Photo by Steve WilberWe grifted our way into the super-exclusivo Quiksilver bash at Laguna's Royal Hawaiian Saturday night, pretending we didn't know we weren't on the list for a party we'd found out about just a half-hour before. But the door guy, Bill—and if there were a list of OC's five hottest door guys, that list would have but one name—was a smiley, welcoming man who really didn't care that we weren't supposed to be there. “Everyone,” he said, “is being so nice! There's no attitude!” Soon, two kids came up. They were not gorgeous. They were not cool. The girl was fat and wearing a dumb hat. She started speaking, quickly and with embarrassed defeat. “Our friend Mike told us to meet him here,” she said. “We told him we wouldn't be able to get in, and we don't even know his last name, so we can't even tell you that! But he said to meet him, and . . . we're not getting in, are we?”
Bill looked at the couple, and then a door miracle happened. “Come on in,” he told them. And that's when I fell in love. The party was fabulously full of tanned pretties drinking Captain Morgans (the captain himself was in the house, about six-foot-six-worth of bizarrely articulate pirate) and dancing to abbreviated, Attention Deficit Disorder versions of popular songs ranging from “Double Dutch Bus”to “Do Ya Think I'm Sexy,“and we were awfully glad that nice door guy was so bad at his job.
We had to head back to Las Brisas because I'd grifted some valet parking over there and was gonna have to pony up a receipt (a trs unsuccessful grift: my illicit parking spot ended up costing $23 for two coffee-and-sump'ms). When we got back to the Hawaiian, a huge crowd had congealed outside: the Laguna Art Museum reception for “Surf Culture,“ which Quiksilver's party was celebrating, had ended, and the stragglers had arrived. Although on the list, they still had to wait, and a self-important young man who was there with artist Sandow Birk had just been denied. “That's okay, dude,” he said to Bill as he turned and stalked off. “I am so over you!” Bill confirmed it for us: the attitudes had been switched on to “superior.” Meanwhile, a muumuued woman in her 40s who said she was a reporter was berating a youngish but weatherbeaten man (whom we shall call The Beav), who was trying to ditch her to talk to a pretty blonde smoking outside. “COME BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!” she was shouting, her words whipping past us all in saucy, muumuued dominatrix fashion. “I AM THE ONE GETTING YOU IN TO THIS PARTY! WE ARE NEXT ON THE LIST!” Dance with them what brung ya, Beav.
The Beav responded with, “I am going to lick your boobs like crazy!” before whispering to us she had kidnapped him and wouldn't leave him alone. I couldn't leave until I'd witnessed them gaining entrance—and perhaps some crazy-boob-licking action—but for once Bill was standing firm. “They're never gonna be the next on the list,” he told me, and we laughed and laughed. Quiksilver? Party of the year. Quiksilver marketing guy Evil Bollweevil? In big trouble for “losing” my invite.
Friday night was a big damn mess, as we got superhammered to impress some cats from The Orange County Registerwho claim they're running a profile of a certain fetching young Socialist. Me, idiots! It seems their editor, Tonnie Katz, is out on medical leave, which is the only way such a journalistic travesty could ever soak up the Reg's ink. Get well soon, Tonnie!
(And a special Commie Girl thanks to Lois Lundberg, head of the county Republican Central Committeefrom 1976 to 1985, who told the Times early this week she considers the Reg “a valuable service to the Republican Party and politics.” Don't we all, Lo!)
In an effort to terrify the Reg's impressionable young writers and photogs, we began at TC's Bar in Huntington for Hair Metal Tribute Night. While I found OC/DC to be quite great, the others decided they were decidedly not. Still, it was really cool watching the li'l Angus kid's mom help set up his wah-wah pedals. We stayed for but one song, but that one song had decibels enough for seven.
We moved on to Costa Mesa's La Cave, where Papa Byrd was spinning something or other while I got progressively—oh, how shall I put this?—less camera-shy. Drunk as Bill Bennett, I began a program of smiling at a cute Backstreet Boy, but even through my stupor, he was as dull as a ballpoint pen. Pity. At the Little Knight, we saw a man in polyester doing The Worm on the patio; he was too cool to talk to us, but we adored him nonetheless. By Kitsch, I'd slipped into a coma. It will be a measure of our Reg friend's goodwill whether there is mention of me reprising the audition steps from Flashdanceor orating my prose poem, “Two Cherubs Frolicking on a Warm Summer's Day.“What a feeling!
On the seventh day, we paid homage to King Kukuleleand the Freaky Tikis. Fullerton's swanky Continental Lounge was curiously packed for a Sunday with folks old and young. Nobody doesn't like the Freaky Tikis!
King Kukulele, as usual, was a mix of Catskills humor (he really is an anachronism) and beautiful tropical love songs that made all the girls sigh. Think of Chris Isaak, but without quite as pretty a voice, and playing a ukulele while wearing a grass skirt and a grass crown and telling dumb but superfunny jokes and singing about the Periodic Table of Elements, and you've pretty much got the idea. In the house were everyone in the entire world, as Fullerton takes its tiki seriously. Shouldn't you?
