Anna Faris is in the upcoming movie House Bunny where she plays a Playboy Playmate that gets kicked out of the Mansion. I decided to do a little research on her (it’s sort of my job) and found out that she used to be married. The first picture I saw of her ex wasn’t out of the ordinary. Then I found a couple others that seemed to tell a story. You can draw your own conclusions…
The Playboy and C3 Late Night Party at SXSW is now in the books. I didn’t get to come last year, so this was my first time to experience the madness. It was a truly amazing party and I think we left our mark on this year’s festival. It’s hard to impress jaded hipsters, but I think most of them came away with a little more respect for the house that Hef built.
The day of the party was similar to any other event day. I had to pick up Lauren Michelle Hill, Qiana Chase, Janine Habeck, and Michelle McLaughlin at the airport — which was a wonderful way to start my work day. I scared the shit out of them once when an 18-wheeler decided to pull a U-turn across the entire four lane street, but we were fine. But that wasn’t the last of my stunt driving on the night.
Shortly after I grabbed some lunch, we had our walkthrough to go over the venue set up and duties for the rest of the night. That day, I only had enough free time to get lunch with my brother and dinner with a buddy. At 9:30, I was back at the venue worrying about all of the little things that go into these types of big events. I put up the rest of the Jack Daniels posters in the last 30 minutes before the official start time for the party. I also managed to think that I lost my rental car keys about five times in that span — see my Boston post to figure out why that’s a sore subject.
I glanced outside once from the empty venue and saw that the line for our party went around the block with a good 20 minutes until it was supposed to start. We probably had over 1000 people on all of the lists combined, but I figured we’d have a mix of “early” and “late” people. It was doubtful that any of the people waiting in line at 10:30 were going to be able to last until 4AM.
The first 15 minutes of the party were great. The room started to fill up, the Jack Daniels clients seemed happy, the food was a hit, and the Playmates were about to make their entrance. Then, one of the clients dropped a bombshell: all of our recipe cards for the “Jack Rabbit” drink called for Jack, ginger ale, and lemon juice… and we had no ginger ale or lemon juice. My job immediately shifted from “make sure nothing is fucked up” to “fix massive fuck up”. Ashley from plusonemusic was my partner in crime as we scrambled to get more drink ingredients.
Our first potential stop was the Whole Foods on Lamar and 5th. I went too far south, so I had to flip a bitch on Lamar where the median broke. It was pretty intense and I’m quite sure Ashley was stunned/horrified by my actions. I get that reaction from women pretty regularly. So back to Whole Foods… our party started at 11PM and Whole Foods closed at 10PM. Fuck. On to Plan B, drive around to find another grocery store … and there are really none downtown. So I stopped at a 7-11 and found out that they don’t even sell ginger ale. Fuck. We were directed to the Randalls on Exposition and I hauled ass over there. It was probably 11:45 at this point and I wasn’t going to be able to have the girls that I invited hand out the 3D glasses for the MGMT music video. FUCK. At this point, it was a matter of priorities and damage control… so the ginger ale was much more important (hopefully that’s the last time I will ever say/type that in my life). At Randalls, we bought every single ginger ale product that was available on the shelves — something like 6 12-packs and 20 2-liter bottles along with 15 bottles of lime juice. We just told the guy at the register that we were really thirsty and my Randalls card (so random that I actually had it) saved Playboy $30. I’m such a good employee. You can see our loot below…
The cart full of ginger ale that Ashley and I loaded
I had to get the security guards to move the bike barricades so I could back down the alley behind our venue. Nothing was happening and I was frazzled, so I got out of the car to see if I could make something happen. Unfortunately, I forgot to put the car in park and it started rolling towards a parked Audi. I jumped back into the driver’s seat just in time to put the car in park before it did any damage. They moved the bike barricades and I started backing down the narrow alley. After about 100 yarsd, some dreadlocked hipster smoking a cigarette informed me that I was backing over cones and I had to stop the rental Ford Explorer. At that point, I just started grabbing stuff from the trunk and carrying it in by hand. As I brought in the last bottles of ginger ale from the trunk of the car, the woman behind the bar said, “This is great. You know, we’re also about to run out of Coke, so if you guys could make another run that would be great.” I gave her the dirtiest look of all time and then just broke out. Not having ginger ale is understandable… but HOW CAN YOU RUN OUT OF COKE AT A PARTY AFTER 90 MINUTES? Not my problem.
After that ridiculous ordeal, I spotted my parents and let them calm me down with a few gulps of much-needed beer. My uncle Eliot was in town for the event (because I’m a miracle-worker) and it was obvious that he was loving life. He told me that his opening line to all of Playmates was “Hey, do you know Chris Duncan?” That’s probably not a bad one except he kept approaching the few girls that hadn’t worked with me before. I actually started to enjoy the party around 1:30AM. I didn’t get to see The Heavy or MGMT, so that was pretty shitty. Some of the girls that I had invited flagged me down while I was making the rounds and I downed a couple more Playboy Energy drinks … questionable decision-making but I needed some nervous energy. I spotted Carson Daly as we were standing around. The greatest part is that the few people that noticed him didn’t even care. Probably because we had an amazing celebrity presence… too many for me to remember, but I know that Carson, Lance Armstrong, Elijah Wood, Pete Townshend, Ben Harper, etc. made appearances.
MOBY was on stage (around 2AM) for his DJ set and I decided to check it out. Within a few minutes, it was obvious that he was killing it. Everybody was dancing (with much intensity) and you could tell that Moby was into it as well. The LED backdrop behind him went crazy as he spun some of his songs from Play and ended with Paradise City. I have some pretty good videos of Porcelain, Paradise City, and the big finale. Justice was the headliner for the night, but I felt like Moby put on the best show. He was truly crawsome (crazy-awesome)… and that wasn’t the last I saw of Moby enjoying himself.
Moby acknowledges the crowd after his set
JUSTICE went on about an hour later than planned, but all of the cool kids were still wide awake and ready for their performance. I felt a little left out since it seemed like everybody around me was on a lot of (good) drugs, but I got REALLY close to the stage and got some good pictures/videos of the French duo.
Justice performing at Playboy’s Rock the Rabbit Party 2008 @ SXSW… the two best ways to describe Justice: “impossibly cool” and “French”
Xavier and Gaspard couldn’t have been more French with their fitted leather jackets, facial hair (chops on one, goatee/beard on the other), and cigarette-smoking but they owned the crowd anyway. I think there were some production issues with sound levels because after the first song, Xavier flipped the bird to somebody off stage. But the show went on after that and I couldn’t have been more pleased. It would have been impossible to match Moby (in my opinion) but Justice killed it anyway. By the time they wrapped up at 4AM, everybody left in the venue had a smile plastered on their face thanks to the music, alcohol, and probably a good amount of illicit drugs.
Justice opens up and try to get the sound situation sorted out
The party was over at that point, but that doesn’t mean that people stopped partying. I was slumped over in a lawn chair in the room that was formerly the Playmate dressing room waiting to DD some people home. Every ounce of energy was drained from my body at that point. Two minutes after I plopped myself down, I saw Moby walk into the room with three absolutely gorgeous women I had spotted in the party. They were probably all at least six inches taller than him in their heels and I think they were scanning the room for snacks. They bailed after a few seconds and I went back to spacing out. Only a few minutes later, Moby returned alone and seemed like he was inebriated. I don’t think he was hammered, but I am pretty positive he was at least legally intoxicated. He walked over to two high chairs and started dragging them out of the room. We were all out of it, but it was still a strange sight. Then somebody said, “Hey man, are you taking those chairs somewhere?” Moby’s reply: “…. they’re going to a better place now.” He’s even witty when he’s fucked up. The last item of note for the night was some extremely wasted girl in what was formerly the VIP room. She called out to Traci, my co-worker, “Hey, you should come in here… THERE ARE POUNDS OF COCAINE.” Not really sure who/what she was talking about, but thanks for being courteous and telling the entire world. I was so out of it at this point (4:30AM) that I couldn’t even get myself to care that Justice was standing in the hall with me and Ben Harper had just gone into the back room. I’m a sad old man now. Even though I lost my powers to party, the Playboy & C3 Late Night Party @ SXSW 2008 was one of the more notable experiences of my life. We did Rock the Rabbit.
NOTE: You can check out all of the pictures on the OfficialChrisDuncan Flickr and videos on the OfficialChrisDuncan YouTube Channel. The Playboy Spring Break Week 1 Recap will be up later in the week… stay tuned.
With Playboy Spring Break 2008 less than two weeks away, it is now crunch time. I’ve been working overtime to get all of the final details squared away. I have some important items on my to-do list such as acquiring a super soaker and fake tanning my pale body. But there really is a lot of planning and execution involved with our Playboy Spring Break events. Each week, we have a total of 4 evening events and 3 day events. You need an all-star crew to ensure success, so let me introduce you to the cast of characters:
Playboy Spring Break Staff from L to R: Chris Duncan, Lisa Kolodny, Charlie Romano, Chip Ross
Lisa “K-os” Kolodny: By our powers combined, we are COLLEGE MARKETING! To put it in laymen’s terms, we do a shitload of work for Playboy. Pretty much anything that relates to a person that is old enough to look at Playboy but not actually old is our responsibility. We destroyed at CollegeFest and I suspect Spring Break will be more of the same. Lisa is pretty talented, but I think her disadvantage of having significantly less body weight will hurt her in the tequila drinking department. Plus, I’ve been training. You should check out Lisa’s blog The Dirtay Thirtay.
Mr. Charlie Romano: Charlie is like the 6-inches-taller, skinnier, friendlier, and more patient version of me. He’s more than the college marketing intern, he’s the Official Chris Duncan apprentice. Soon, I will pass on the lessons of being a cranky, impatient fuck to him. For now, he is assigned all of the work that I don’t want to do. Kidding. Charlie handles much of the nitty gritty that goes into our main events like CollegeFest, Super Saturday Night, and Spring Break. His idea for the proposal to Fox was good enough to get us a sponsor (Hitman DVD). He also blogs about The Rise of Charlie.
Chip Ross: I first met Chip at CollegeFest 2006. He also came to Cabo last year for Playboy Spring Break as well. Chip is in charge of a little site called Playboy U. He’ll be handling the video content that will go up on Playboy U and also making sure that the bands are sufficiently drunk. That’s a joke… they won’t need our help getting drunk.
Rocky “Rawdog” Rakovic: Rocky is the artsy, effeminate version of me. Not really. He’s the badass editorial staffer that actually at least pretends to like marketing (thanks for putting my Mark Frazier interview on the Playboy Blog, buddy). We appreciate that. The Rawdog has had numerous pieces published in Playboy Magazine. My personal favorite is the write-up of his Brazilian wax experience in the August 2006 issue (Monica Leigh cover). At least he won’t have a problem getting that done for Cabo. He’ll be blogging the madness from our events.
Official Chris Duncan and Rocky Rakovic… that’s my drunk snarl caught at an awkward moment
Jimmy “The Muscle” Cambria: Jimmy is in charge of security at the New York office. He’s worked pretty much every major Playboy event for the past few years. He’s a former New York police office. I’m hoping that I’ll get to hear more crazy cop stories this year. Jimmy will also be the person that gets me out of Mexican jail.
The Playboy Models: Oh yeah, we’re bringing some girls with us too. The first week (March 8-11) we’ll have Playmate Shannon James and Cyber Girls Jennifer Hurt, Amanda Hanshaw, and Megan Hauserman. Shannon is great — she has dealt with C-Drunk/Piss Drunken and she still pretends to like me. Jennifer and Megan both have huge crushes on me (sarcasm), so we’ll see how that plays out. I’ve never met Amanda before, but I’m pretty sure she’ll fit in well. She can talk to Megan about being on Beauty and the Geek… so that works out. Week two (March 22-25) Playmate Lindsay Wagner and Cyber Girls Jillian Beyor, Aubrie Lemon, and Jessica Danielle will be making appearances. Lindsay is new to me, so I look forward to meeting her. Jillian was in Cabo last year and rebuffed my advances, so that’s a lost cause. She was at CollegeFest with us last September and kicked ass. Jennifer and Aubrie also both came with us to Spring Break last year. They’re also both Deal or No Deal models. I approve.
Some of my favorite people will be joining me in Can San Lucas this year. But I’m sure I’ll be making a lot more friends when I’m down there… lady friends. If you’re making the trip to Cabo either week, leave a comment and let us know!
The dust has settled and the party is now in the books. For the third straight year, I’ve witnessed the Playboy Super Bowl Party officially known as Super Saturday Night. In Detroit, we were in a hangar at the Detroit Airport for the “8 Mile High Club“. Last year we converted the American Airlines Arena into “PM: Playboy Miami After Dark“.
Every year, there are uncontrollable elements that force you to adapt. It was freezing cold with snow in Detroit. In Miami, we were given l2 hours for move-in at the arena because the NFL had an event there the previous night. That’s $100K worth of carpeting, constructing bars/cabanas, creating a silent auction room with almost 100 items worth over $200K, building a massive DJ booth, and then making it LOOK like a party. By the time DJ Reach arrived at American Airlines, people were starting to filter in and there were guys with drills trying to put VIP booths together.
The War Room at The Playboy Villa aka the hotel meeting room
You can’t help but be delirious at the end of the night — Detroit was a 20+ hour day, Miami was exactly 24, and this year it was 21. Super Saturday Night is a 12-month project (they’ll be looking for a Tampa hotel in a couple weeks) with a budget exceeding a million dollars. And it’s always fucking incredible.
The Playboy Villa Our home away from The Crown Building in New York is always a luxurious boutique hotel in the hottest part of the Super Bowl host city. Not really. We usually occupy about 90% of the rooms at the hotels we choose. That means all the Playmates can be impressed by me moving boxes and driving a rental car (Toyota Highlander).
Playboy Staff (note the blackberry party) and Playmates Hiromi, Deanna, Tiffany, and Pilar dine on the breakfast buffet
This year, Mr. Charlie Romano was my bunk-buddy (we had a two bedroom, actually) and he managed to run amok in Phoenix as well (my exploits are documented here). He went to the Pepsi Smash in the VIP section. That’s just how we roll when we’re not blogging. We do it all for you.
On an early morning KMart run, I hit photographer James Trevenen’s rental with mine while backing out of the hotel parking lot. It was hilarious. But the final KMart run yielded one of the greatest “you’re not in New York” moments. The girl at the register asked us if we were French. It must’ve been Charlie’s mohawk. Charlie and I don’t look anything close to French. She must not get out of Phoenix very much. The “Playboy Villa” was in Phoenix, most of the other events were in Scottsdale, and the Playboy venue was in Chandler.
The Venue: Rawhide! Yee-haw? I bet the Giants were pissed that we chose this spot because the nearest hotel (literally a 60 second drive) was their team hotel. They could probably hear the party on Saturday night. We had to convert a gigantic tented area into a party. It was no easy task. When I pulled up on Thursday, I couldn’t even tell where it was going to be. Charlie and I drove all the way to the Western town — the kind where they stage shootouts. We got back on the road and found another road that brought us past the petting zoo complete with a bison.
Relevent, our production company, had the place looking like the retro-themed Desert Oasis and Resort by the middle of the day Friday. I did everything from lift boxes, haul a thousand pounds of water, direct traffic, find salt, set up umbrellas, help get the wireless internet set up, move really angry-looking and sharp cacti, and get our college rep bus to the event (more on that below).
The Hero: The Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch Bodypainter Mark Frazier and his team arrived at 10:30AM as we had specified in their contract. Mark is an amazing professional and I don’t just say that because he may be my ticket to the Playboy Mansion (his interview is in a follow-up post). When he arrived at the venue, there was no power in our production area and his crew couldn’t get started. Not a problem — Mark and his crew relaxed and knew they could get it all done. One of the guys asked me to give him our PR girl’s number so he could call her about inviting NFL player to the event. That’s always iffy, but he ended up getting Leon Hall. So it worked out.
Arizona nudity laws require that the models have pasties and latex thongs. Mark Frazier says he hates working with pasties and latex thongs. I feel like that’s almost a Chuck Norris level of bad ass in that statement. Possibly more. I saw the first girl done with my favorite design a little after before lunch. That was a nice diversion from the shit-hitting-the-fan pace we endure. One of my (female) co-workers was irked by the fact that “when the girls bent over, you could see their skin because their buttcracks weren’t painted”. I have an interesting job.
Mark Frazier and the Bodypainted Models… jealous?
Mark and the team finished the job with plenty of time to spare. The girls looked amazing. I felt pretty pleased with my first of two major contributions to the party.
The Bus: Reppin’ Playboy On Campus I fucking love college marketing. There’s no two ways about it. I love college sports. I love college girls. I love being irresponsible. I love having free time to waste. Other than the sports, those are becoming a much smaller part of my reality and it makes me sad. So my job “keeps me in the game” because I’m a sad old man. But this sad old man had to make sure that 50 beautiful girls from the University of Arizona made it to our party safely. I do a very good job.
Aside from the few hundred girl-only tickets that I sent out, the rep bus was my big contribution to “the ratio”. I assigned two reps, Michael Knudten and Laurie Laird, the task of recruiting a bus full of girls. It doesn’t matter how big the celebrity, the girls’ entrance has been a show-stopper the past two years and this was no exception.
Girls from the University of Arizona @ Playboy Super Bowl Party
They arrived at about 9:30PM and I was able to meet them at about 10:00PM with the bus parked right in front of our entrance. Charlie and I tried to work our magic with the PR team running the red carpet but we just missed our opportunity to have them walk the red carpet. We were told that Common, our host, was arriving at that moment. He walked in wearing a grey suit with some bad ass grey shoes that looked like they were worth more than my life. As we were about to the unleash the hotness of the University of Arizona onto the red carpet, Nick Cannon arrived and bumped us again. I was about to step in and stop the line when I saw a police car pulling up. We were definitely getting bumped from the red carpet again because Hef was arriving with a police escort and his girlfriends. Seeing The Man himself walk into our event was probably the first time I’ve ever actually been starstruck. They were walking the red carpet for about 30 minutes since EVERY press member wanted to interview one of the girls individually (plus Hef was there).
Hugh Hefner and Kendra Arrive @ Playboy Super Bowl Party
After about an hour and a half of waiting, Mr. Romano and I made our way down the red carpet with a gaggle of hot coeds right on Mr. Hefner’s heels. They literally entered the party after him as he had just finished his interview with Playboy Radio. You can check out the video of the girls below. We had a lot of NFL players at our event, so I suspect the bus did not go back full…
The Show: Party All the Time, Party All the Time, Party All the Time By the time my duties with the bus were done, it was pretty close to midnight. I had my stint at the door coming up at 1AM. The party is really just something that happens while I’m running around. It’s only 6 hours out of a long weekend of work. Still, we managed to pack in 2000+ attendees including a long list of athletes. Audrina and LC stopped by. Sadly, that’s sort of exciting for me. I saw them in Cabo last year at a taco stand at 4AM though. I did get to climb into the DJ booth with Nick Cannon and DJ Reach for a few seconds. It was a pretty amazing moment because it was just as Nick Cannon had started on Stronger.
I ended up back at the door soon after to have some guy try to get in with a girl ticket (his girlfriend said that somebody ahead of him had “mixed up tickets”… right). Another two kids tried to convince me to let them in without tickets because they came with a lot of girls … the old “we’re with them”. Sorry, guys. The fire marshal shut down the door at about 1:30 because we’d reached capacity. This happened in Miami at about 12:30. We could only let people in at a trickle after that.
Willis McGahee showed up at about 2AM and the party was pretty much done. I was happy that we had landed the Madden Bowl champ. He shook my hand and told me that he had brought a couple of family members. Nice guy.
We drove back to our hotel after 5AM and I ended up getting into my bed after 6AM having to pack when I “woke up”. I got up at 7AM to make sure I was ready to go to the airport. Oh yeah, I heard there was a football game scheduled for Sunday. I did make it back just in time to see kickoff at my apartment.
OCD was launched in early 2008 by the Official Chris Duncan. He writes about pop culture and current events including entertainment news, trashy reality TV, sports, politics, and celebrity culture.
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