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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
