1st Ruby Air-Fuel Talent Show, Las Vegas, NV

I don't have much of a social life. I rarely get out, and spent most of my twenties as a total geek entrepreneur. Consequently I have a very small set of close friends, and they all date back to school when I started my first companies.

• When we started to pass the drinking age, we threw beer bashes.
• The dirty thirty parties were more serious. Success gave us the ability to throw very nice parties, although for the most part we kept them pretty quiet.
• In somewhere in there were a few bachelor parties, company success parties, and company funeral parties too.

And we're still together, growing older.

This year I noted an impending 40th birthday for one of the gang, the first of us to pass that magical portal from "young" to "not so young". And after the party I threw in Las Vegas in the spring, I thought, why not try something like that for John?

A few emails, a flurry of ideas, some wild-assed financial forecasting, and the rest of the gang was committed to the Tyco-quality budget (expenses before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization, of course). I, of course, was given planning responsibility.

So I was sitting there, the phone number of one of the dancers I had hired for the previous Vegas party in hand (the one who baked cookies), thinking. And while I was thinking, I saw a news item on my portal page mentioning a shut down in the porn industry. Sadly, an actress was found to have HIV, and the porn industry shut themselves down while they tried to chase down the chain of intercourse.

Kind of like a chain letter, but in this case you are blessed if you break the chain. 

An industry insider was quote as saying that they could not shut down for too long, as much of the talent in the industry tended to live month to month and needed the work. Perhaps they need better financial advisors.

But if a porn actress and a financial advisor met in the same room, who would end up getting fucked?

Well, after I read the article and commentary, light bulbs went off.  If there were porn talent hungry for work, perhaps I could provide some!  And that's how the party concept started, the Ruby Air Fuel Talent Show (RAFTS).

Ruby = the traditional 40th anniversary gift Air-Fuel = a combustive mixture ideally at about a 15:1 ratio Talent = think media actresses Show = well, it sure wasn't intended to be literature!

Now merely logistics remained. 

RAFTS LOGISTICS

I have a few contacts from years back in the so-called adult entertainment industry, for a reason you wouldn't believe so I won't bother telling you. In any case, I made a few calls to ensure that I could name drop, and was given a few leads to agents. Now I hadn't known there were agents in that industry, having thought that talent were under contract with studios like the Good Old Days of Hollywood, but apparently agents are the norm.

And a few contacts with agents coupled with shameless name dropping yielded... an invitation to a karaoke event in California.

Huh.

So I went. And it appears that there is a porn industry karaoke event approximately every week to every month. There was also a charity event. I attended both. Only to network, of course...

And I only rent porn movies to listen to the cool soundtracks... and I buy the magazines for the articles.

When I went for the events I met several agents in San Fernando Valley. Their business wasn't real estate, that's for sure, although their properties had huge, er, tracts of land. 

Meanwhile I found a big house to rent outside Las Vegas. It was surrounded by, er, huge tracts of land and adjacent to a small lake. And of course it had broadband.

I showed the color of my money, and it was set. I was cautioned by both agents that many of the talent were flaky, and a certain percentage wouldn't show sometimes. The long and the short of it is that I offered to hire fifteen plus or minus two girls for my event from two agents. I specified a location event in Las Vegas, and accepted a makeup person and two videographers. Just what I always wanted: a whole mobile pornography crew of my very own.

A bus was found to transport the whole group to Las Vegas on Friday and back on Sunday.

I enjoyed the Venetian so much last time that I chose it for my return. They also had made a mistake on the last trip and owed me some credit. I rented twelve rooms and one small conference room. I was told the girls and crew typically double up in rooms, not much luxury in that business, which was to my benefit.

  SCHEDULE

Roughly what I emailed to John:

John,

 

I'll pick you up around 7 PM. I'll have girls and guns and an SUV. We'll spend Friday night with the boys in Vegas. Bring your bankroll so we can make some of our money back.

 

Then on Saturday we head out to the back trails of Nevada. We'll lose you in the desert and leave clues for you to find your way back. Pack light: GPS, compass, mirror, hat, sunscreen, water purifier, four water bottles, and lots of condoms.

 

No, seriously, pack all that and lots of clean underwear, chapstick, and several tubes of Preparation H. You also may want to bring a tape demagnetizer.

 

You have been warned.

Expect anything. But don't expect to be back at work until Tuesday.

Sig (your friend, ha, ha!)

Here was the schedule I emailed to the rest of the party:

Friday:

   --   Arrive and check into Venetian under RAFTS party

  3 PM  Sig meets bus   5 PM  Meet at conference room XXXXX, catered snacks    8 PM  Sig picks up John    --   Dinner, drinks and pool

Saturday:     --   Check out of Venetian, Dan handles lunch, Sig leaves for house   3 PM  Girls arrive at house and set up, caterers arrive   6 PM  Dan arrives at house with John    --   Dinner, drinks and pool

Sunday:

   --   All girls out of house by 3 PM   3 PM  Cleaning crews arrive    6 PM  Dan takes John to airport

  9 PM  Jack returns keys to house I reminded the guys that part of our goal was to keep the suspense and terror high, say at the Red threat level.

 

 

THE ATTACK

So the day rolled in. Did it all go according to plan?

Well, yes and no.

On the plus side, almost all the gals showed up. Now you have to understand, when the girls outnumber the boys by 5:1, and only the girls are professionals, you just can't expect the event is about sex. The men just aren't able to keep up. This was designed as entertainment. Several scenarios, filming scenes, lots of girl on girl, toys, and so on. But...

On the minus side, my friends went totally nuts, lost inhibitions, and you know, there are some things you just don't want to see your friends do. Especially on three CCD digital video. Suffice it to say that there was far more, um, direct participation than I had expected or planned.

Oh, and apparently girls in the industry are like family. Ok, an incestuous family. But it also means they have history. And a few of the gals had some current history. As in fights over boyfriends or girlfriends (I couldn't quite figure out which it was). As in Jerry Springer class fighting. In the living room. Without the oil wrestling paraphenalia.

Well, it was exciting.

Two sets of video, given to the birthday boy to cherish until his significant other finds it.

But we, his best buddies, will never tell. As long as he keeps wiring money into our accounts...