Feeding the homeless with James Brown's widow

See interesting things always happen when you kind of just go with the flow in Los Angeles or New York. The first step is usually to say yes and just keep saying yes to see how it all unfolds like a giant snake of improbable sights and sounds wrapping itself around your otherwise sedantary habitual nature. Or is that just me. So on one of these nights when I actually said yes (it helps to have friends who ALWAYS say yes-- Lance being on the forefront of those but I can think of others--it's a requirement to be in the inner sanctum chez Rigg) I ended up at the Viper Room to see Tomi Rae Brown's chick rock band Godmother play a set. Not too crazy since we are pitching a reality show for Tomi and a documentary on the late James Brown and have often enjoyed her edgy throaty power rock vocals in the process. So they play the gig, and I am in a booth with Lance who is visiting some musical theater friends, and Julian and Andrea who decided to drive me there so I could drink. Which I didn't. Lance did, and took a shot from between the breasts of sexy female bassist Beth Ami who obliged with a full titty dunk into his eye that rivals only the Nicole Sheridan puss flash we had in the elevator at the porn awards a couple of years ago.

party Crash tip number 17: Sometimes you don't actually want to crash a party or be part of the party at all. If the host looks like a homeless person, excuse yourself and make your friends go with you. Even if they are drunk.

So it was one of those things where everyone afterwards goes whaddyYOU wanna do no whaddyYOUUUUU wanna do for fifteen minutes in the parking lot. Some dude from Indian Casinos out west gave me his card which I lost. Lance flitted away, the band starts to flit away, Beth Ami has mold in her kitchen and is at a hotel with family, drummer Athena has to return to her Scorpion (drummer James Kottak-- it's a family biz) and I am like wait am I Tomi's ride? She's hungry. They leave me holding the bag so to speak and she goes CMON, WE"RE GOING TO THE RAINBOW. Which is across the street which seems totally like, whatever, but she points to some dude that has been sniffing around us for the whole time and says that dude is a sax player he is gonna buy us dinner. I go, are you sure? She goes yeah yeah he loves me he wants to show off and buy us dinner. And then she lurches across Sunset. I spot check Julian and Andrea who are yessers, sometimes and they shrug ok. The roadie whose name I forget is following too. Everyone is talking about Tequila and Pizza and Tomi keeps saying they know me there, My picture is on the wall. And as we slither into a booth there it is, fuscia hair and all next to a grinning James Brown. So we order the pizza and Tomi Rae is poking my sunglasses through a kind of hilarious drunken aria of laughing and cracking word-play jokes. She's got a mind for puns and a bod for sin apparently. It's a little disorganized and I say to the roadie, "Dude will you drive her back?"and he is like hells yeah. So I go when did you start working with them and he goes "Tonight" we met on the plane. Visions of Rufis and tattoo ink dance through my mind and I go "You know what it's cool I got her." Seeing as I am the Exec and all.

Long story short the meal ends with Julian's eyes rolling back in his head from making small talk with drunk people, I got the tattoo of James Brown crushed into my shoulder by Tomi Rae who is leaning and lolling through interesting stories, but still. Photo is me having my glasses knocked off my face close to end of meal by an exuberant Tomi Rae Brown. The check comes. The sax player who is supposed to be the ringleader of this extravaganza and who has drunk 3 shots of tequila, throws a buck on the table. A buck. Julian laughs. Tomi goes, hey he's buying. Sax player who is as I suspected actually creepy homeless dude says well this is all i got for richer or for poorer. Like that is supposed to be funny. Julian throws down a 20 for him and andrea. Roadie has like 10. Bill is 150. I pull out my amex card thinking, poverty jet set don't like getting stuck with the check, even if I do get a candid shot of James' Brown's widow drooling on my shoulder. I can still taste the flappy tomoatoes and soggy crust under the layer of white cheese and am not at all happy that THIS is the meal i am paying a buck fifty for. I mean at LEAST Beso. Katsuya. Something.

As we leave, a group of cougars in a pink convertible go Hey Tomi!!! She whispers to me, they all want to fuck me. They are Beverly Hills lesbians they throw parties and wanna do me. I am shocked particularly because they have the long silk wrapped nails of the idle rich/hookers/check out chicks in Queens. And plenty of inectables in their nasal labial area. Hardly dykey looking predators on the outside.

I consider how much money it would take to entice me to be the meat in that Real Housewives sandwich, particularly because I have just fed the homeless who is now saying to Tomi "how you gonna leave without giving a brother your number"....

We drive her to Beth Ami's house where she is tip toeing around the kitchen mold to get to her bedroom, and she flops open her suitcase for the weekend which contains a crazy hat, a devil mask, a bra and a hairbrush. That's it? I say incredulous at how packing light can be so eclectic. "Yeah" she says "I thought I might need this stuff."

That makes perfect sense to me.