Hollywood: Rock Of Ages

by Chris Solberg

  Ginger - Vinnie Vegas

  I met Liz right after I moved into my studio apartment across the street from The El Cerrito Apartments, but I also met a girl who shared a studio in my building with her roommate. Her name was Ginger and she looked exactly like a pudgy Marilyn Monroe. Not fat, just a little chubby, you know the type. She had the boobs to match, so a little bit of chub was by no way a big deal. Ginger had really white skin and usually sported a couple of dark bruises somewhere on her thighs. Once again, you know the type! My time with Ginger set me back a few squares in my quest for adult relationships.

  Ginger and her roommate lived in a pig stye of course, and if you asked them what they did for a living, you’d never get a straight answer. They weren’t strippers because I knew them all, but there was a different kind of hustle where women got naked and played with themselves in booths, while guys plunked tokens into machines for a peek. There was a place called The Paris House on Santa Monica Blvd. which they probably worked at. I’m pretty sure they were a part of this sleazier genre which also included “private clients” with deep pockets and kinky fetishes. Both of these girls always had plenty of cash.

  Ginger’s roommate had a pretty hot body, but Perris said her face looked like a fish, and after he mentioned that, I had to agree. Bobby wanted elaboration on what he meant and Perris told him, “Just go down to the market and look in the cooler”. Yes, she looked really good when she wore a form-fitting red dress with pumps, but Perris was right, her eyes were far apart and her mouth was extra wide with thick lips. Because Ginger latched on to me, “Mrs. Grooper” thought she should hook up (get it?) with Perris, but he’d have no part of it. Lots of girls tried the friend/friend hook-up but it usually never worked.

  Now Ginger and I didn’t really date, it was more of a “friend with benefits” situation, and at the time, I didn’t even know what that meant. It wasn’t until Alanis Morrisette released “Jagged Little Pill” did I figure out what that actually meant. Duh! The first time I met her she invited me into her apartment which was lit by one single light bulb hanging in the middle of the ceiling. This would cast wicked looking shadows across the wall when you walked around. Her roommate was digging around through boxes because they had just moved in. Ginger was wearing a short plaid skirt 10 years before Britney Spears made that look a phenomenon, and sitting cross legged on the floor. She had been pounding Jack Daniel’s and offered me some. So I sat on the ground making sure to position myself so I could see right up her skirt and tilted the bottle. She knew I could see up her skirt and didn’t care. In fact, she kept leaning forward so I could look down her shirt as well. She was being very playful due to the Jack Daniel’s and started teasing me She’d close her Marilyn Monroe eyes and lean into me while parting her lips. As I tried to kiss her, she’d pull back, open her eyes and then giggle at me. It was pure flirty fun, so I was not put off by it. Her white shirt was tied loosely in a knot and she had a lacy black bra on which of course accentuated her boobs quite nicely. She had one of the biggest set of boobs I had seen on a girl in Hollywood until then. She continued to flirt and tease me right in front of her roommate and even began to do a little peek-a-boo strip routine for me. All the while her roommate didn’t bat an eye and went about her business while Ginger got raunchier and began saying all sorts of dirty things that she was going to do to me. I began to feel odd, and combined with the stark atmosphere of that one light bulb in the room, things began to seem downright weird. I remember thinking that the old Vinnie would be uneasy in this situation, but the new Hollywood Vinnie had better straighten up and not be such a wuss. After all, this is Hollywood, and these things go on in Hollywood all the time. If I was going to survive in Hollywood, then I’d better suck it up and roll with whatever happens. So I drank another shot of Jack and became Hollywood.

  As much as I appreciated the attention, I didn’t do the usual happy-trot home that night. There was something dark about that experience that was

  hanging over me. I felt like I had crossed some line that there was no coming back from. These two girls lived in another dimension of Hollywood that was a complete opposite of the Glam/Metal universe of the Sunset Strip. This was the dangerous side of Hollywood that included shady characters, hard core drugs and dead bodies. And I was beginning to worry that I might get pulled in.

  Later, Ginger apologized for that night and told me that she had recently gotten out of a relationship and decided to get drunk to blow off some steam. I accepted her explanation, but realized that there was more to the girl than just that. She craved affection and had no bones about acting out on that. She decided that she liked me, and made it a point to seek me out whenever she could. This was not hard because my parking spot was right outside her window, so she knew exactly when I would get home. She’d bound down the hall and meet me as I was unlocking my apartment door. She didn’t like to be alone and would spend a lot of time with me. Her favorite trick was to call up and tell me she was coming over. She would walk down the hall in a black trench coat, red pumps, and of course when she took it off, she would be naked except for the shoes. That outfit made me feel like I was with a spy while she wore it, and made me feel like James Bond. More often than not, this would happen on work nights, which led to many a hazy morning at work the next day! It got to the point where somehow when my phone rang, I knew it was Ginger wanting to come over. Every so often, I actually found myself hoping my flashing red bat-phone wouldn’t light up and ring, just so I could get some rest. But it usually did, and I never said no.

  Ginger would take me to after-hours parties in abandoned warehouses that were full of stripper types and Russian mafia dudes in bad suits. This fed my belief that she was indeed hanging out with the wrong crowd and I began to avoid these clandestine soirées. I was growing dangerously close to rubbing elbows with underworld types that gave me the heebie-jeebies. Ginger saw no threat from this crowd, and thought I was being overly dramatic when I tried to convince her that she should be careful.

  I ran into Ginger at the Coconut Teazer on Halloween night. The Coconut Teazer was an odd club in Hollywood on the corner of Sunset & Laurel Canyon that looked like it used to be a residence at one time. Ginger was dressed in the familiar devil outfit of a red leather lace-up bustier, short red pleated skirt and two red horns sticking out of her short blond hair. She had gotten really sloppy drunk and had no business being in public, so I told her roommate I’d take her home. Her roommate wanted to stay, so she welcomed the idea. Ginger thought it was a great idea as well, and we started walking down Sunset Blvd. around midnight. So there I was, trying to steady a drunken devil-girl down Sunset in the middle of the night who is teetering on high heels. I had to laugh at myself, and I remember thinking, “Isn’t this what you wanted in life?” The answer was yes.

  We only lived a few blocks away, so I was looking forward to having her alone in my apartment, but she had a different idea. She keep trying to pull me off into every dark corner and doorway on Sunset. She was also grabbing me and trying to kiss me every step of the way. We took a short cut through a back alley and she pushed me off and told me, “Whats the matter? Don’t you want me?” As I was stuttering and stammering, my devil-girl climbed up on a fire hydrant with a wicked look of lust on her face. In the dark with her horns, she almost looked like a gargoyle from Notre Dame as she leaned forward and leered at me. This finally got to me because her skirt rode up exposing thigh-high fishnet stockings and a thin red g-string. Remember, in the 80’s g-strings were as rare as Brazilian waxes, and she had both. So if you want to put yourself in my position, picture a 5’ 1” Marylyn Monroe wearing red devil horns perched atop a fire hydrant giving me the “come hither” signal with her index finger. Well, who would say no to that? Certainly not me, I mean, wasn’t this all a part of my Hollywood dream?

  In the middle of it all, I had a moment of clarity. Here I was in a back alley of Sunset, known as the very place where hookers take their Johns. I suddenly pictured a squad car pulling arou
nd the corner spotlighting me in the beam o’ death. At that point I knew I’d be taking a ride downtown for sure, so I stopped dead in my tracks and pulled myself together. I decided to get Ginger home as soon as possible and leave the idea of public fornication behind. We made it back home without any run-ins with the LAPD and that was fine by me!

  Ginger and I enjoyed each other’s company until I moved in with the Hooligan Stew boys, and after that, we really never saw each other any more. We’d bump into each other from time to time, but since she wasn’t right down the hall, it just never seemed to happen. Even though I was only a block further away from her. I always thought of her every time my bat-phone rang and flashed it’s red runway lights. But it was just as well, because by moving into the Hooligan Pad, I was about to enter the most action packed days of my life. And with that, I never flirted with the dark side of Hollywood again.

  I did see her roommate later one night on the Sunset strip. I was in a car stopped at Larrabee St and she walked across the street in front of the car. She looked in the car, recognized me, smiled broadly and waved hello. She then looked over at Leslie who was driving the car topless. Her face went blank and she looked straight ahead while hurrying across the street. Leslie and I laughed the entire way home.

  You better hold on tight,

  love’s a roller coaster ride!

  -Ultra Pop

  The red white and blue crew

  THE BIRTH OF VINNIE VEGAS - Vinnie Vegas

  Something strange happened to Hooligan Stew after a couple of years. Right around the end of the 80’s, the situation in the Middle East was starting to heat up. Names like Muammar Khaddafi and Sadam Hussain were making there way into the headlines and it looked like a showdown was imminent. In Hollywood, everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, was stanchly anti-American. Movie stars, rock stars, directors or producers, it didn’t matter. Everybody was on the left-wing and pro-Arab. If anybody dared to offer a different prospective, they were immediately shot down and ridiculed publicly as idiots. Who knew Matt was patriotic, but boy he was, and this attitude in Hollywood pissed him off. You’d have bands jumping on the bandwagon by ranting onstage about how America sucked and we needed to fuck off. This was always met by half-hearted applause, but nobody dared to shout out anything in defense of the US. Honestly, I doubt that any of those bands really felt that way, but it was a ploy by lead singers to look cutting edge about a subject that they knew nothing about.

  We had written a song called “The Old Red, White, and Blue” and one night Matt brought a full sized American flag to our gig at FM Station and began waving it over the audience right before the song. He launched in to a tirade about the filthy pig called Sadaam Hussian, and how America was going to kick his ass. The audience fell quiet and didn’t know what to think. It’s not that they didn’t appreciate the sentiment but, they all looked around at each other because that kind of talk was forbidden in Hollywood. This kind of talk was the exact opposite of the nightly drumming thrown out by everybody else in Hollywood. This only encouraged Matt even more, so each time we’d play the song, he’d break out that flag and more and more people cheered until after a few months it became a mini rally. This really threw the Hollywood elite for a loop and they immediately began to trash talk us, but with the people behind us, they had a losing cause. Suddenly this became our identity and we started sewing American flags on our stage gear and people started showing up at the gigs in all things Red, White, & Blue.

  I don’t remember this being a thought out thing, but rather spontaneously I started wearing a red baseball hat, red bandanas, red converse and played a red bass. On the other side of the stage, Bobby started do the same thing with blue. This left Matt in the middle with white. Suddenly we went from being street punks to the “Red White & Blue Crew” It was right about this time that a legend was born. It was Matt who unwittingly created the monster known as Vinnie Vegas. This would prove to haunt him because he was a complete narcissist and resented the fame my new name brought me. You see, this town wasn’t big enough for two Vinnies. There was Vince Votel and me, and I had the disadvantage on this one. Vince Votel was not only a lot more popular than I, (and better looking) but the name just rolled off your tongue and was easy to remember. Any time somebody asked “Where’s Vinnie?” the answer was always “Who... Votel?” When it came to me I was officially the “other” Vinnie. That didn’t sit to well with me and most people didn’t even know my last name anyway. This always led to:“No, the other Vinnie... you know... brown hair... Cupkake’s friend.”

  Around this time, I fell in love with Las Vegas and ended up going there just about every month. This annoyed Matt because he felt I was spending too much time there instead of focusing on my bassly duties. So out of the blue one day Matt asked somebody if they knew where I was. As usual, they asked “Who... Votel?” Matt answered “No... not Votel... You know,

  Vinnie... Vinnie Vegas! On that day, a legend was born!

  Believe me, being Vinnie Vegas was a good thing. There’s no way you’re forgetting that name! It also fit in well with our new American image. Over time, we all obtained the obligatory leather jackets that everybody wore. The typical thing to do was to personalize your jacket with all sorts of buttons and pins you got at British Imports. We liked to do things different, so me being an artist, I was commissioned to custom paint everybody’s jacket. I liked the idea of wearing a leather jacket because it reminded me of the fighter and bomber squadrons of WWII. So I painted the logo of Fighting 31, a squadron which featured Felix the Cat running with a bomb in his hands on the back of my jacket. I painted all four suits of cards down one sleeve and a big white VEGAS in block letters down the other. Now there would be no doubt exactly who I was! Boy I really marketed myself to the hilt. Well it worked, so what the hey! I gave Bobby an East Coast feel with pool balls painted down the sleeve. Matt had the Hooligan Stew logo on the back and Perris wouldn’t let me paint his jacket. He just had a lame skull pin on the pocket. This was fun, now we looked like something special when we hit the strip. And the more I wore the jacket, the larger the legend of Vinnie Vegas grew.

  PARTY ANIMALS - Vinnie Vegas

  As Hooligan Stew began to gel into a solid unit, we decided to actually map out a future for the band. Both Matt and I lived in Hollywood, but Perris lived in the Valley, and Bobby lived in bum-fuck Long Beach. We decided that it would be better for the band if we all moved in together, so we got the first of our apartments that would be well-known for the after-parties we threw. We purposely picked a place with large rooms just for that reason. It was on the north end of the building so it never got any direct sun and was always nice and cool, even on the hottest days. The place had no AC, but you’d never know it, so I really liked our new home. The only draw back was the fact that it may have had mildew in the walls because you would get that musty smell if you didn’t keep the windows open. The place had that hip 70’s feel to it with a glittered popcorn ceiling, shag carpet and a huge sliding glass door. I think it even had an avocado refrigerator! We always had the windows open, so a cool breeze was usually wafting through the place, I liked that a lot because reminded me of Pacific Beach in the summer. We were up on the fourth floor and had a huge balcony that looked out the back rather than to the apartments next door like most of the other balconies did. There was a loud blue bird called “Jay-Bob” would fly in through the open sliding-glass door to eat Doritos with us. Off that balcony I saw more wildlife than I did anywhere else. I’d look over the edge at night and see raccoons on their way to the dumpster. Perris got spooked one night because he was throwing chicken at a “giant rat” and it looked up and hissed at him. He didn’t know what an opossum was. I saw owls perched on aerial antennas suddenly dive down on something, quiet as the night. You’d see coyotes or deer casually walking down the street and skunks wandering between the houses oblivious to anything. Between the raptors hunting prey and the coyotes ripping apart screaming cats at 2 am, it was like watching the Discovery Channel
every night. The environment had changed over the years, but the wildlife did not.

  Liz-Bone and Ultra Pop had come back from their tour, and since Ernie was not in the band anymore, Vince Votel and his girlfriend got a place next door, while Liz-Bone and Cupkake moved downstairs. We called Cupkake’s apartment “The Bunker” because that’s exactly what it looked like. They had to find the cheapest place, so the manager offered them a crib that had to be a janitors room at one time. It was on the ground floor right next to the pool, but it had no windows, except for a slat that opened up like an air hole on a camper shell. The walls were cinder block and with only one room and the place being so small, Cupkake had to sleep on a mat in the kitchen like a dog. From our place, we could yell “Votel!” out the window, and he’d hear us and answer back like on The Honeymooners. Cupkake would come up all the time to hang out or watch Beverly Hills: 90210.

  After playing a show on The Strip, we’d bring back tons of people and the party was on. I had a lull in the party scene after Cupkake moved out, but now it was back with a vengeance. Once again, finding a girl was as easy as simply saying hello. All this action meant that a lot of girls came and went through those doors and some of the regulars tried to pair up with us as if they were real girlfriends. Perris got the worst of it, and I laughed because some of girls that were with him the night before, were now suddenly

  appalled at the new “whores” in the living room sideling up next to him. And the next night, that second group of girls would be just as appalled at the third. And so on... and so on!