| Previously on TheAngryPen: |
09-12-2000 2 Parties |
08-18-2000 Al’s Acceptance |
08-10-2000 Gore’s Choice |
08-03-2000 The American Dream |
07-20-2000 History and Hollywood |
07-13-2000 40 Acres and a Mule |
07-06-2000 The God We Trust |
06-29-2000 Lyrical Assault |
06-15-2000 Bank Fees |
06-07-2000 A Mixture Often of Incongruous Elements |
05-24-2000 Social Security |
05-17-2000 Governmental Good Intentions |
05-10-2000 Johnny Reb and Disgusting Fatbodies |
05-03-2000 Low Fidelity |
04-26-2000 Jackboots and Black Helicopters |
04-19-2000 Movie Trailers |
04-12-2000 All Things Cuban |
04-05-2000 Censorship |
03-29-2000 Juries and Tobacco |
03-22-2000 Several Things |
03-15-2000 Gore the Reformer |
03-08-2000 Mission to Mars |
03-08-2000 Super Tuesday |
03-03-2000 Little Johnny Murderer |
03-01-2000 Bob Jones |
02-23-2000 The Christian Coalition |
02-16-2000 Valentine's Day |
02-09-2000 Short-Sighted Political Parties |
02-02-2000 Mosh Pits |
01-12-2000 Al Gore's Personality |
11-17-1999 Playboy |
09-02-1999 The Demise of Heavy Metal |
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TheAngryPen vs. Playboy |
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First, a disclaimer: To my good friend, who called me out of the blue to invite me to this party, despite having absolutely no obligation to do so. I genuinely appreciate you thinking of me "C." Thank you very much for the invitation. Clearly, you had nothing to do with anything you are about to read. And I mean you no disrespect by the following:
MEMO
To: Hugh Hefner
From: the Angry Pen
Re: Your shitty-ass lingerie party
Alright, I never... ever thought I would see this sentence come out of the business end of The Angry Pen. BUT... Hugh, you and I need to have a serious talk about your approach to throwing a party, because Tuesday night's Club Lingerie launch party was a 5,000 pound dud.
But I need to start at the beginning.
Rarely can I remember being this excited about a single event. I've been hearing about Playboy parties since I was a kid. My friends and I never knew, in those days, exactly what went on at a Playboy party. All we knew was what we saw in the sneak peeks we got from the 70's editions of the magazine we found in our fathers' closets, and poured over in our bedrooms behind doors we couldn't lock, one ear cocked (you'll forgive the expression) for the sound of an approaching mother. But Hugh's hedonistic mansion soirees remained mysterious, even mythical, events we only wished we could experience for ourselves. As I grew up, they continued to be the yardstick by which all other parties would be measured. Hugh's parties were something we aspired to. The Holy Grail of parties, if you will. And now, my friend Adam and I were going to one. Imagine. We spent all day Sunday shopping for pajamas at the mall. We left work early. We obsessed over our outfits. We bought a disposable camera. We talked about how we were going to take dozens of pictures and post them on the Internet so our friends could eat their collective hearts out. We planned to get there early (5:30). We were, in a word... psyched!
Sadly, our expectations would go unfulfilled. But truth be told, we should have known that going in.
There were several points along the course of our ill-fated odyssey when we should have realized that this party was not going to be "all it could be." Clue #1 came when I called The Century Club for directions. I got the address, and then, before the nice lady with the sexy voice on the other end of the line could hang up, I decided to ask what time the party was supposed to start. She said "The general public will be let in at 8:30." "General public!?" That should have given us pause right then. I thought this was a highly-exclusive, invitation only, "be a VIP or be gone" kind of affair. And yet there they were, those two oh-so-telling words whose existence there was just no way to get around. "General Public." How exclusive could any invitation that includes those words really be anyway? Well, I didn't think to ask that question then, and in my giddiness at being less than an hour from a friggin' Hugh Hefner Lingerie party, I pushed my fears aside and pressed on.
Clue #2 was dropped at The Century Club door. I walked right up to a stunning brunette in a low cut dress, the effect of which was significantly enhanced by the modern marvel that is "the Wonder Bra", sitting behind a row of card tables. "Can I have your name please?" "Certainly" said I, "The name's Theriot... T-H-E-R-I-O-T." She glanced at her list and then, with a look I took to convey sincere disappointment at what she was being forced by cruel fate to say to me, she said "I don't have you on my list." I tried to hide my panic, smiled, and said "That's OK honey, I'm on the XYZ list (name withheld to protect the innocent)." She grimaced and, for a minute, I thought that my pathetic attempt at name-dropping was not going to be enough to get the job done. But the blonde sitting next to her nudged my brown-haired lovely with an elbow and said "it's OK." Seconds later, Adam and I were in.
Now... let's talk about that little scene for a minute before we move on. No "Playboy" party... no wait, let me say that more strenuously, no party of ANY kind, should be that easy for somebody who's not on the list, AND who's wearing a puke green polyester robe over ratty pajamas, AND who's followed by a guy who seems capable of speaking only the words "I'm with him", to just walk right into. Nevertheless, Clue #2 also went ignored by Lars and Adam.
Now the pitch: I can't tell you how many times I heard the following sales
pitch in the days, hours, and minutes leading up to this "event." "Dude,
there's gonna be 65 playmates... an open bar... food... and a runway show." Well. I can
think of at least four things wrong with that sentence.
1) "65 playmates." I would say they were at least 64 playmates short. Adam,
who seems completely incapable of recognizing even the most famous celebrities
in public, is nevertheless able to recall, with a clarity I consider
frightening, the names, months, years, and turn-ons/offs, of any Playmate that
comes within seventy-five yards of his person. That said, the only playmate he
positively identified at the party was Heather Kozar ('99 PMOY), and she was the
freakin' emcee. Now, I don't mean to be a raging sexist, or to objectify women
in any way, but I would guess that even the women in my audience today, for
better or for worse, think of a certain kind of woman when they hear the word
"playmate." Not necessarily a "better" kind of woman, just a "certain" kind of
woman. Well anyway, I know what I think of when I hear the word "Playmate" and
the closest I saw last night, was a half-dozen, bored-looking, mid-range models
in ill-fitting lingerie sitting at booths in a cordoned-off "cast-and-crew"
section of the party, all looking like they hadn't had so much fun since hour
one hundred-two of CNN's round-the-clock coverage of the search for JFK Jr.'s
missing plane. "Oh dear Lord, hold me back Hugh, I don't think I can control
myself!" Please.
2) "Open Bar." Well, I can't strictly claim that this turned out not to be
true. In the most basic, Webster's Dictionary sense of the word, yes, the bar
was, technically, "open." "Open" in that, it wasn't "closed." I mean there
were bartenders taking orders, serving drinks, and accepting tips. But when I
hear the words "open bar", and I don't think I'm alone in this interpretation of
that phrase, I do not expect to have to pay for my drinks! Adam and I, for one
single Corona and a Miller Genuine Draft, paid nine... that's NINE (9) American
dollars! $4.50 a piece folks! As VIP invitees, I don't even think it could be
convincingly argued that we got a discount!
3) Food. Well yes, there was food. Anyone care to guess how much they charged
for a hotdog? If you guessed 5 dollars, you are bidding too low! Hell, I got
free food at a screening of an absolutely unwatchable, straight-to-video
"Airplane"-esque mafia comedy starring Dom Deluise that I went to about a year
ago. And I wasn't even invited to that!
4) And finally, the runway show. It happened alright, but I know for damn sure
that if you were watching it on the internet, even if you were doing so from
Kenny Khmer's Hanoi Kitchen in downtown Phnom Penh, you had a better seat than I
did.
Bottom line is this Hugh. You've got more money than God. Many American men, my friend Adam included, think you ARE God. And I've never thought of you as the kind of guy who is afraid to spend it. So come on Hugh, next time you decide to throw a party to celebrate the launch of what I can only assume is a multi-million dollar line of lingerie, don't be afraid to spend some of that money on your guests. At the very least, don't make them pay for their drinks. I mean if I can get a free beer at the premiere of a god-awful movie like U-Turn, I damn sure should better be able to get one at a Playboy Pajama Party.
And believe me, I've got a business degree, I can certainly understand wanting to make the event special for the paying customers (meaning, those watching on the internet), a member of which group I certainly was not. Granted. But this was, at its heart, a marketing push. You were selling the fantasy of Playboy last night. And the words "Playboy Party" carry with them a certain pedigree. The meaning of which, previously agreed upon by the collective male consciousness, is this: if the folks at home don't wish, with every fiber of their being, that they are AT the party, rather than simply NEAR it, well then the luster is likely to rub off of Camelot in one hell of a hurry. And if those of us who WERE there aren't excited about it, how can you expect anyone else to be? That's, like, rule number one, or something.
I remember at one point Adam suggested we leave and drive over to the Body Shop, a famous strip club on Sunset Blvd. I said "What!?" And he said "Seriously, what are we getting here that we couldn't get there?" And I had to admit, he was right. We had horribly overpriced food and drinks, we had fairly attractive-though-fake women who looked like they would just as soon kick you in the nuts as smile at you, and we got a few fleeting glimpses of what could only be described as "begrudging semi-nakedness." In fact, I couldn't think of one single difference between what we would have seen at a strip club and what we saw last night. No, wait a minute, that's not fair at all. There was at least one difference. Had I been at the Body Shop, I would've felt comfortable staring.
Now... about the... "Sausage Factor." In college we had a lot of party options on a given night, and we used to weigh those options on a fairly arbitrary scale that measured the likelihood of a given party having a favorable ratio of women to men. We used to consider certain parties, those given by the Future Farmers of America, or Lambda Chi Alpha, for instance, to be likely "Sausage Factories", a description which, I assume, needs no further explanation. And as far as The Playboy Club Lingerie Party is concerned, I am hard-pressed, as I look back over four college years of parties, from small get-togethers, to naked, animalistic, keggers, a single party with a Sausage Factor higher than what I saw last night. Even the models themselves, and I use that term loosely, noticed it. Most of them spent the evening huddled together in groups, likes schools of mackerel, seeking refuge from the hordes of leering guys in Armani suits, slicked-back hair, and guttural European accents.
It was barely eight o'clock when Adam and I had the following conversation:
"Hey Lars. You seen Dogma?"
"No."
"We could maybe catch a 7:45 show."
"Hmmm...Doesn't Salma Hayek strip down to a bra and panties in that movie?"
"...I think so."
{shrug] "Let's go."
Unfortunately, in a final, "icing-on-the-cake" moment... we missed the movie by 20
minutes.
"But Mr. Pen" I can hear you asking. "Surely, there must have been an upside to all this. I mean come on... you were at a PLAYBOY party for God's sake!" OK, you're right. After all, I'm a cup-half-full kind of guy. So here goes. The upside is this. When I got home, I was already in my pajamas.
Although the Angry Pen has never been wrong, there's a first time for everything. Click here to duke it out with The Pen.
