the playboy mansion and i: an inspiring date with bunnies, cockatoos,

twister and weezer (2005)

This was not reality – this was wild paranormal conduct.

On February 25, A friendly-sounding woman from Weezer’s management invited me to attend a reality-bending extravaganza: twelve hours at the Playboy Mansion with Hugh Heffner, all four members of Weezer and about fifty Playboy Playmates who have no business playing Twister with me.

I was also invited to join in on the fun for Weezer’s newest music video - a comeback single titled “Beverly Hills” - but that part of the story just seems like incidental trivia to me; the real story at hand is all about Twister, Bunnies, cockatoos and myself.

Fear & Loathing in Beverly Hills

Here’s a little background on me; In 1994, I recorded a cassette with Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” on it thirteen times. I never had to rewind that cassette to hear that song over and over. This was probably the first time I recognized that I was a genius; I had somehow self-discovered how to cement myself into the subculture of pretentious rock enthusiasts who are proud to vituperiate about how we listened to Weezer at a time when our piers were still pissing their pants and listening to MC Hammer explain to you why you can’t touch this... at age eight!

Flash-forward to today; I’d soon be seeing that self-affirmed ‘guy who looks just like Buddy Holly’ in person. I couldn’t say no.

Actually, that’s only 85% true. I very nearly never attended any of this; I initially declined the offer out nervousness. Back then, I was incredibly nervous about rubbing shoulders and whatnot with some of Playboy Magazine’s most buoyant of the month. However, after a quick conversation with a roommate (the key subject being my recent stupidity), I redialed the friendly-sounding girl and she offered me the spot once more. And after a few setbacks that included oversleeping, I-405 traffic and general indifference toward arriving on time, I arrived at the meet-up point for the shuttle (the rooftop of the Robinson’s-May in Beverly Hills) a scant two-and-a-half hours late.

That became a problem; I arrived at the Mansion nervous and alone. No one who worked there (including the shuttle driver) were allowed to tell me where I was going, either. Peradventure this was because Heffner doesn’t want me or anyone else to come over another day and ask if any of his girls are up for an underwater game of Marco Polo. (However, any troglodite with a rudimentary knowledge of using Google Earth should be able to find the Mansion nowadays.) So, having no reference for where I was, I actually believed that I was at Jane Seymour’s house.¹ I assumed so because I overheard some key grip bros discussing her. It sounds silly, but it’s what I really believed. Perhaps I should have come to my senses about this, but mostly I was coming to my senses that my girlfriend was going to be really, really jealous.

Concluding the Jane Seymour thing, the arrival of fifty-something twenty-somethings in white lingerie provoked me to realize that I was not texting my friends from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman’s backyard.

People who look just like Buddy Holly look just like idiots

The problem with Weezer fans is that the typical fan is the physical personification of the abused character in the Offspring’s song “Self-Esteem,” which is to say that he or she doesn’t have any. In full disclosure, I have for many years been a longtime champion of Weezer’s 1996 record ‘Pinkerton.’ I even supported the album in 2001 when lead singer and guitarist Rivers Cuomo recalled the album as an embarrassment to Guitar World magazine and called  the record’s fans “little bitches.” I also have the vinyl of the record sitting at home in its original shrink wrap and I do not intent to open it.

Having said that, I know what it’s like to be a glutton for punishment. Weezer have time-after-time hammered their fans with disappointments in the wake of ‘Pinkerton’s’ release,  remaining relevant-by-tenure for the better part of the new millenium. So if “Beverly Hills” is any sign of things to come, things are going to continue this way.² With this new song, the career-low letdowns continue; the song is completely devoid of aural enjoyment (is that too much to ask for, Riv?). Anyone who has given a good listen to both ‘Pinkerton’ and ‘The Blue Album’ already knows that the guy can write musical, pleasurable, and most importantly - RELATABLE - songs that everyone can enjoy. So why can’t Cuomo stop rapping? Why is he droning on about rolling like a celebrity? (His words, not mine.) Who could possibly relate to partying with Playmates in Beverly HIlls?

Giving up hope on a band I had such high hopes for was like one of the most important things about becoming an adult. I suspect most disenchanted fans now and years from now will come to terms with their loss and will perform this task. But many others will not. And that’s because, like an ex-girlfriend who shows up at your door one night (“she’s drunk again and looking to score”), Weezer has hurt you before. And Weezer will hurt you again.

My buddies and my homies all come along

What’s odd about Weezer is that none of Cuomo’s egocentric qualities appear to have rubbed off on his band-mates. It’s apparent when you first meet them; drummer Patrick Wilson helped me steal a champagne flute from inside the Mansion. He would also perform drum riffs from various Police songs and then ask anyone nearby if they could guess the tune. On the other side of the coin, Rhythm guitarist Brian Bell regularly dished out John Lennon discussions. (“I want this song to be our... what’s that song that mentioned ‘bagism’ again?”) Bassist Scott Shriner is typical thought of as the ‘badass’ of the band. However, this absolutely has to be incorrect or at least a little misguided from of his gruff exterior, because Shriner secretly possesses a warm disposition for a guy missing a few front teeth. Whilst sitting on a pair of lawn chairs late in the afternoon, Shriner pridefully pointed out his fiancée to me. (“That’s my baby. We’re getting married” he said so out of the blue that I would have sworn he was talking to someone else.)

If you haven’t gotten the picture yet, the individual members of Weezer make it easy to say that ‘Weezer is just a regular bunch of guys, like me and you.’ That statement would actually be true, if only Rivers weren’t such an irritable c***. (If I could say anything about Rivers Cuomo and have it be true, it would be this sentence.)

Only twice was I able to get close to Cuomo. The first time was at the hospitality table; I suspect I may have been picking fruit from his person catering table,  because he gave me an awful look when he saw me there. When I politely attempted to recommend the oranges to him, he said nothing and removed himself from the site. Strike one.

The second interaction was just as brief, but much more memorable. As Cuomo left the front yard on foot (where a game of soccer was in motion), I spotted him alone on my walk back from the Mansion’s menagerie. Throwing a black magic marker and Weezer’s legendary 1994 album cover for “Weezer” in front of him, I begged Cuomo to sign his name for my girlfriend. Needless to say, he was reluctant. It seemed ridiculous - I mean, why invite people over to party if you don’t want to sign a fucking autograph? I begged him to sign by telling him it would make me look good to my new girlfriend (which it did) and that he would make her the happiest woman alive (which he then did). In one swift, Pelé-esque move, Cuomo grabbed the marker from my hand, squiggled his name down, and (literally) disappeared before my eyes before I could recompose myself.  Had Cuomo been a ninja instead of a popstar, he could have been more professional.

Ain’t no party like a West Coast party ‘cos a West Coast party gets filmed

Do you know what’s it like to interact with girls on-camera who are typically nude during these types of on-camera interactions? The director, Marcos Siega, appeared to have it all figured out. WIkipedia says that Siega has directed three Playmate-themed music videos - Blink 182, Hoobastank and now Weezer. One could easily get the impression that, if not for either Siega or Heffner, these poor young girls - too attractive to ever have real jobs - might never have jobs at all.³

It was all a little underwhelming, but I’ll admit - I started to panic when, barely an hour after arriving on the scene, a Bunny named Shauna⁴ began to rub her hands all over me while dancing on the lawn for an extended period of time.

Moving on

If you ever have the chance to visit the Playboy Mansion - which I suspect you might one day since it appears to be rapidly transforming into an amalgam of attractions like Disneyland, Yellowstone, Jurassic Park and the Watergate Hotel.

Cameras were forbidden on the premises, but I found a few key opportunities to take photographs of insanely-rare wild animals when I had the chance to be alone in the Mansion’s backyard menagerie, which was often. Privacy was something that was easy to come by in the menagerie. Brian Bell and his girlfriend or fiancee, Peggy⁵ - were frequently in the menagerie between takes in order to avoid the rabid fans and Playmates.

Bell himself is easily the world’s worst cheater in Twister, but I owe the best part of my night to him. Cuomo was leaving around nine o’clock p.m. for a flight to New York, New York, but there were still hours of filming and partying left in the night. The director’s idea was, in Cuomo’s stead, to have a fan come up and pretend to be him, and for that fan to lip-sync the lyrics while the rest of the band played rhythm.

As Marcos Siega asked for a volunteer, my hand shot straight up, even though I didn’t recall any of the words. I had spent most of the day tuning the song out of my head, resigning Cuomo’s new lyrics to the ‘contrived’ category and opting instead to just try to ‘live in the moment,’ lest I herrange the band about how the mighty have fallen... which I did at one point, mockingly telling bassist Scott Shriner that he was really rocking those two chords in the song. He never caught on, probably because he is too nice to ever assume that someone who seemingly looks up to him is making complete fun of him at the same time.

And here is where Brian Bell came in handy - he fed me the lyrics to the song when I reached my most nervous point on camera, and even jokingly told me not to worry because, in his words, “we’ll make you look good.”

Unfortunately, I must not have looked good enough, because the director quickly decided it was time to ask for other volunteers to rotate through and take a shot at ‘being Weezer’s lead singer.’ In the end, the scene became a hodgepodge of cuts between different lead singers for the band and, for whatever reason, Playmates too.

Three strikingly-plastic Playmates came into frame with me as I pretended to sing along to the lyrics I thought I knew, and one proceeded to unbutton my shirt on camera. This would mark the second time this happened at the Mansion. Whoever said that Playboy Playmates were whores (probably my mother) may have been right, and wondering how they got so good at taking off men’s clothes when they are normally paid to only remove their own will always sit at the front of my mind from this day forward. I can't recall verbatim what this particular model told me when I stopped her on my third button, but I believe it was either “relax,” “let yourself loose,” or “that’ll be $500.”

Unfortunately, the result of that scene ended up as the penultimate shot of the music video, and I don’t have much appreciation for director Marcos Siega for immortalizing me on screen as ‘that dude banging his head with an unbuttoned shirt in the Weezer video,’ but I understand that one could be remembered for far worse things.⁶

Only in dreams

As things winded down, I elected to leave the video shoot an hour early to head home and get drunk with a friend who wanted to go to Rosco’s Chicken & Waffles. (I said no to the waffles.) It was for the best, too, because the defining moment of the day happened as a direct result of my early departure. While I rode shotgun back to the lot in a twelve-passenger van filled with no less than twenty people, “Buddy Holly” serendipitously appeared on the radio. At that moment, everyone on that bus, including myself, became an eight-year old in 1994 again for three-and-a-half minutes. I know of no other way to get that surreal feeling back at this moment in time - whether by nostalgia or mind-bending drugs - but anyone who does should email me immediately at (redacted).

Out of hundreds of ordinary experiences since my day and night at the Mansion, I wouldn’t lose some of them for another trip back. Though I didn’t want to make this a moral story (but here I go), I will say that the moral of the song “Beverly Hills” is that there are much more rewarding experiences and relationships to be had than just “living in Beverly Hills” and “rolling like a celebrity,” no matter how glamorous and exciting it actually is. OK, this might not actually be true (and it certainly isn’t true for Weezer), but it’s a nice thing to say to people who will never get there, anyway.

Weezer, 1995: “Until the schoolbus came / and took my friends away.”

Weezer, 2005: “I might as well enjoy my life / and watch the stars play.”

1. 1.You’re no doubt wondering why I felt like this was a reasonable assumption. Seymour is the owner of St. Catherine’s Court, the gothic Bath, England Tudor manor/castle where Radiohead recorded their breakthrough 1997 record (‘OK Computer’). So, it seemed completely plausible that Weezer would want to film their latest excuse for relevance at a similarly-owned property.
   

2. 2.Bad news - it’s two albums later in 2008, and I was right.
   

3. 3.Labor and boobs alike.
   

4. 4.I may have this spelling wrong - the Bunny’s name could possibly be ‘Shawna.’ I have no idea who she is, but I’m 70% sure there are magazines for that sort of thing.
   

5. 5.I happened to run into Brian Bell once again in the spring of 2008, and he was with a girl who was a) not Peggy, and b) much, much younger than Peggy was in 2005. I can only assume that Bell just wasn’t ready to settle down like Scott Shriner was.
   

6. 6.See: the Star Wars kid, the scream heard ‘round the world, Fergie.
   

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michael alahouzos

2005

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