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.)