Paul Dateh & DJ inka one Rock the Rabbit Performance The video playlist is close to 15 minutes. Paul Dateh is a violinist and DJ inka one is on the turntables. They performed three times during the week with Playboy Spring Break in Cabo. These guys are amazing.
Booty Shaking Contest @ Billygan's These girls really, really wanted to win. They were both nice enough to flash the crowd to show their appreciation. I love Spring Break.
Musical Chairs @ Billygan's More college girls shaking it. No flashing here, but a lot more girls...
The Beasts of Eden with Paul Dateh Two members of Playboy's Rock the Rabbit 2008 combine forces in Cabo San Lucas. The Beasts of Eden from Brooklyn have a great design for their Rock the Rabbit t-shirt. The Beasts and Paul give a sneak peak into what may be in store for Rock the Rabbit 2009.
One Spring Break down and one to go... my tan is almost gone along and I haven't yet regained my ability to work in a cubicle. Luckily, I'll be able to work shirtless a few more days when I'm in Cabo. It's been a tough few days in the I was back soul-crushing-grip-of-the-daily-grind since spending the 11 previous days in Cabo and Austin. I already posted a SXSW recap, so let's review the last week in Cabo.
Birthday Boy - Friday was my birthday, so I felt pretty special. We were headed to Nowhere Bar to celebrate. It's probably only about a 10 minute walk from Tesoro Los Cabos... but there's a lot happening in between. The strip club promoters could see that I was glowing and really gave me their "A" game. I resisted those propositions. There are about four strip clubs in one plaza and one or two other ones nearby... I think people would let me know if one was worth visiting. Once we got to Nowhere Bar, The Cabo Spring Break staff gave me a turtle whistle necklace as a birthday gift. People were very impressed. After getting sufficiently intoxicated and spending way too much buying shots "in da club", it was taco time. One of the best "legit" taco places in Cabo San Lucas is Los Paises. It's a cement slab covered with plastic furniture, but decor is not the reason to visit. The tacos there are fucking incredible and it's a great thing to put into your stomach before you sleep for four hours. Seriously though, find Los Paises if you visit Cabo.
Your Vegas @ Cabo Wabo - I can't stop pushing Your Vegas because they are awesome. They're a rock band from Leeds that was featured in Rock the Rabbit 2006. They came to Cabo with us last year (lucky them) and they came again this year (lucky us). Since last March, they've signed with Universal and toured with The Bravery. Last week, they did a set at Sammy Haggar's Cabo Wabo and proved that they are indeed "proper rockers". I was able to get a pretty good video of their last song "Troubled Times" from the catwalk at Cabo Wabo. I pissed in Sammy Hagar's private bathroom and it made me feel pretty good about myself.
Musical Chairs @ Billygan's - If I ever have a daughter, I never want her going to Billygan's. At Billygan's, Spring Breakers partake in a number of "beach games" and the result is anything but good, clean fun. After we had been at the beach for an hour or so, they started announcing a game of musical chairs. I saw a handful of girls go to sign up immediately. They still needed more people so the MC continued to call for girls to play the game. I saw a woman (probably in her 40s) that was trying to get her (teen) daughter to participate. Soon after, she was up on the platform and the game was about to start. With a bucket of beers on the line, the players were serious about the game. The "daughter" won the game and I was ecstatic. I approached her mom to try and make sure that the daughter would sign up for our Miss Playboy Mobile competition. That's when I heard the MC calling for girls to trade him their bikini tops for beers. The chairs were gone from the platform and the hose at Billygan's was in full effect. It would have turned into a raunchy wet t-shirt contest if it weren't for the unfortunate placement of the giant "U" on the Playboy U shirts the girls were wearing. Not all of the girls traded their tops for beers and I think only one girl flashed, but it was still entertaining... so entertaining that I don't have any pictures/videos. Sorry.
Tesoro Pool Deck - We were at the Tesoro Los Cabos hotel pool deck on Sunday and Tuesday. Sunday was supposed to be the day where we recruited girls for Miss Playboy Mobile on Tuesday. We had guys on stilts and guys with bouncy shoes hopping around... but that wasn't really effective for recruiting girls. It was a pretty cool scene on Sunday but we had to rely on Billygan's as our main recruitment effort. When Tuesday rolled around, I started to sweat. The event was supposed to start at 1PM and nobody was there. Come 2PM, there were not many college students at the pool. That's when we decided to take matters into our own hands. Charlie hit the beach in search of college kids (specifically hot girls) to hang out for Miss Playboy Mobile. Rocky and I went to the marina, but there wasn't much to be found there. Most girls were with their families (we think a cruise ship had just docked and released a few hundred tourists). We reached the end of the marina and there were no pretty girls to be found. The one fruitful result of the mission was seeing the most aggressive mullet of all time. A rotund 40-something mexican guy had a perfectly cubed crew cut on the top. Complementing the top was a sun-inned or orange dyed back part... this guy was a stickler for grooming, so it was slicked/brushed and there was no shag. This guy did not fuck around. I tried to take a cell phone picture of Rocky with this guy in the background, but he wouldn't stay in one place.
Shortly thereafter, Rocky and I turned around and headed back to Tesoro with our fingers crossed that the other crew had been successful. There still weren't that many people at the pool when we got back a little after 3. I got one girl who we'd talked to earlier in the week to sign up (she eventually won). There was a group of cute girls from TCU and I was trying my hardest to get them to participate. I knew that getting these 6 girls in the Miss Playboy Mobile competition would mean we were no longer fucked. The problem was that they only cared about their booze cruise that day (they wanted to leave in 15 minutes). I offered to pay for the booze cruise and they started to come around. They made me confirm it for them about five times, give them my card, and give them my cell phone number... but they were in. Complete failure had been avoided. It wasn't long before Charlie rolled in with Amanda Hanshaw & Jennifer Hurt with a group of kids. We convinced a handful of girls from that group to participate and we were set. There was a round of Playboy trivia where Nappi (winning girl who signed up first) got every question right. The other girls would wait until she put up an answer and just copy it... bitches. The talent portion was probably the most entertaining. The TCU girls wanted to go as a group. Apparently, all but one of them were cheerleaders. The "stage" was the hot tub covered with plywood to make a platform. Throughout the competition, it had gotten pretty wet. As the TCU girls set up on the platform, you could tell they were going to try something ill-advised. They set up in a horseshoe and threw Mindy or Melanie (one of the two twins) into the air. As she came down, somebody slipped or just fucked up and they BARELY caught her. Disappointed with their first attempt, they set up again. At this point, everybody by the pool was thinking "NO!" but couldn't help but watch. They threw the girl up in the air again and executed perfectly. I breathed a sigh of relief since we wouldn't have to take any Texas girls to the hospital that day.
Hackman @ Squid Roe - One of the funniest parts of the Cabo trip happened after I got back. On one of the first nights, we went to Squid Roe when it was pretty late. From our table/booth, I saw a random guy dancing on a table. We had actually seen him at our hotel wearing a Sonics jersey. I thought his dancing was hilarious, so I took two videos with my digital camera. After I had been back for about a week, I edited them with the OfficialChrisDuncan tag and some text on the second video. I put them on YouTube and hoped that people would think they were awesome. After a day or two, I noticed that I'd gotten email notification of a new comment on my blog. It was odd to me because the comment was on a much older post. I checked it out and it was somebody claiming to be the dancing guy in my video. I figured that one of the handful of people I'd sent the link or somebody that was in Cabo with me was playing a practical joke. At like 4AM, I got another comment but this time on one of the YouTube videos. It was somebody claiming to be the dancer again.
Comment on the YouTube video
Been back from Cabo for a week.....'bout time someone put me on Utube! :) Hack "Hypnotic Dancer" Squid Roe '08
Comment on my Spring Break post:
Hey Chris! It's Rob....U know the "Ridiculous drunk man dancing on top of a table". That was just at a proper level....you should see me drunk! Anyway....I knew if I waited I'd show up on Utube. Had an awesome 10 days in Cabo.Stayed at Tesoro,Partied with the PB girls,Dos Equios girls....just never stopped!! Rob H.
One thing I don't understand is how you can visit a site called YouTube.com, find a video of yourself, then call the site "UTube" in your comments. Eventually, I checked my MySpace account a couple days later (I don't check it very often). I noticed that I had a bunch of new friend requests -- mostly spam. I clicked on the one random guy that had friended me since I figured it was a real person. 43 years old, from Oregon... and then OH SHIT, IT WAS THE GUY. The greatest part was that he had actually embedded the videos of him dancing on his MySpace profile. So Rob Hackman is now my new friend and he's enjoying the hell out of being an "internet celebrity".
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.
This picture is not a sandy beach or a beautiful woman... its New York (West Village specifically) at 6:30 am. My car came at 7:30, so why on Earth would I be out on the street at that time? The answer: Mexican customs fucked me.
We sent down five boxes last week and three got stuck in customs. We paid a few hundred dollars to get the tool box and other supplies released. But for the other two boxes, they wanted us to pay 83000 pesos each (that's $8000). Fuck that.
The problem with that is the precious cargo in one of the boxes. Unfortunately there was a pinstripe fedora in the shipment that Jennifer Hurt was going to wear. We promised the client that she'd look like a mobster to promote the Hitman DVD. So that forced me to search for a new costume.
Luckily that was quite easy since I live in the West Village. Fantasy Land is a mere 2 blocks away. Not only did I get the mafia girl outfit, but I also picked up a few new Pyrex pieces. I <3 New York.
