dirtbikers and fossil-hunters were hanging out, swapping stories and bullshitting. They were more than happy to see us amble over, and welcomed us into their circle, plying us with more apple pie booze and whatever else we wanted to drink! If there’s one thing I love in this world, it’s a campfire. If there’s another thing, it’s rednecks with booze. YAY!! We stayed up til all hours of the night, drinking and bullshitting and getting into political debates (I had to defend Obama to these right-wingers, don’t ya know). It was all in good spirit, and a really good time.

 

 

Around 2:30am I decided I better crawl into bed, so I bid adieu to the rednecks and headed for the cabin I was sharing with the other gal. I was sleeping in a loft bed, reached by a ladder over the main bed…but when I entered our cabin, I found that one of the other models had borrowed my pipe!!!!! You probably know that I have TERRIBLE insomnia, and cannot sleep without my legally prescribed medical marijuana — what to do?! I didn’t feel like traipsing outdoors over to the other cabin, and waking the other girls up in my search for my pipe. So I ripped a sheet of paper from my notebook, and rolled a half-assed joint. It didn’t work very well at ALL, and I spent a miserable night dozing fitfully in my loft as the other chick snoozed peacefully (with her naked boobs splayed out shamelessly, haha) below me.

 

Around 7am I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and climbed down the ladder, and went over to Sheriff Stone’s cabin to wash up. I had forgotten my toothbrush, so had to fake-brush my teeth with my finger (blecccchhh….I *HATE* doing that), but after I splashed a little cold water on my face I was good to go. I slapped on some makeup, and then ran into the two photographers out in the desert, shooting landscapes — they were too nice to bother the other models, who were still slumbering peacefully!! WTF! Have you ever heard of such nice photographers? These guys were AWESOME!

 

The other girls finally got up, and we all headed back to the saloon for a big old greasy breakfast…then went back out for more photos. That ghost town is like Disneyland for photographers!! Rusty old buildings everywhere, with antique cars and farm equipment and all kinds of fun stuff laying around — all of it free to shoot on! I’m telling you, it’s a photographer’s DREAM!

 

Luckily, one of the ghost town inhabitants (some people do live out there…it’s only 3 hours from Vegas and 1 hour from Tonopah) was more than willing to act as photo assistant, bringing us water and food and whatever we needed as we made our art. “Stranger” was a sunburned old ex-outlaw biker who had been “saved” by Jesus back in the day, and was now devoted to a life of good deeds and restoring one of the old cabins in Gold Point. Before his conversion, Stranger led a very full and colorful life, including stints as an interior designer and a model — he was even offered a gig as the Marlboro Man, but due to  “other projects” had to turn them down (!!). Now he bides his time restoring one of the old cabins in Gold Point, as well as doing construction jobs on buildings in nearby Tonopah and Goldfield…but despite his busy schedule, he somehow found the time to offer his assistance at every turn to a group of 4 naked models. Amazing!

 

After shooting til about 1 or 2pm, we packed up for the drive back to Vegas. I had to be at work by 6pm (BOOOO!), so I felt like the party pooper of the bunch, since we were all having so much fun that we probably could have shot for another week, at least. DAMN WORK! We packed all our bags, said our emotional farewells to Sheriff Stone, blonde saloon mistress Brenda, bartender Walt and of course Stranger, the solicitous biker — who told us in all seriousness that if any of us EVER, and I mean EVER, were in any trouble in our lives, we should find a way to get ahold of him, and he would help us. You see, he has an army of fellow ex-outlaw bikers at his beck and call…so if we ever felt like we were in trouble, we were to get ahold of him, and between him, his girlfriend and the army of outlaws, they would take care of it. Awww….good to know! Thanks, Stranger!! 😀

 

On the way back, we stopped just outside of Beatty, where a strip club/brothel called Bikinis squats in the desert south of town. The entire wall facing the highway is painted with 20-foot-tall letters spelling out “N U D E  G I R L S,” so we just had to stop for a photo op! There was only one woman on duty at the time, a leathery old blonde in a black evening gown and paste jewelry, with a squeaky icky-girly voice, but she and the club manager welcomed us in and even bandaged my toe for me, after I stubbed it viciously on some sharp evil deserty plant in my naked glee. D’OH!!!

 

We made it back to the Hard Rock in Vegas around 5:57 pm, and I was supposed to be in the photo lab at Caesars by 6pm. DOUBLE D’OH!!! I raced across town and got to work just in the nick of time, managing to shove my throbbing, bleeding toe into some crusty old flats I keep in my locker for just that reason 🙂 But I’m pleased to report, I did an EXCEPTIONAL job that night, selling an extraordinary dollar amount of photos! (That still didn’t keep me from getting a call from the boss…he bitched me out the next day for not collecting enough email addresses from my customers. You just can’t fuckin’ win!!!)

Aaaaaaaaaanyhoo, I was TOTALLY EXHAUSTED after that adventure, but had another photo shoot the very next day, with a genial Norwegian photographer from Trondheim, Norway…an ancient, frostbitten little burg north of the Arctic circle where I have actually been myself!!! (I went on a cruise up the Norwegian coastline once.)  So it was back out into the desert for me! My toe was still kinda bloody and crusty, but had mostly healed over until I foolishly BONKED it into an old pipe that was half-hidden in the sand. TRIPLE D’OH!!!!!! Nevertheless, we had a great time and he was a very nice man. In addition to the usual artistic nudes, he had me pose with a bottle of this Norwegian orange soda called “Solo,” and said he plans to post the photo on their Facebook page. LOL!

I got a small break the next day (well, I had a gynecologist’s appointment…if you wanna call THAT a break), but then Tuesday it was back out to the desert AGAIN, this time with a photographer I met at, of ALL places, the Red Rooster swingers’ club!!!! LOL!!!!! It just goes to show, you never know who you’ll meet anywhere you go!!! I was there back in May or June with my friend Phil Connors and another girl, and I remember as I was sitting by the porno mag racks, flipping thru Hustler, I struck up a conversation with a man who professed to be a photographer. At the time, I thought he was just some perv blowing smoke up my ass…but come to find out, he’s actually an accomplished photographer, and a very cool dude. We had a great conversation about the Sex Pistols and the early NYC punk scene, all while shooting fabulous art nudes out in the desert by Lake Mead. FANTASTIC!

 

Aside from kooky conceptual costumed stuff, art nudes are my favorites types of photos to shoot. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll shoot whatever pays my bills — “Playboy” style, fetish, cheesecake, whatever. But classical art nudes are my favorite. I like the funky, athletic poses and the chance to show off my fabulous muscle tone. I spend all that fuckin’ time in the gym…might as well show it off!

 

Now, speaking of photo shoots…you may remember me mentioning a month or so ago how I shot with a “revolutionary new product” that was “sure to take the foot fetish world by storm.” Well, I am pleased to announce that the inventor has FINALLY given me the okay to tell you what this fabulous product is! It’s a stripper shoe — you know, one of those 7-inch heels with the giant platform — that has a POCKET PUSSY embedded in the sole!!!!! Yes that’s right — now you can take your love of shoes to a whole new level, with your very own removable Fleshlight embedded in the sole of a sexxxy 7-inch platform heel. Even better, the pocket pussy VIBRATES…and the vibration speed is controlled by the wearer pressing her big toe on a hidden control button on the insole! F*A*B*U*L*O*U*S, no?!!!!! The shoe retails for a shockingly affordable $250, so if you like shoes, check it out: SunsetLadies.com. The inventor got the idea while hanging out in a San Antonio strip club one night, and noticed one of the strippers grinding her foot into some poor shlub’s crotch (at his request). After the guy left, the inventor asked the stripper what all that was about….and thus learned about shoe fetish, and then came up with the idea for the shoe (or so he says). Hah!!!! I *love* shit like that!!

 

Now, finally…I’ve been working so much lately I haven’t had much time to cultivate any wants or needs, but I DID fixate on something recently that is now at the top of my “Must-Have ” list: a pair of customized leather cowboy boots!!! I’m not really much of a cowboy boot wearer in my day-to-day life (they make my legs look stumpy and short), but an acquaintance of mine happens to be a custom bootmaker in Idaho, and he and his wife recently pitched me on the idea of making me a FABULOUS custom pair of WonderHussy cowboy boots!!!! His wife says she even drew up a design for me, on pink and white leather, with dice and showgirls and “WONDER HUSSY” hand-tooled in fabulous leather. O…M…G!!!!! I have never been seized with lust for a material object so much in my LIFE! I have never owned any article of clothing, shoes or purse that cost more than $100, so I feel really bad about wanting $900 boots… but what the fuck?! He normally charges even more! And I just LOVE the idea of stomping into the saloon at Gold Point, NV one fine day…clad in absolutely nothing but a bush and my Wonderhussy boots…sidling up to the bar, plopping my naked ass on a barstool, kicking my hand-tooled heels up on the bar and ordering a tall, frosty Apple Pie shooter from Walt the bartender. What do you say, pardner?!!!! Let’s do it!!!

 
 

 

 

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From OMG! to WTF?!

Thanks for my friend Adam Sternberg (shotbyadam.com) for helping me redesign my blog template…I figured it was time to jazz it up a little. I still have a LOT of work to do, but at least I finally got started.

 

Anyway, I’ll cut right to the chase — I did a lot o’ crazy stuff the last several days. SURPRISE!!!!

 

As usual, my paid gigs ran the gamut from “OMG!” to “WTF?!” On the milder side, I did a scavenger hunt for theGoGame.com as Secret Agent Hotpants, over at the Bellagio. For this character, the script calls for me to dress sexy and post up at a bar for 2-3 hours, and when the teams of players find me, they have to kick me their best pick-up line to try and score my phone number. Depending on how lame their lines are, I give them a number that doubles as a score. In this particular game I actually got some pretty good ones — one guy reached back and fiddled with the tag on my shirt, which I thought must have been sticking out or something…but then he said, “Oh, I was just checking to see if you were Made in Heaven.” ACK!!! That was a top scorer.I got another clever one involving a packet of sugar, but I can’t remember what the line was, alas. Anyway, it was a fun game, and I always enjoy playing Secret Agent Hotpants…even though you run the risk of being confronted by security for being a hooker, since who else puts on a sexy outfit to sit alone at a hotel bar for 2-3 hours talking to strange dudes??

 

More towards the “WTF” end of the spectrum, I also went in to be fitted for an Ass Wrap. You know how they “wrap” cars with advertisements — basically a big sticker/wallpaper that covers the car with a corporate logo? Well, now they can do that with asses, too — just check out facebook.com/FleshWraps!  I went down to the shop where they print the wraps, and they printed me out a pair of panties, then fitted them to my ass specifically, thus creating a pattern that can be used to print out endless future pairs of panties just for me, bearing the corporate logos of whatever fine company wants to assvertise — Disney? Focus on the Family? Romney/Ryan 2012??! Come on, guys, don’t be shy — there’s plenty of room on my keister for ALL of your messages!

 

Delving deeper into the “WTF” arena, I did some REALLY weird fetish videos for a new studio I just started working for –I’m not even sure what it’s called, to be honest 😮 The first one involved me playing a scrawny, frumpy housewife trying to make dinner for my husband, who was about to get home from work. Problem was, I was SOOOO scrawny and weak, I couldn’t even open the can of beans I was trying to cook! I whined and moaned about how weak I was, and then “prayed to the kitchen gods” to make me stronger. Next thing you know, this Wonder Woman costume magically appears underneath my frumpy housewife clothes!! I tear off my outer layer to reveal that I am now a superheroine, with bulging muscles and super powers — and not a moment too soon, as at THAT VERY MOMENT a giant masked intruder breaks into my house, thinking to steal all my stuff!!! (In a bit of lamentable typecasting, the guy who was filming this enlisted the help of his roommate, a big black guy, who was good-natured enough to step in and play along.) I proceeded to “kick his ass,” then threw him out onto the street: “…and STAY out!!!”

 

Then after that, we did a clip where I put on a giant pair of fake boobs and a giant fake ass, underneath some huge, baggy clothes. I rambled on about how “I just LOOOOVE my big juicy ass and my big, juicy tits! Those skinny bitches at the office are just jealous of me — especially that one cow who put a ‘curse’ on me. Hah! They’re just jealous ’cause I’m such a gorgeous BBW,” etc. etc. etc. (these fetish videos require a LOT of ad-libbing; you actually do have to be somewhat of an actress to do these, haha).

 

Well, next thing you know, the “curse” takes effect — first my ass disappears, then my tits. Now I’m flat as a pancake on both sides!!! I cry and moan and attempt to eat a can of beans to maybe grow them back…but I just keep shrinking and shrinking until my clothes fall off, and I’m huddled there naked and tiny in a pile of fabric. LOL! I’m guessing there had to be some intensive post-production done on this one, because the special effects were pretty weak.

 

 

Then I did another shoot for Boomhilda.com, wherein I sat on and popped a bunch of balloons. It might sound like easy cash, but take a look at the welts I got on my inner thigh from doing this! OUCH!!! Thankfully, balloon-popping was only about 2/3 of the shoot — we also shot a tickling clip (I was tickled on my bed by a phantom tickler), and then a clip of me washing my hair in the shower (apparently hair-washing is a big fetish too). Whatever; I had to wash my hair anyway!!

 

 

So that was all the fetish stuff I did lately. Then one day, a Facebook friend messaged me about some French movie that was filming here in town, and needed a topless model for a minor role. I said I’d do it, and they told me to go downtown to the Beat coffee shop to “meet with the director.” I went down there, and what a clusterfuck!!!! First of all, I find that coffee shop a WEE bit on the pretentious side — I guess I do like it, but it tries so hard to be Portland-y that it can sometimes get on my nerves. Also, it’s a real BITCH to park at, and I didn’t have time to ride my bike, as I was having a really busy day. But the MAIN thing that pissed me off was that there was a line of 100 unemployed wannabe actors lined up to “meet the director” for this “French movie,” which turned out to be a music video, not even a movie. So I had to stand around and wait, which I didn’t really have time for! Not to sound like a diva — I understand the purpose of auditioning; I JUST DON’T BOTHER DOING IT — EVER!!! Why? Because out of the 100s of hours I’ve wasted auditioning for shit, I have VERY, VERY rarely ever been cast for anything. There are SO many other models /actresses in Vegas, with bigger tits and more ability, that I decided about 2 years ago not to even bother any more. It’s a total waste of my time! PLUS, while you’re waiting, you have to suffer the asinine company and conversation of all the other wannabe bozos in line — a fate worse than being buggered with a broken Coke bottle by Tim Tebow onstage at a Christian megachurch!!!!! ARRRRRRRGH!!!! ***NEVER**** ask me to audition for ANYTHING!!!!!!!

 

Anyhoo, I waited for about 10 minutes before crossing my name off the list and bailing the fuck out of there — I had SHIT to do, yo! (Interestingly, they didn’t even end up casting anyone that day…I saw them post a week later on Model Mayhem, still looking for someone. And it was NO FUCKIN’ WONDER, since I got a good look at the other people in line, and it was slim fuckin’ pickin’s!!! Maybe I should have stayed, after all…oh, well.)

 

As mentioned, I was in a real hurry that day — I had scheduled a fun photo shoot with my good friend Randy a/k/a Shutterbug-Studio, and I still needed to run around and collect a few items for the shoot. My friend Mat had given me this awesome pink Lady Elvis costume, so I wanted to try and find a blonde Elvis wig to go with it — so I could spray paint it pink! I also got a last-minute idea for a photo involving a watermelon, so I had to run around town looking for one of those, too — no easy feat at this time of year! Like I said — I was BUSY!!

 

 

I was able to find the watermelon (see below for the FABULOUS results), but alas, on the wig front all the costume stores in town came up dry. WTF!!! This is VEGAS, and a girl can’t find a blonde Elvis wig?!?!?! I guess I’ll have to order one online — but in the meantime, I ended up just sort of shaping my own massive hair into a pompadour, and spraying it pink. AND IT CAME OUT GREAT — don’t you think????!!! P.S. Yes that’s my trusty throne that I found at Burning Man, ha ha ha…I bet the asshole who left it laying on the playa is pretty bummed out right about now! I mean, just $10 of spray paint, and look how fabulous it is!!!

 

Anyhoos, the pics we shot that day are REALLY fabulous….but when I got home, I was inspired for an EVEN MORE FABULOUS shoot!! I won’t say what it is, but it’s gonna involve some intensive hair, makeup and prop-building — so watch out! I actually got inspired for about 5 or 6 new photos, which is great, because guess what??? Randy and I are collaborating on a FABULOUS BOOK OF OUR PHOTOS! Watch out; this is sure to take the art world by storm. We’ve been shooting together for about 4 years, on and off, and have amassed quite a collection of fantastic pix — so we’re going to publish the best of them in a sort of coffee table art book — photos by Randy, text by me! My idea is to write a short, witty

blurb about each photo — maybe about its origins, or something weird that happened during the shoot, etc. So you’ll get fantastic photos AS WELL AS scintillatingly witty writing! I will be sure to let everyone know when this book is ready — trust me, you’ll definitely want one!

I have long wanted to publish a book of my photos, but they are taken by so many different photographers that it would be a nightmare to get all the necessary permissions. The sad fucking truth is that, as a model, I do not own the copyright to ANY of my photos 🙁 Even the ones where it was MY concept, my hair/makeup/costuming, my location scouting, etc. — because the photographer clicked the shutter, he owns the image. I understand if it was a shoot for which the photographer PAID me…but this applies even if it was a Trade (i.e. unpaid) shoot! ARRRGH! I have so many awesome photos shot by so many awesome photographers, but it just isn’t feasible to get them all together in one book. But since I’ve shot the most with Randy, I decided to team up with him. I do have a lot of SUPER BAD ASS photos with Michael Maze, as well…so maybe I’ll team up with him on a second book 🙂 And another of my fave photographers, Barfing Rainbows, is also working on a book of his own in which some of my pics will appear…so look out for that!

So aside from all that, I also did a gig as a corporate mascot at a convention for convenience store owners. Picture a cavernous convention center, FILLED with displays of candy, chocolate, pizza, pretzels, beef jerky, CHEESE jerky (?!?!?!), potato chips, TastyKakes, cookies, deep fried taquitos, hot dogs….basically every NASTY-ASS “food” item that can be purchased at a convenience store (or, as they call them in the trade, “C-Stores…” LMFAO!). WORSE, all the vendors are offering free samples of everything! Luckily for me I was trapped inside a giant rabbit suit, and couldn’t do tooooo much damage…but I did get a few breaks, and I’m here to tell you it was ugly. I tried to eat a healthy breakfast before going over there, to try and fortify myself…but it was no use. Despite my better instincts — I work out and eat healthy — the smells of all that awful shit called to me. I swear, they add some kinda chemicals to that crap to make you crave it. D’OH!!!!!!! I ate SO. MUCH. CRAP. Fried mac-n-cheese wedges, tater tots, French toast stix, pizza, Slurpees, chocolate wine (!!! my new favorite thing!!!)…ugh, I want to puke just remembering it.

 

 

 
To get away from the temptation, on one of my breaks I went outside and sat there reading one of the trade journals they were passing out  — I always find it interesting to read these insider magazines, in this case to see what the fuck is going through the mind of someone who owns a C-store. It also happens to be election season, so a good bulk of this particular mag was devoted to stumping for Romney…but mostly AGAINST Obama. These c-store owners *DESPISE* Obama…mostly for Obamacare, which they say would force them to offer insurance to their employees, which they can’t afford!

OMG you poor souls…I understand you don’t turn a profit on gasoline, but how about the markups on that artery-clogging GARBAGE you’re pimping to your blue-collar patrons (and employees)?! Are you fucking serious?? If convenience stores only sold apples and pornography, you wouldn’t even NEED Obamacare — everyone would be hale and hearty! Arrgh! Seriously, I’m no nanny-stater…but “STUFFERS?” CHEESE JERKY??! This isn’t food, it’s tumors!!!  As mentioned, I am well-informed and try to eat well, but having that shit around is REALLY hard to resist. I’m not saying it should be illegal — everyone should be free to make their own bad choices — but it should be taxed to tell, so that the extra revenue can be used to PAY THE MEDICAL BILLS OF THE INDIGENT FOOLS WHO EAT THIS SHIT! Obesity is about to cost the U.S.A. **BILLIONS** of dollars in healthcare costs…and Dog knows the crooked fuckers in the insurance industry are salivating at the prospect. Wise up, America!

 

<—- (And if you didn’t believe me about the c-store industry being anti-Obama…check out THIS little bit of thinly-veiled racism. O………..M…………..G.)

 

 Now, I know a lot of Republicans “read” this blog (they’re the biggest fucking perverts of all, don’t you know??) and I’m sorry to kill your boner mid-jerk with all this political rhetoric, but seriously. How can you be all about letting people make their OWN decisions when it comes to worship, interpretation of science, and eating junk food….but at the same time be so VEHEMENTLY opposed to letting people make their own decisions when it comes to abortion, fucking people of the same sex, and eating/smoking drugs?? Abortion I can understand, because it can be argued that a life is being taken. But DRUGS?? HOMOSEXUALITY? How is that worse for the Nation than living off junk food and soda??? I smoke marijuana every single night of my life, and I GUARANTEE you the side effects are less than that of eating junk food and soda. So either shut the fuck up and let me smoke my weed legally, or else let us liberals make junk food a Schedule I drug. End of rant!

In other news, a fabulous local bar/bowling alley/nightclub called Drink & Drag just rolled out a new Lesbian Night on Wednesdays, called Dollhaus…and they have Drag King competitions every other week! I went out there last Wednesday as my male alter-ego, Johnny Areola, and had a grand old time groping the tits and asses of every woman in the house. I LOVE BEING A MAN! Seriously, it’s very liberating walking around without a fucking purse hanging off your shoulder — as Johnny Areola, I roll around with just my keys, money and ID tucked in my front pocket — easy peasy! No makeup to fuss with, no bullshit. Love it!

I met up with my friend Mistress Mizery, who was co-hostessing the event, and then I performed in the Drag King competition, which was just like a Drag Queen thing where they lip-sync Whitney Houston songs or whatever…only now it’s Drag KINGS lip-syncing manly-man songs, haha! I wanted to do George Michael’s “Faith,” but the DJ didn’t have it…so I settled for “YMCA” instead. The contest was judged by audience applause, and since none of my friends were there except Mistress Mizery, I came in 2nd place 🙁 Fuck that shit! I decided never to go again….but then the next Wednesday, Mistress Mizery texted me begging me to come down and perform! She said they would even pay me a small stipend this time, so I got back into my Man Suit and went back down there for another round.

 

This time it wasn’t a competition — just performances, and they finally had “Faith,” so I lip-synced that and made a few tips from the audience. Nice!!! I never did get paid for going down there, but I didn’t feel like waiting around all night so I kinda just bailed right after the performance, anyway. But before I left, the badass lesbian promoter who runs these events took me aside and told me she’s starting a Drag King Revue, and I can be in it!!! She’s going to cast five Drag Kings, then teach us choreographed routines and shit, just like the Backstreet Boys, LMFAO!!!!! How fucking fun is THAT going to be??? Watch out, Vegas!!!!

 

 

Now speaking of things to watch out for, I spent last Friday night hanging out with this local magician friend of mine, and he has a REALLY cool idea for an attraction: facebook.com/WhatIsItVegas! Basically, it’s like one of those roadside attractions that charge you $1 to see the “Thing…” you know, the classic P.T. Barnum shtick!! I *LOVE* stuff like that! Well, I happen to have some inside info on this “Thing” my friend has acquired, and I’m here to tell you…IT IS FREAKY! I’m sure sure *quite* what the fuck it is, but it is BIZARRE! All he’ll say about it is that it was “Purportedly found on the Banks of Lake Mead, Very close to the Hoover Dam… Never Before Seen By The Public!… What is it?” So anyway, look out for that coming to a spot near you in the near future!!!

Anyway, my magician friend and I went to the Renaissance Faire for a couple hours, which was the same old, same old…and then we hit up the 10th Anniversary of the First Friday Arts Festival in downtown Vegas for a couple of hours, where I helped some friends of mine pass out flyers for the 3rd Annual Las Vegas Halloween Parade, a **FANTASTICALLY FUN** parade/party that will be held in downtown Vegas on Halloween night. Seriously people, if you have no plans for Oct. 31st (a Wednesday), be SURE to come to this party — it’s gonna be SICK! I went last year, and I had one of the best times of my LIFE (and that’s saying a LOT!). This parade grows every year, and will soon be on par with Mardi Gras or the Love Parade…I’m telling you, it is SICK. They roll out all these Burning Man art cars, which drive the parade route as floats, and there are fire spinners and stilt walkers and all kinds of amazing costumes (this is a city known for costumes; of COURSE we have the baddest ass costumes in the USA!). The parade will end at a block party just off Fremont Street, where the Dancetronauts will perform and all kinds of merriment will take place. If you’re not from here, Vegas usually has fantastic weather at that time of year, so what better place to spend the holiday than here?? COME ONE, COME ALL…SEE YOU THERE!!!

Incidentally, if you’re wondering about the random-ass photo I posted to the left…I just the other day discovered the “Other” folder in my Facebook messages. I didn’t realize that if someone sends you a message and they are not already your “friend,” it gets filed in this weird sub-folder and you never even know you got it!!! I went in there and it was like a time capsule — I had ALL KINDS of fan mail, party invites (including one to party with the real Dos Equiz Most Interesting Man in the World, supposedly) and other assorted offers (including one to shrink and eat some guy, haha)…all dating back as far as 2010!!! WTF, if you emailed me and I never answered you, I apologize — I just didn’t know this folder EXISTED! Fuck, one more thing to check every day, I guess…but meanwhile, someone had sent me the above photo, from a gig I did back in June as the Pool Diva at the Tropicana pool.

 

Now lastly, I also FINALLY got around to converting my guest bedroom in to a walk-in closet. Ever since I moved into this new house, I’ve been dissatisfied with the teeny-tiny 1943-era closets…so I finally just took the plunge and jettisoned my guest bed (on loan to my roommate) and put a futon in my office, for any visitors to sleep on. Then I turned the entire room into a sort of boudoir, with allllll my wigs, hats, shoes, costumes and makeup all in one place. NICE! I wanted one of those old-school Hollywood vanity mirrors, with the lights all around it, but I was trying to do this on the cheap, yo. So I got a $14 mirror at Savers, and strung an $8 string of giant white Christmas lights around it!! It works GREAT!!! Total cost of this project to date:

  • $100 vanity desk, purchased on craigslist
  • $90 futon, purchased on craigslist
  • $50 freestanding closet device, from casa.com (it arrived badly damaged, so they refunded me 50% of the $100 original price)
  • $14 mirror
  • $8 lights

total spent: $262. Not bad! I’m still not quite finished organizing it, but when it’s all done, I will post a video tour online, so you can see it for yourself! I also need to make a video of my playing my autoharp, which an awesome friend of mine finally tuned for me, and which sounds BEAUTIFUL! Any song requests??????

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strange Goings-On at Hooters

Wow, what a week.

Not much really happened, but it was still a doozy. Work was slow, which made me antsy, which made me apply for all kindsa crazy Craigslist nonsense that I shouldn’t have bothered with…but it’s toooo laaaaate nooooow…..once I say I’ll do something, I’ll DO IT, by Jove! I’m not a flake!

The big hubbub around town concerns the latest haunted house attraction, known as Eli Roth’s Goretorium. Now, Vegas is famous for capitalizing on every holiday known to man (I’m sure someone’s already working on Viva El Eid®), and Halloween is no exception. Every year, the venerable Circus Circus turns its entire Adventuredome theme park into the Fright Dome haunted house…so it was only a matter of time before someone took the concept uptown.

Enter Eli Roth, director of horror film classics “Hostel” and “Hostel II…” but probably most notably recognizable as the Bear Jew from “Inglorious Basterds.” Roth had the semi-ingenious idea of opening a year-round haunt on the Vegas Strip — something to get that coveted 18-35 Hot Topic dollar, complete with a wedding chapel and lounge. He hired a bunch of local nightclub-industry douchebags to run the place, then set his sights on a late-September opening…just in time to capitalize on Halloween (which, due to its symbiotic relationship with slutty costumes, has pretty much become Vegas’s signature holiday).

I’ve never been a huge fan of horror movies (although I’d like to BE in one…I’ve long fancied myself a scream queen, albeit a flat-chested one)…but I thought this might be an interesting attraction. A bunch of my Burning Man friends got jobs there, so I figured it was worth a look-see when they announced they were having an invite-only VIP grand opening party with free drinks. (Honestly, I couldn’t have cared less about the haunted house. It was the DRINKS!)

The reception went from 9-11, and I had to work til 10 that night… but having been assured that it would be worth stopping by at, I raced over there the minute I got off work. And I was immediately confronted with a HUUUUUGE line….a line that wasn’t moving AT. ALL.

Now, I *HATE* lines. Whenever I see a bunch of people standing in line to get an iPhone or to get into a nightclub or something, I am immediately reminded of the late, great Sex Pistols’ song “EMI:” “Blind acceptance is a sign…of STUPID FOOLS WHO STAND IN LINE!” Anything that has a bunch of dumbasses in line for it is usually a COMPLETE waste of time (viz. Disneyland rides, iPhones, Justin Bieber tickets). Everyone knows that the REALLY cool stuff is the stuff that NO ONE GIVES A FUCK ABOUT…the stuff that sits in the 25cent bin at Savers, unwanted and unloved. 9 times out of 10, that stuff is the SHIZ.

But, as mentioned, I have a bunch of friends who are working there, and I kinda wanted to support them in their new endeavor. Plus, I had a couple friends in line already, and it was fun to chat and catch up with them while we waited. Unfortunately, the line barely moved for the 75 minutes or so that I stood there. Meanwhile, some asswad busker in a kilt was braying on a bagpipe about 15 feet away, and it was starting to eat away at my fillings. I had a LOT of shit to do…why was I standing here? But every time I thought to bail, my friends convinced me that “the line is moving now! We’ll be inside any minute!”

Yeah, no. After over an hour, a bouncer-type douchenozzle came out and informed the line that the place was closed. That was it — no apology or sugar-coat, just GET OUT OF HERE. He had that arrogant douchebag nightclub bouncer mentality about him that just rubbed me the wrong way — I mean, there’s a POLITE way to say this shit! It’s not like we were doing anything wrong — we had all RSVP’d and been “specially invited” to this dumbass opening. Now I feel stupid for believing the invitation! And I don’t like feeling stupid!

I was pretty much over it already — one qvetchy Tweet, and I had it out of my system. But when I got home, the negative Facebooking began: apparently, there was a sizeable group of Goretorium employees who had quit in protest of unfair working conditions. Now, I don’t know any of these people personally, so I can only report on what they’ve written: according to these aggrieved ex-employees, they were hired as gory actors and promised “good pay;” pay that they would be “happy with.” They all quit their day jobs, began slaving away at the Goretorium…and then the sword dropped: they would only be making $8.25/hour (minimum wage). Gasp!!!

The protest group is led by one Don Henrie, a/k/a the Vampire Don…I don’t know him, but he is apparently a dedicated real-life vampire: he is a sanguinarian (i.e. drinks blood), avoids daylight (due to a propensity for sun poisoning), and sleeps in a coffin (it helps alleviate his fibromyalgia symptoms). (All this from Wikipedia.) I guess he was hired at the Goretorium as an actor, and promised “good money…” but then found out after it was too late that the “good money” was minimum wage. He says he quit a better-paying job for this b.s., and he’s mad as hell! He has a sizeable cadre of followers — fellow ex-employees who are also pissed off, plus a random assortment of fans and friends. They are one and all hell-bent on bringing the Goretorium down — with social media campaigns and live protests (in costume) in front of the Goretorium, in the middle of the Vegas Strip.

All this over a freaking haunted house!

Out of spite, I was inclined to side with Don Henrie and his peeps…but, honestly: would you EVER take a job (much less quit an already established job) for a new one without knowing EXACTLY what the pay is? I know I wouldn’t! No matter how fun a gig it is, I need to know the bottom line first, yo! (Again, I don’t know the whole story here…so if you have a rebuttal, please post in the comments! I’m genuinely curious!)

Aaaaaaaaaaaanyway, everyone in town is all abuzz with pro- and anti-Goretorium sentiment. I got caught in the middle — half my friends work there (it seems like half of Vegas was hired to work this thing — but then at $8.25/hour, I guess they can afford a bunch of actors…being that the ticket price is $40, and they also sell merch & have a bar)…but now I also somehow fell in with the anti-Goretorium crowd, and am getting all THEIR wacky postings, too!

I had pretty much decided to wash my hands of all of it (remember, I hate haunted houses anyway)…when one of the anti-Goretorium peeps posted a photo of a leaked flyer that was given to employees, urging them to pimp out the company on social media. This handout advises that if you want a bonus (it couldn’t be a very big bonus, seeing as they pay minimum wage), you are expected/required to do a bunch of crazy social media crap, including make a Facebook page for your Goretorium character, have at least 100 friends on it, post on it at least 3x per week, plus have a Twitter page, plus vote for Goretorium in all the local “best-of” polls, PLUS find six different locations that will let you drop off Goretorium flyers every 2 weeks. It sounds exhausting!!!

But the worst part of it was, they ALSO expect you to write good Goretorium reviews on Yelp. If you don’t already have a Yelp! account, you are supposed to create one — then write two good reviews of other businesses first, so that you don’t get flagged or filtered when you post your glowing review of Goretorium (Yelp! has a decent algorhythm for filtering out fake reviews written by people with no previous Yelp! presence, and Goretorium management cannily figured out a way to circumvent this).

Apparently, this is standard operating procedure for many Vegas Strip nightclubs — and other businesses in general. How sad! I *love* Yelp — I use it ALL the time to find mechanics, restaurants, contractors, etc. I am such a prolific Yelper, in fact, that they gave me Elite status, and now I get free schwag every now and again (see below). But I take my Yelping very seriously, and would NEVER write a fake review — even though you’d be ASTONISHED at how many times I’ve been asked to. NOTE to business owners: I AM NOT writing a fake good review for your business — unless I’ve already been there, and liked it! Fuck off!!!

Anyhoo, seeing this bullshit in black-and-white really got my goat…so now I’m back in the anti-Goretorium fray. How sad is it to coerce your minimum-wage staff to write good reviews for you, so they can win a paltry bonus? Answer: pretty sad.

But, with that being said….I am officially withdrawing from the Goretorium fray. You’ll never hear the word escape my lips again…nor will I type the letters again. I have too much lamer stuff to focus on than worry about a $40 haunted house!

The main thing I had to focus on was my shitty birthday. As previously mentioned, I’ve never been one to really celebrate it, but this year was exceptionally shitty. It was all mostly the fault of this kooky Lebanese whackjob I met the other night when I was taking souvenir photos — he came up to me as I was selling my photos at the end of the night, and struck up a conversation. Since he was nice enough, and ESPECIALLY since he resembled a Greek/Lebanese Rod Stewart, I agreed to meet him for a drink after work. We went to a lounge and chatted for an hour or two, but he got too attached, and tried to kiss me, so I broke it off. But he seemed so lonely and miserable that for some reason I agreed to meet up with him when I was next available…which happened to be Saturday night, after work on my birthday. I had no plans anyway, so I agreed to meet him for another drink at 10pm in front of the theater. I gave him my card so he could text me, but he demurred, saying “No, I’ll just meet you at 10pm in front of the theater.”

Well, that was Wednesday. By the time Saturday rolled around, I was pretty depressed, and the LAST thing I felt like doing was hang out with a strange Englishman (he was Lebanese/Greek by birth, but lives in London) who would doubtless just try to get his hand down my pants. But he never did call or text me, and I didn’t have his info, so I had no way of contacting him to cancel.

Say what you will about me…I am NOT A FLAKE! Even though I was severely depressed, AND it was my birthday, I *STILL* dragged my ass up to the theater at 10pm, secretly hoping he wouldn’t be there, so I could just go home and celebrate my b-day with my friends Chuck and Mary Jane. I just couldn’t make myself stand the poor guy up — I just felt sorry for him. I’m a nice person, what can I say?

Well, thankfully that asshole blew me off (he must have figured since I wouldn’t even KISS him, I would hardly let him jab a finger or worse into my hoo-ha)…so I did end up going home to see my TRUE friends (sad as that may be). And when midnight rolled around, I sighed with relief: pressure over! Another lame-ass b-day averted.

Now, that’s not to say I didn’t have ANY fun this past week! Another friend took me to an excellent vegan dinner at the Wynn — in case you did’t know, Steve Wynn is a hardcore vegan, and all his restaurant menus offer vegan dishes…so my friend took me to one for appetizers, and another for more apps and entrees. It was DELICIOUS! That reminds me, I need to Yelp about that… their vegan food is truly exceptional. You would never know you weren’t eating meat…some of it is very clever.

But all my vegan eating was ruined by my choice of beverage: Campari, a most UN-vegan drink! The red dye in Campari comes from the shells of a South American beetle — gross but true; look it up. It’s called “carmine,” or “cochineal extract.” (Actually, Campari stopped using carmine in 2004 or so, and replaced it with fake red dye…but you can still get the real Campari in Brazil, and they say it tastes MUCH better. Anyone who wants to send me a bottle of Brazilian Campari, feel free!!!) So anyhoo, my drink was technically still vegan, after all.

I couldn’t stay out too late, because I had a fully-booked schedule the next day. At noon, I did a shoot for a nudist website here at my house — the webmaster videotaped me painting nude (I painted a weeping unicorn, of course), exercising to Jane Fonda videos nude (LOL!) and then playing Strip Trivia (he had me wear the same outfit I wore when I was on Jeopardy! in 2003, which came off piece-by-piece as he asked me questions from a Trivial Pursuit game). When my nudie shoot was over, I headed straight over to the Hooters Hotel (LOL), where a photographer had hired me for a quickie one-hour photo shoot in his room.

I was a little sketched out by this second shoot, since the guy didn’t want me to bring anything and said he already had a Hooters outfit for me (??!)…but it turned out GREAT! Come to find out, the guy runs a pantyhose fetish website, and has a special predilection for those industrial-strength orange/brown Hooters hose that they wear…so he basically just had me put on one of his MANY Hooters costumes (he had them in every size), then photographed me lolling around on the bed in various states of undress. Fun!

While there, I had a few flashbacks to my own days as a Hooters girl in 2006. STOP LAUGHING — they really hired me! Apparently, they hire based on personality and not tit-size, as the giant-fake-titted girlfriend I went with did not get hired, and I did. Yay! Alas, I only lasted about 2 weeks, for two reasons: one, the money SUCKED BALLS for the amount of work (hustling wings and greasy-ass food all day for a $3 tip here, a $2 tip there…no thanx). And TWO, they won’t let you wear your hair up — you have to leave it hanging loose (hello…health code???), so that it absorbs all the grease and nastiness. Washing my hair is a long fucking process — I’m not trying to do that EVERY DAY! So I quit. But I really just did it to see if they’d hire me — and to take photos in the costume. Mission accomplished! (But remind me to tell you about it some day…it’s a GREAT story!!)

Just as I was feeling kinda gross and low-class for doing a photo shoot at Hooters (not my first, incidentally…I’ve shot in most of the hotel rooms in Vegas) — another photographer hired me for a super-classy shoot in a VIP suite at the Encore hotel. This guy was very polite and very classy, and gave me a sizeable tip “for parking” (uhh, parking is free in Vegas….but I guess I shouldn’t let that get out) but ironically, the Hooters shoot paid more! Although the Encore guy let me go early, which meant minute-for-minute, I made more at Encore. But who’s counting?!

The worst thing was, the night before the Encore shoot I went to a buffet and PIGGED THE FUCK OUT! Now, you tell me — who the hell goes to a buffet the night before a nude photo shoot? I don’t normally — but it was exceptional circumstances. One of my many part-time gigs is writing show reviews for a local tourist website, and this time they sent me to see “The Rat Pack is Back,” a Rat Pack impersonator/memory lane nostalgia-fest at the Rio. The jackass who was supposed to go with me flaked, so I went alone — figuring it would be easier that way, anyway. I mean, I only make $25 per review, so I like to just go, get the fuck out, & bang out the review.If I bring a date, then I gotta hang out and schmooze and bullshit over drinks…all of which brings my hourly rate down to G________ level (I TOLD you I wouldn’t say that word again!!!).

But what I didn’t realize was that this show (which was awesome, incidentally — read my Yelp review here) also came with free buffet passes! Now, I’ve never been one to shy away from free food…but going to a buffet alone? DEPRESSING! Still, I made myself sack up & do it anyway — in the interest of being frugal (plus, it was the Rio…and their buffet is pretty good). I got in line, endured the jokes and come-ons of all the mooks in line who wanted me to eat with them, inhaled 3 plates of food and then got the fuck out of there!!!!! Then, thanks to all those sit-ups I’ve been doing for the last 9 years, my ab muscles held it all in place the next afternoon at the photo shoot. WINNING!!!

Shockingly, that was not the only buffet I went to this week, either! I also got an invitation from Yelp! to attend the grand opening of the new Bacchanal Buffet at Caesars Palace — which was *A*W*E*S*O*M*E*!!! I mean, REALLY high class. Amazing food, amazing accoutrements, amazing decor, amazing service. That place is tits for sure! Again, I inhaled about 3 plates of food…but this time I had a girlfriend with me, and we walked around the Forum Shops awhile to burn a few calories afterward. AND I had no nudie shoots the following day, so I was able to just let it all hang out.

Now speaking of shoots, I also did a REALLY fun one with one of my favorite photographers, Michael Maze. I had been wanting to do a Marie Antoinette themed-pic for a loooong time, but never had the right props or background for it. FORTUITOUSLY, on the last day of Burning Man, I found this AWESOME-SAUCE chair on the playa that some jackass had left behind…so I hauled it home, and $10 worth of spray paint later, it was an awesome throne fit for a Queen!

So I invited Maze and his girlfriend over, and we had a fabulous photo shoot party. Alas, he hasn’t finished editing any of the REALLY good ones yet…I mean, I specially made a fancy piece of cake and went to town on it in a very special way — but here are a couple. I especially like the ironing board one — it’s an idea I’ve had for a long time, since I’m flat as the proverbial ironing board. Miss Fawn Dew did an EXCELLENT job channeling a trailer-park Jerry Springer housewife in it, don’t you think???

Meanwhile, all this shit was going on and I was STILL really depressed. I think it was the fact that my birthday falls on the autumnal equinox — so just as I am getting older, the leaves are all turning brown & falling off, reminding me of my mortality. That, and I guess I’m still kinda bummed about Captain Crunch…whatever! There’s only one thing to do when I’m feeling blue — head straight down to Bell, Book & Candle, a local Magick Shoppe that sells spells, potions and candles. The great big shaggy bear of a wizard who works there always fixes me up a nice candle in a jar, with oils and herbs and glitter sprinkled atop it, and then I go home and burn it for 7 days and my blues ALWAYS go away. I’m not superstitious or even spiritual…I just like rituals. And I like the great, big shaggy bear wizard…who is ALWAYS barefoot, and whose shoppe is full of the most interesting jars of herbs and spices with hand-written labels reading “Witches’ Bane,” “Baby’s Bloode” and “Wolf Nipple Chippes,” etc. I swear, that shop has to have been open for at LEAST 100 years…I’m sure it predates even the Old Mormon Fort here. Now that I think about it, I should Yelp it! It’s AWESOME! If you’ve never been, and you need a spell or a tarot reading….head over! It’s on East Charleston, near 15th St. Fabulous place.

After that, my neighbor took me out to Ellis Island for steaks. Ellis Island is a local dive that’s been around FOREVER, and they’re mostly known for their karaoke. I used to hang out there back in the day when I worked at the MGM (in 2001-ish) because they used to let casino employees drink FOR FREE (!!!!! Can you imagine!!!! I can’t believe I didn’t get a DUI until 2010.) Then for awhile, there was talk of imploding poor old Ellis Island for another douchey high-rise condo tower — which thankfully, a little something called the Recession put the kibosh to! So Ellis Island still squats in squalor, in the shadow of the Strip (it’s on Koval Lane, for all you non-locals…check it out!).

Either way, I’m here to tell you that they have an AMAZING steak special — around $8 or so for a big-ass (8 oz or so) filet, with salad, green beans and a baked potato. PLUS a beer is included…but I hate beer, so I had a glass of wine (which cost extra). I thought the $7.77 steak special at Mr. Lucky’s in the Hard Rock was good (and it really is)…but if you like beer, Ellis Island is the better deal. (If you like fake tits and poseurs, then Hard Rock is the better deal for you.)

After that, I felt a LOT better — plus, I embarked on a new project, which has served to take my mind off my malaise: I am tired of trying to cram all my clothes and costumes into my shitty-ass 1943-era closet, and have finally decided to turn my guest bedroom into a dressing room!!!! Like one of those old-school Hollywood starlet ones, with a lighted vanity and all! Alas, I am perpetually broke, so I’m trying to do it on the cheap — I bought a vanity on craigslist, and am gonna try and attach strip lighting to this mirror I bought at Savers. Next I need to rig up clothes rods and shelves, and before you know it I will have a FABULOUS dressing room, fit for a diva. Anyone have any tips or advice, please let me know…I *SUCK* at carpentry!

So now I feel better. I did manage to have a few hi-jinks these past several days, including this fantastic bike parade they had as part of Interbike, the bicycle industry trade show at the Sands Expo. It was sort of like Critical Tits at Burning Man…only we all wore clothes, and rode down Las Vegas Blvd. to downtown Vegas, where there was an afterparty at the Downtown Cocktail Room (a slightly pretentious bar that I am ambivalent about). The party was pretty good, and I met some cool bikers — plus they were silkscreening this cool old-time steampunk-y bike logo onto koozies as souvenir giveaways. I don’t use koozies (remember, I hate beer), but I REALLY wanted something silkscreened!!! I remember at Burning Man, one of my campmates made a silkscreen logo of the Roller Disco and was making shirts for people, but I hadn’t brought anything that would hold a silkscreen design. I’m still pissed about that — so this time, I vowed NOT to miss out, NO MATTER WHAT! But my shirt was black, and I had nothing else to put the logo on….except my underwear!! I was wearing a pair of those ugly-ass 100% cotton briefs my gynecologist had recommended I wear, to prevent yeast infections, so I stepped out into the alley behind the Downtown Cocktail Room, slipped off my shorts and panties, and just as the bouncer was screaming at me “HEY! HEY! HEYYYY!!!!” I whipped my pants back on and had them silkscreen my panties!! They came out GREAT!!!! Although, I’m not sure if they are gynecologist-approved any more :/

In other news, speaking of my friend Mary Jane, my medical marijuana prescription is about to expire in November…so now I get a letter from the Department of Health & Human Services advising that I have the PRIVILEGE of renewing for another year… for the LOW, LOW price of $150 — PLUS the cost of another doctor’s note ($80), PLUS notarizing two documents ($10). So basically, if I want to take my medicine — and it was VOTED by the citizens of Nevada to be recognized as LEGAL MEDICINE — I have to cough up $240!!! WTF! Is there any other medication that one has to pay $240 just to get a LICENSE for — and then PAY FOR, on top of it??? It’s bullshit! Imagine if you had to pay $200/year to be allowed to take penicillin — or Prednisone — or Viagra??? I hate that this is such a bullshit gray area — either it’s LEGAL, or it’s NOT…make up your fuckin’ minds, assholes. (Once Pfizer figures out a way to patent THC, it’ll be legal all right…mark my words. Fuckers.) But as a friend said, what we marijuana users really need are some EFFECTIVE LOBBYISTS! I hate the idea of lobbyists, but I guess that’s what it takes to get shit done in the U.S.A…eh?? So, I guess I should start some kind of fundraiser, so we can afford to hire some annoying asshole to go to Washington and toss congressmens’ salads or whatever, to get ’em to legalize it. Arrrrgh!

Oh P.S., if you’ve ever wondered how to clean a bong….here’s a tutorial I made one recent afternoon:

LOL!

Speaking of funds, another friend (the same one who took me out for vegan food at the Wynn) recently hired me to do some word processing for him. I’ve never done any remote office work like this before, but have found it to be enjoyable and easy — so if you have any typing, editing or other office work that I can do from my home office, let me know! For a small additional stipend, I’ll even do it naked! As you may have noticed reading this blog, I have impeccable attention to details and excellent spelling and grammar…so keep me in mind. Just saying!

Finally, one of my photographer friends made this calendar of my nudie photos…if you’re interested in ordering one, here’s the link!

Now I gotta get to bed — it’s late, and I have a party to attend in the morning. Sayonara, friends!

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I lack gravitas…but I make up for it with shenanigans

I’m barely back from the artsy-farsty lovey-dovey hippiefest of Burning Man, and the seedy Vegas underworld has gotten her claws into me already. I can’t be in this town two minutes without an Irish transsexual inviting me to a bondage fest at a local titty bar, or a polyamorous fetishmeister hiring me to pop balloons with my ass. As one of my readers suggested I use for a motto…                                                                         WONDERHUSSY: MY WEEK BEATS YOUR YEAR!

Actually, it all started very unglamorously with my being unceremoniously DUMPED by my erstwhile boyfriend, Captain Crunch. You may have noticed that I haven’t written anything about him for quite some time — though we were still “dating” up through last Saturday, he generally preferred to spend time with his mountain bike, and I guess I was busy with my….well, you know the kind of shit I do. Between that and the fact that we live 30 minutes across town from each other, and rarely had the same nights off…it was a weird relationship all along. Honestly though, I had noticed that he seemed MUCH less interested in me for the past few months…so I guess he just got tired of my shtick, and moved on.

I was slightly miffed that HE was the one to break up with ME, however: I’m the one who does the dumping around here, ya heard?!  Truth be known, I knew it was over at least a month ago, when I made my ill-fated trip to San Francisco for that modeling seminar — he didn’t seem to miss me at all, and was standoffish on the phone. I should have sacked up and called him out on it, but I’m a total passive puss, so I just let it slide, with my usual laissez-faire attitude: let’s just wait and see what happens. Well, I guess I found out what happens!! When I got back from California, we had ONE night off in common before I left for Burning Man (and he left for a 2-week mountain biking odyssey) (I told you he was obsessed with his mountain bike). He was supposed to come over to my house on that one night, but at the last minute he called to say he had a lot of homework, and could I just go over to his house instead? Well, I wasn’t feeling well anyway, and didn’t really feel like driving across town to sit around his house watching him do homework (he’s working on his master’s degree from one of those bullshit online diploma mills, so he can get a promotion in the Chair Force)…so I demurred, saying, “Well, I guess we’ll just see each other when we get back from our respective trips.”

So when I got back from Burning Man, we chatted on the phone and made sort of vague plans to get together…and then 20 minutes later he texted me that he just wasn’t feeling it anymore, and how did I feel? I said I felt he wasn’t interested in me anymore, and had felt that way for some time. He was very apologetic and polite about it, saying he felt he’d done me a disservice (he’s very well-spoken)…but honestly, it was no suprise — and truthfully not even much of a disappointment. An ego blow, maybe…but it wasn’t really meant to be, if I’m completely honest with myself. He is a very cool guy and was totally supportive of my lifestyle…but he was bound to get tired of it, sooner or later. They all do!

Anyhoo, my new policy is: NO MORE AIR FORCE DUDES!!! As you may recall, the last guy I dated, Sgt. Peanut, was also a drone pilot…and look how that ended!!! I think I need to date a musician or an artist of some sort — someone who GETS me! But either way, HEAR YE, HEAR YE: CALL OFF YOUR DOGS, I AM NOT READY TO START DATING AGAIN YET! So back the fuck off, boys…I need some me time!

So, aaaaaaaaaaanyhoo, I had just gotten dumped by Cap’n Crunch, but I had little time to cry because I was booked to appear in this fetish fashion show at the Hustler Club, which was having a Fetish Masquerade Ball featuring all the local BDSM aficionados. Me and a few other chicks modeled latexwear from this amazing local German fetish shop, The Black Door, and there were live beatings, spankings and performances by the Genitorturers and the Swing Shift Side Show.

You may remember the Genitorturers from their ’90s Goth heyday — well, I’m here to tell you that they have fallen on positively Spinal Tap-esque times of late. The evening started with a big snafu over the dressing room situation — so as not to be in the way of the REAL working strippers at the Hustler Club, we had been given the men’s dressing room to use as our staging area. Halfway into our latex-lacing, in come the Genitorturers, whose frontwoman, a washed-up hag with bleached blond hair and bad tattoos, starts throwing a hissy fit about how that was “THEIR” dressing room. Ooh, my bad! They moved us down the hall into the manager’s office, so that Gen (as the lead singer calls herself) could strap her fat ass into her corset, boots and wig out of sight of the prying eyes of us lowly models.

Anyhoo, washed-up hag or no, I have to give credit where credit’s due: she is an AMAZING performer, and a great frontwoman. She really rocked the Hustler Club; those perverts never knew what hit ’em! But even better were the ever-popular Swing Shift SideShow, a local band of tattooed, pierced freaks who perform a sort of twisted mutilation act where they stick corkscrews in their noses and shoot darts out their vaginas, etc. I’ve seen them several times, and they are AMAZING! Li’l Miss Firefly, the midget in the troupe, did a striptease on a pile of broken glass and then swallowed a balloon that was as long as her entire body (!!!)… all of which was very hard for poor Gen of the Genitorturers to live up to, despite the fact that she was desperately flailing a fiberoptic whip around while grinding a chainsaw against her codpiece, sending sparks all over the strip club. Sorry Gen, a glass-trampling midget beats your tired old shtick every time!

As all of this mayhem was going down I was busy being chatted up by the owner of a local uber-kinky swingers’ club. You want to talk about CHARACTERS?? This guy is a character: long blonde curly mullet, deeply tanned leathery complexion, bodybuilder’s physique, and super-earnest manner. He was telling me about his legal woes, and the trials and tribulations of running a sex club empire (he also runs a legendary club in San Francisco)… and as all this was going on, my transsexual friend was being flogged onstage by none other than his lawyer — a huge, bald beast of a man who also happens to be an avid member of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism…aka those guys who dress up in chain mail and joust in the park) . WOW!

That night really blew my mind, and pretty well put any and all thoughts of Captain Crunch on the back burner. A huge thank you to my fetish friends for helping me through this difficult time. Yay!!!

After that, I got right back into the swing of things, hustling as hard as ever to make up for my income-less time at Burning Man. I did a desert photo shoot with a very sweet (and accomplished) photographer from Biloxi, Miss. one day…then another day I did a shoot for a FANTASTIC new foot fetish product that is going to take the industry by STORM!!! I’m telling you, the guy who invented this thing is a GENIUS. He asked me not to blog about it yet, but I’m DYING to spill the deets — it was THAT cool. And by cool I mean “gross,” “funny,” and “amusing.” Although if you have a foot fetish…you’ll really dig it. Trust me. (I’ll post details as soon as I get the green light from the inventor — stay tuned.)

Then I did the aforementioned balloon-popping videos for this awesome site, Boomhilda.com. Come to find out, balloon fetishists like to see women popping balloons in three different ways: by sitting on them, by stomping on them, and by blowing them up until they burst. That last one was the toughest — hard to keep an alluring expression with the impending threat of exploding latex in your face! But I thoroughly enjoyed the stomp-to-pop clips…and especially the sit-to-pop; I just looooooooove busting stuff with my fat ass! Plus, the guy who runs the site is super cool and very simpatico; we hit it off really well, and I look forward to working with him much more in the future!

Another gig I did for cash was check out this local tourist attraction/class called Stripper 101, at Planet Hollywood. I work for a show-review website that sends me out and about to random shows and attractions so I can write blurbs for their website…but I had long been curious to try out this class for myself, anyway. Stripping seems like the easy answer to my money troubles, only I’m a terrible dancer, and have a hard time being “sexy…” which is what stripping is all about. I thought that maybe by taking this class, I’d pick up a few tricks and get the confidence I need to make the leap into pole-dancing for a living. WRONG!

If Stripper 101 taught me anything, it’s that I would FAIL MISERABLY as a stripper. Not only do I lack the athleticism to strip, but I also lack the gravitas. Yes, I said “gravitas” and “strip” in the same sentence — to be a good stripper, you have to be sultry and sexy and serious about it — not goofy and flippant, like me. That’s why I like doing fetish videos — I can maintain a certain level of gravitas for brief periods — say, 3 minutes; long enough to film a balloon-popping clip, ya know?! If I break character, it’s not so bad; after all, who wouldn’t make a goofy face sitting on balloons til they pop?!! But a six-hour shift in a strip club??? NOT SO MUCH!! I could hardly keep a straight face through the 60 minute class…I felt like a royal idiot swinging spastically around the practice pole. Then we were supposed to give a lap dance to this empty chair…and that was even WORSE! The instructor showed us a routine, and at one point we were supposed to motorboat the guy — now, you tell ME how someone with itty bitty titties like mine is supposed to motorboat ANYONE! It was actually kind of humiliating!

Anyway, you can read my Yelp review on the class here…basically, to sum it up, I felt it was a silly class with little real value; just a bunch of fat Filipinas (bachelorette party) giggling non-stop at the instructor’s coy references to our “cookies” (vaginas). Boring…but very Vegas. This is what chicks from the Midwest come to Vegas to do: learn ho tricks so that they can be ho-ey like the hos on TV. Fun!

Speaking of hos on TV, I myself was a ho on the radio this week! I was cruising around town one afternoon when I got a call from one of the hosts on the local NPR station, a guy who does a show about local and State issues. Usually it’s important stuff like public schools and gaming control board issues…but in the interest of goosing ratings, he was doing a show about local dominatrices and fetish models, and wanted to know if I’d be comfortable talking about my work on the air. Does a bear shit in the woods?!

I referred him to a couple of local dommes, Lady IceQueen and Onya Cox, and we all three ended up going down to the local NPR station for the interview. Shockingly, I had already been to this station before — as a volunteer, LOL, answering phones during one of their pledge drives!!! (Yes, I am a HUUUGE NPR fan, and a current supporter, LMFAO! It takes me a loooong-ass time to put on my makeup, so I listen to NPR to pass the time while I’m drawing on my eyebrows and shit — every day. Some day maybe Terry Gross will interview me on “Fresh Air…” but for now, I had to settle for appearing on “State of Nevada.” Gotta start somewhere!)

Aaaaaanyhoo, Lady IceQueen, Onya Cox and I blathered on for 45 minutes about what we do and why we do it. The other two claimed that domming wasn’t just a job for them, but who they were; I was the lone dissenter, who admitted to doing it solely for the money. I have my doubts about their claims…I mean, if their slaves weren’t paying them, or giving them any sort of tributes (Lady IceQueen had a very nice new Hummer bought for her by one of her slaves)…would they really still do it?

Then the discussion got into feminism; the other two claimed no interest in it, instead preferring to be “pampered,” having doors opened for them and the like. I tried to mount a half-baked defense of my actions, saying that I do consider myself a feminist, but realize that by filming these videos, I’m still playing into a male fantasy and being paid by men in the end…so even though I may be stomping on a guy’s nuts or spitting on his face, he’s still ultimately in control. The other two admitted no such thing — they are in control at all times, FYI. Even when the guy is paying them to castrate him (as Onya Cox claims to have been beseeched to do)…they are the boss, end of story.

Either way, it was an interesting discussion, and you can listen to it here. I wish there had been a live video feed, so you could have seen the three of us in there — it was a riot! The guests before us were stuffed shirts from the local hospital board, and when they got up to leave and saw us coming, you never saw anyone blush so hard. HA! Lady IceQueen was her usual blinged-out, tatted-up, pierced self (she’s the only person I know who has been on Jerry Springer, LOL!)…and Onya Cox was all rockabillied out in her usual sassy style, wearing a cute white dress with a matching fanny pack around her waist. Fabulous!!! I had sort of dressed down in a baseball cap and gym clothes…I mean, WTF! It’s radio!!!

Anyway, the interview went OK, except at one point the engineer came in and bitched us out for using bad language — apparently it was a live show, and he used up all his bleeps when Lady IceQueen said “shit” by mistake, and I made reference to fans “jerking off.” Oy, VEY!! Get over it. After that, we were all very careful to censor our speech and only talk nice, using ladylike language. LOL! I got the hell out of there as soon as we were done — me and Onya Cox went to Denny’s for breakfast, and then I went home to do some yardwork, and to finish cleaning up my shit from Burning Man, which I still hadn’t done.

And then, later that night, I finally returned to work at my souvenir photography job. I hadn’t worked any shifts in like a month, since there hadn’t been a show — but now, since it was Mexican Independence Day week, this certain Latin Lothario who comes in every year was doing a run of shows. This guy, we’ll call him……oh hell, it was Luis Miguel; anyway, Luis Miguel comes to town every year at this time to do a run of shows, and I just looooooooooove working it. He attracts a crowd of the most bedazzled, blinged-out, made-up, expensive-dress-wearing, tits-spilliing-out-the-front, ass-busting-out-the-back filthy rich Mexican women you’ve ever seen. Working his show is like being on the set of a telenovela — gorgeous women everywhere, none with less than 10 pounds of makeup caked on their faces. It’s astonishing — and usually pretty good money, although this year sucked a little more than usual, due to who knows what. I worked three nights of that, and it was insanity — those people drink and party like there’s no tomorrow. You could just tell that most of the men in there had blood on their hands, but all they did was guzzle Chivas and pat their heavily-made-up women on the asses and mill around in the casino after the show singing “Cielito Lindo” over and over and over. Ay, yi, yi, yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii………………..

So, that was pretty much my week. In between all that madness I made time for a few other little shenanigans…nude sunbathing at an eccentric friend’s pool, meeting up with a reader after work for a photo op…but most of the time I sat around thinking of my impending birthday, which is coming up on Sept. 22. Another year older, arrrrrgh. People keep asking me where the party’s at, but astonishingly…for as big a party girl as I am, I have never had a birthday party in my entire life! Not even when I was a little kid! Crazy, but true…I guess I prefer crashing other people’s parties. O.P.P….wasn’t that a song?! Watch out….yours might be next!

 

 

 

 

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