Stern Grip on Hard Rock Pool

More than a thousand Howard Stern fans packed the Hard Rock Hotel pool in Las Vegas this afternoon, dying to see who would be crowned the next Miss Howard TV (Stern's In Demand cable channel).
Actually, they seemed more dying just to see naked female breasts.
"That's not allowed?" host Artie Lange asked an authority figure standing off stage.
"Sorry, guys!" he told the crowd, which nearly rioted in response.
Lange, the Stern sidekick who headlines Hard Rock's Joint tonight, treated 12 inexplicably voluntary female subjects to a full evaluation of their bodies and test of their knowledge of American history.
"If any of them knows who the vice president is," Lange announced beforehand, "I'll blow a guy."
Lange's heterosexuality was in no danger. One contestant thought our second in command was Sarah Palin, another that 9/11 occured in the year "September."
"How about a hand for this dumb bitch!" Lange yelled.
Of course, the real question on the minds of everyone in attendance -- if not everyone in America -- was not who will be the next Howard TV, but who's taller: me or Ronnie "the Limo Driver" Mund.
I shall keep America waiting no longer. We are the same exact height -- a height that Mund refers to as 5-foot-7, but which is really 5-foot-5 and a half.
Mund, Stern's chauffeur and bodyguard, reportedly looked forward to having me butle for him this weekend as part of "Fear and Loafing," the monthly Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper column in which I try out different only-in-Vegas jobs. (And where else but Vegas does a limo driver get a butler?)
Mund plugged it on Stern's airwaves earlier this week, and was said by other staffers to be preparing plans so elaborate and diabolical, "they would make your head spin."
However, the Hard Rock never officially signed off on the plan, ultimately kiboshing it on Thursday.
When pressed to comment on the debacle, Mund responded: "My cup is empty! Go fill it!"

**UPDATE**
Jo Ann Levitan (shown above with Lange) has been crowned my personal Miss Howard TV. And I'm not just saying that because of my massive screw-up last night by not saying how great her thighs looked in the short-shorts she tried on for me at Kohl's.

Dr. Zhivegas and the Lingering Question

Left: What's On Vegas editor Martin Stein, Dr. Zhivegas singer Frankie Muriel and me before making a jackass of myself yet again.

Lori Nelson from Station Casinos phoned the other day, a funny tone in her voice.
"Did you ever write for Circus magazine?" she asked.
Lori is one of my favorite publicists. She trusted me not to crash cars as a Palace Station valet, and handed me the empty showroom at Green Valley Ranch to do with what I pleased as a lounge singer. (It remained empty.)
Whatever her reason for asking this question, I knew it would be interesting. Before whatever it is that you call what I do now, I enjoyed a spectacularly unspectacular career as a rock journalist. My first post-college job was the plotline of "Almost Famous." I rode tour buses and limos with bands into the backstage areas of hockey arenas. Of course, it was with the wrong bands (hair metal), in the wrong decade (the early '90s) and with the wrong magazine (not Rolling Stone). Still, it was cooler than going to law school like my parents hoped.
Lori mentioned my lounge-singer column/debacle to the frontman for Dr. Zhivegas, whom Red Rock Casino just hired to play weekends at 10 p.m.
"Wait!" Frankie Muriel said. "I know that guy!"
It was sometime in what feels like the late 1600s. I was on assignment covering the critically important Nelson concert in St. Louis. Muriel's band, King of the Hill, who lived there, had just had what would prove to be its only hit, "Drop the Gun." I had an expense account and a desire to hang with anyone whose name wasn't Matthew or Gunnar.
I remember rides on both the St. Louis arch and back at my hotel room with the band's own version of Kate Hudson. The problem is that alcohol was so heavily involved -- as it always needs to be for sex with me to become an option -- that only disjointed memory bursts are retrievable.
I looked forward to seeing my old friend, hoping that a reunion at the launch party for his new band's Red Rock stint might clear things up. After Dr. Zhivegas' set, Lori escorted me backstage with Jo Ann (who was more of a sport than she had to be about my obsession), What's On Las Vegas editor Martin Stein, and assorted guests.
Frankie and I exchanged our first hellos in nearly 20 years. I told him that his band's hit was lodged indelibly in my brain. To prove it, I started singing "Drop the Gun" out loud. Then I asked what I came to discover: what he had remembered about my lost weekend. Who was Kate Hudson and what processes (other than vodka-cranberries) were responsible for my conquest?
Frankie gave the matter some thought before replying.
"Dude," he said, "I have no memory of that at all." He added: "Are you sure that was us you hung out with?"
On the ride home, I realized that "Drop the Gun" was not King of Hill's hit. Frankie had stood there, without saying a word, as I sang him a song by a band called Kings of the Sun.

Can You Tell Who's Who?

It's me and Chippendales dancer Alex Castillo in an outtake from the R-J's Sexiest Male Exotic Dancer Contest. Voting closed on Sunday. The winner will be announced on May 17.

My teeth are better than his. That's pretty much it.

Hey? Anyone remember when I was a Chippendale? http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Jan-09-Mon-2006/living/5194946.html

Playboy's Playmate of the Year Awards 2009: Night of 1,000 Fake Boobs

Above: Hef and Palms owner George Maloof (somewhere in the center) pose with as many Playmates as can squeeze together without popping.

Below: Jo Ann and Hef hang after the party, back in the Playboy Fantasy Suite.






Just got back from the Playboy Playmate of the Year party at the Palms. Since blogging is the future of journalism, here is my first attempt at a future...

I don’t know what kind of Roman orgy people expect happens at a Playmate of the Year party, but to me it wasn’t too much unlike my cousin Brandon’s bar mitzvah in Westchester last year. Only with 500 women whose breasts were bigger than their heads.

We knew how A-list this was going to be just from the valet at Palms Place. (Marky Mark Wahlberg walked right by us to his limo. Strangely, he was entourage-less.) As we took the elevator up to the restaurant Simon, I wondered if my teeth were white enough for this crowd.

Shit, Simon was empty. Had we arrived on the wrong night? If I didn't read the invite right, Jo Ann was going to be extremely less than pleased. Her friend, Kim, came to our house earlier today to do her hair and makeup for three solid hours -- as they drank wine in our living room and watched YouTube videos on how to insert hair extensions.

The date and time were right, whew. It’s just the location that was changed. Because it was too windy outside Simon, the party was now in the ballroom at the Palms. Why everyone else seemed to know this except me, I can’t say.

On the elevator ride up to the Palms ballroom, our friend George Maloof said hi.

(In preparing for my future as either a blogger or a homeless person, I need to stop and ask you -- was that last sentence necessary? Is dropping names something that makes a blog better, more hip, more personal -- or does it make me a blowhard? I'm new to this stuff.)

Truth be known, George is much more Jo Ann’s friend than mine. Who doesn’t prefer her company? Anyway, I was just as psyched to see Jimmy Jellinek in that elevator. He’s the brand new bossity-boss of Playboy magazine under Hef. Jimmy actually recognized me from my Playboy stories and said hi. He told me to keep pitching stuff. From that point on, even a Roman orgy couldn't have made my night any better.

After cocktail hour, we were called into the main ballroom. Unlike Brandon's bar mitzvah, there were no seat cards.

While the result of open seating at a Playboy party isn’t as physically damaging as, say, when The Who played Cincinnati in 1979, I have some definite psychological damage to report. Immediately, I snagged and tried to save three seats up close for Jo Ann, R-J columnist Doug Elfman and his lovely fiancée, Stephanie. But when you try to save seats at a party with 500 Playboy Playmates and open seating, you get a real sense of what it feels like to be the poor schmuck who finds himself married to one of these beautiful creatures and no longer in a position to help her career.

“HOW many seats are you saving?” asked one silicone Sally.

She turned to her friend, clicking her tongue.

“Can you believe this guy?” she asked.

They looked around, then back at me. A decision was apparently made that I was unimportant enough to battle.

“Excuse me, are YOU a Playboy Playmate?” Sally demanded to know.

It’s one of the few jobs I haven’t performed yet in Vegas, but not because I didn’t apply.

Sally and her friends didn't wait for me to think up a smart-ass response. They simply removed the napkins I placed on my seats and sat their next-to-nothing bottoms down. It was all very junior high school. I felt that at any minute Pamela Eaton and Erica LeBoyer from homeroom were going to show up and tell me I should know better than to dare try and sit at the cool table, before adding “loser!” and high-fiving one another.

The presentation began at about 8:45. Brande Roderick, Playmate of the Year 2001 and part of a set of actually rhyming former Hef girlfriends (Brande/Mandy/Sandy) took the stage and a swipe at Joan Rivers, who called her a “dumb blonde” on last week’s “Celebrity Apprentice.” At least I think it was Brande. The only seats available now were so far in the back, we had a better view of the ballroom stage at the Rio.

During his turn, Hef commented that he was “under the weather” this week, but that if he hadn’t have made it, “I would have killed myself.” He then gushed over the Playmate of the Year he was about to crown and hand a $100,000 check.

I probably should have paid attention to the reason we were all gathered tonight. I definitely should at least be able to report the name of this year's Playboy Playmate of the Year. And if I were reporting for a newspaper, you would have read all that information in my first paragraph.

But I'm blogging now, remember? I'm not getting paid for this. I owe nothing to you. Deal with it.

The truth is, I have no idea what her name is. I stopped paying attention when the guys sharing our humiliating table, Tony and Kevin, started trying to guess how many girls Hef has probably boinked in his 83 years. It seemed a lot more fun than watching speeches. My answer was at least 20,000 – Wilt Chamberlain’s number. “No way,” Kevin maintained. “Chamberlain had six girls at once sometimes.”

At one point, I activated the calculator function in my Palm Treo, trying to figure out how many days were in 50 years, this was such an important discussion.

Wait, hold on. Hef was married in the '80s.

"Yeah, but you tell me that marriage wasn't open," Tony pointed out.

Suddenly, it was over, and the stage was rushed with a Botox river. Every Playmate, it seemed, from every month going back to the LBJ administration, some with actual chin cellulite, all seemed positive there was still a place for them inside the mansion if they just could have two minutes with Hef to remind him how much he forgot he misses them.

My dream -- to include at least one photo of me, Jo Ann and Hef in my first attempt at a blog -- was crushed in that stampede. (The attached photo with Hef and Jo Ann was taken at Madame Tassaud’s Wax Museum at the Venetian two years ago. Even the wax Hef seemed to like Jo Ann better.)