In celebrity-starved Denver, it's no surprise that the PleasuresDudes — the alter egos of Mike Wheeler and Fred Gates — have parlayed their late-night TV ads for a local adult-store chain into a certain star status peopled with parties and porn stars, as Jared Jacang Maher described in his January 11, 2007, cover story, "The Pleasures of Their Company." And thanks to the web, news of the Dudes' exploits has spread far and wide — wide enough that they were invited out to Los Angeles for last Saturday's F.A.M.E. (Fans of Adult Media & Entertainment) awards, essentially the people's choice of porn, where they were to work the red carpet and interview people like hot heavy-metal VJ Metal Sanaz and the legendary Ron Jeremy.
They were supposed to share that carpet with Dave Navarro, guitarist and former main squeeze of the pulchritudinous Carmen Electra. "But Navarro did a no-show," Wheeler says, "so it was just us.... It was beautiful. We got to talk to everyone." And not just talk. After the ceremony was over, FAME host Jesse Jane — who'd just won for Best Body — came over with her award. "I pretty much told her that I loved her," Wheeler admits, "and she said, 'I guess I'll have to fuck you, then.'" Which she proceeded to do — filming the entire thing. "It was pretty incredible," the Dude reports.
You can read all about it — and we mean all about it — at westword.com, where Wheeler's F.A.M.E. diary and photos are posted.
Tommy boy: Last week in this space, as well as in the Presidential Precedent section of Demver, our political blog at westword.com, former senator and onetime presidential candidate Gary Hart noted that he won't be casting his ballot for John McCain — even though he's a longtime friend of the Arizona senator and even served as a groomsman at his second wedding. In contrast, Representative Tom Tancredo, a more recent White House hopeful from Colorado, will probably vote for McCain — but as he makes clear in an extended Q&A at blogs.westword.com/demver, he's not exactly a-bubble with enthusiasm over his options. "He was not my first choice, not my second choice, not my third choice," he says of McCain, who favors considerably more liberal immigration policies than does Tancredo. "He's the party's choice, and therefore, that's the end of it."
As for the end of his own presidential bid, Tancredo paints a vivid picture of the final moments. "I was in Iowa," he recalls. "It was mid-December. It was cold, it was nasty, it was about eleven o'clock at night. I'm eating my dinner in a motel room...and Rudy Giuliani comes on — a commercial. And he says, 'If you elect me, I'll build a fence. We will secure our borders.' And that was it. I picked up the phone and I called Bay Buchanan" — his campaign manager — "and I said, 'Bay, I just watched Rudy Giuliani say he would support securing the borders. Let's pull the plug on this thing.'"
Of course, Giuliani's own campaign flatlined shortly thereafter, but Tancredo still believes that his own candidacy pushed the Republican Party closer to his own immigration positions. "I must admit, I feel pretty good about the whole thing," he says.
Except for that voting-for-McCain part.
