|
News
&
Events
Words
Images
Links
Archival Abby
Abby's Bio
|
Vegas, Baby!
2006 AEE Party Wrap-Up
Every year for the past decade I’ve made my annual pilgrimage to Las
Vegas for the big porno convention and though I enjoy roaming around
the convention floor in search of swag, the high point for me is the
parties! From businesslike cocktail hours to cattle call crowds in
nightclubs to the corny Legends of Erotica, to just hangin’ out at The
Venetian’s Circle Bar, there are oodles of opportunities to stay up all
night.
One year I judged the quality of the parties by the size of their
mountain of shrimp. And any event that features free booze is a-okay in
my book! Porn stars and B-list celebs make things more exciting, but
the promised porn stars often fail to appear, so I’ve learned not to
expect them. The best is when you can actually have a conversation with
someone—anyone—since the whole purpose of being at a party is to have
fun and socialize.
The big ones thrown by the big companies—or a group of them—almost
always suck. Last year, the Pure Play Media party at the Hard Rock was
so mobbed that the president of the company himself couldn’t get in.
The space was over capacity, so bouncers were turning people away. We
wound up on line with the president till we finally gave up. Also in
2005, I offered an alternative to the corporate-sponsored mob scenes:
my Mondo Porno bash. It was in a tacky ballroom at the Boardwalk Casino
and Hotel, with Coyote Shivers driving up from LA and Erocktica jetting
in from Manhattan. Judging by the feedback I received, it was the only
party people truly enjoyed. The mere fact that everyone who wanted to
get in actually got in was probably its biggest selling point.
I didn’t even bother trying to get into any of the big bashes this
year, since they’re such a waste of time. Except for the Penthouse
party. I went to that with my husband; he’s the managing editor of
Penthouse Forum and Girls of Penthouse and he needed to put in an
appearance. The party was billed as the “Penthouse Lingerie Party” and
we assumed there would be a lingerie fashion show. Alas, no such luck.
After waiting an hour for the place to open (we’d been told the party
started at 9:00 and the venue didn’t even open till 10:30), we were
shuffled from one “VIP” line to another and then herded into the cold,
dark club. The Pets were all in the lovely lingerie, but they were
stuck in one tiny little VIP area with a few bottles of vodka. Man,
whoever came up with that buy-a-bottle-sit-in-the-VIP-section concept
should be executed. A bunch of business-type guys were milling around
hoping to get a word with one of the girls, but for the most part it
was just a loud nightclub. And no fashion show. The evening was
salvaged, however, when I met up with friends at The V Bar, which by
that late hour was thankfully not a mob scene, and then randomly ran
into a friend from home who knew friends of friends. He and his posse
had a limo driven by the guy who’d been Flava Flav’s babysitter and
chauffeur on that wacky reality show and he ferried us from one cool
club to another, slipping us in ahead of the lines n shit. We wound up
dancing to a slammin’ DJ at Empire Ballroom until just about dawn with
no porno conventioneers in sight. Woot!
Thursday night I went to the Adult DVD Talk bash, held in a suite at
the MGM Grand. The bar for suite parties was set pretty high back in
2004 when my friend Paul Nathan and his co-host Dirty Dan threw
their party. Between Dennis Hof, Ron Jeremy and Motorhead’s Lemmy, it
had an impressive celebrity quotient. And with the fleshy female being
fisted, Dirty Dan being simultaneously spanked and skewered and the
delightful tranny Tara Emory pissing into her own mouth, my eyes were
just about boggling right out of my head. They threw their party again
this year, but the antics weren’t quite as manic. There was some
spanking and bondage and a few appletini body shots, but I didn’t spot
any penetration. Sigh. I am so jaded! I had a great time, though, and
met some pretty amazing people, as you can tell by the accompanying
photographs.
Anyway! Back to the Adult DVD Talk party. They had a fab spread of
food, not highbrow or big budget, but plentiful: wraps, sandwiches,
snackies and the usual crudité. But the enormous bowl of mini
candy bars really sealed the deal. Ya gotta love baby Milky Way bars!
Even better were the well-stocked bar, the bathtub full of beer and a
bunch of extremely friendly people. The host and hostess were
hilarious, sharing their stories of moving to Maine and how they’d
managed to smuggle all the booze upstairs in their rolly suitcases.
Porn auteur David Aaron Clark made an appearance with his sidekick
Brian Surewood, who generously shared his party favors. The rooms were
full of mostly guys till porn chick manager Mark Spiegler showed up
with about a dozen babes. There must’ve been some sort of action going
on in the smoking bedroom at one point, cause a bunch of photographers
were jockeying for shots. I couldn’t be bothered getting up to go check
it out, though, as I was deep in conversation with some guy about San
Francisco vs. New York City—one of my favorite topics! We hung out
there for hours, from being almost the very first people to arrive to
being just about the last to leave. It was casual, comfortable and the
ideal alternative to waiting in long lines with company presidents
unable to get into their own parties!
All in all, the nightlife was pretty damned good this year, though I’m
pretty easy to please. Next year I’m definitely gonna do another Mondo
Porno and I’m hoping to conspire with Paul and Dirty Dan on a bigger,
sicker suite party too. So stay tuned for 2007!
[Written Jan. 2006]
|