A few days in the Valley

Paris Hilton's Birthday Party. Ah, another night in Paris. Her birthday, in fact! And for some odd reason, I was plucked from obscurity by friend Pete Giovine to join in the revelry and thus ended up elbow-to-bony-elbow with the ambitious blonde at her Body English VIP booth. I had been in a supremely foul mood after the Hard Rock valet, himself a little testy from the All-Star chaotica, flipped me off. A van full of Samoan men had tumbled out into the parking lot, one rapping on my window, offering a beer from his box. I said no in favor of a better offer from a nice gent who gave up his parking spot for me—"You owe me a dance tonight," he said. Would he come back to collect? I felt dirty.

Up close, Paris still looked like Paris, Nicky looked gorgeous and the rest of her mantourage appeared to be wearing makeup. Except for Stavros Niarchos, who was suitably scruffy for a Greek tycoon. Paris' friends swung her around like a rag doll over the table until she jumped up on it, only knocking over a few glasses in the process of mouthing the words to her song, "Stars Are Blind."

While the afterparty raged around her in the Bowling Alley suite—complete with sideshow acts courtesy of comeback king Jeff Beacher (whom Paris declared her "main man")—Paris drifted to the foyer at 5 a.m. for a reality check. Wine glass in one hand, she used the other to support herself by leaning on the mirror. There she stared directly into her own eyes for a whole, eerie 60 seconds before jerking to attention and stumbling off to points elsewhere, just nearly crashing into two gossip columnists. Again, I felt dirty.

Sarah Silverman at the House of Blues. The couple to the right grows agitated. She shrieked, "I love you, Sarah!" when the spotlight first hit the politically, religiously and racially insensitive comic. Drink aloft, his "Whoooo!" punctuated every punchline. But now, deep into the "Dead Nana" bit first popularized in Silverman's 2006 film Jesus Is Magic, they've tired of parroting the many parts they've heard before. Even the renditions of "You're Gonna Die Soon" and "I Love You More" were so old they could tell Don Rickles stories about when they had to walk to school uphill both ways. But then she closes with the melodic strains of "I Pooped," and they giggle and sway in each others' arms. They haven't seen enough episodes of The Sarah Silverman Program to know the cutting-edge comedian puts Al Gore to shame with the amount of material she recycles.

Burlesque at the Bunkhouse. "Hey, baby, why don't you take it all off!" yells a drunken man from the back of the Bunkhouse Friday. Almost on cue with the drunken request, Las Vegas burlesque dancer Lulu Roxy unbuckles and drops her corset to the ground, exposing large breasts obscured only by the two sequined tassels.

Burlesque combines sex and seduction with a mix of teasing modesty, as dancers never show it all. But as Roxy peels off her nylon gloves and tosses them into the crowd of rowdy men and women, to the sounds of sleazy jazz, the Bunkhouse suddenly transforms, seeming less like a dumpy bar in Downtown Las Vegas and more like a '50s strip club.

With smoke, sweat, musk and booze pungent in the air, Roxy, dressed in tight, red-sequined fishnets and caked in white makeup, snakes around the stage as the wild hoots and hollers bring a smile to her red-painted lips.

"That's what I'm talking about," the same voice yells, competing with the cheers of the crowd—mainly women—around the stage. Roxy's act goes into its final crescendo, involving a loose chair and her surprisingly agile and curvaceous body. Then she gets up, takes a bow and begins to gather her clothes from the stage. As Roxy cleans up, the music switches from the sounds of the '50s to '90s nu-metal, and retro-euphoria dies—but for that 15 minutes or so, it seemed like Roxy had taken the crowd back to a time when exhibitionism was tempered with modesty, and it was strangely refreshing.

A night in a Strip suite. Among the 40 text messages during All-Star Weekend, the best came at noon on Sunday, when I was still in bed and barely awake: "My boy's got a suite [at a major Strip casino]. I call when you when I get there; let you know what's up."

Friends—you can't enjoy All-Star Weekend festivities and not pay All-Star Weekend prices.

After a few days of showing around visiting friends, loitering in Strip hotel lounges and flaking out on the bajillion celebrity parties, I was actually ready to, egad, go to a party. But, cheap bastard that I am, I wasn't about to pay the exorbitant prices to get packed with other sheep into some crawl space of a club.

So, to the friend-of-a-friend's suite we went, and into a plush suite we crashed. Butt-shaking hip-hop music was blaring (surprisingly, there were no complaints while I was there). You had to get there early for the best grub (shrimp) but there was enough liquor to open a distillery. And it was free. Three women danced on a bed, while my boy dry-humped a girl from Chicago on the floor. In front of everybody!

Cooler libidos prevailed, though, and everyone just partied, turning the living room into a dance floor.

As for the All-Star game, which was won by the Western Conference 153-132: It was only important in emphasizing the Left Coast's cultural dominance: Said one man, high on life and possibly a cannabis-related inhalant: "That's a real West Coast ass-whoopin'."