When I was in sixth grade, "The Dukes of Hazzard" was big. Every Friday night my friend Kirk Ryan would come over, and we'd build a makeshift fort out of the dark brown cushions from the basement sofa, load up heaping bowls of Breyer's chocolate ice cream and then sit rapt for an hour in our pillow fortress watching Bo, Luke and Daisy fight to keep the Duke name untarnished under the watchful gaze of Uncle Jesse.

Now, let me just say from the start, Luke was cool. You couldn't have had the Duke boys without him. But Bo was the shit. Everyone liked him best, and everyone wanted to be him at recess when it came time to reenact scenes from the show. All the girls were gaga for John Schneider, and getting picked to play him was a thrill. (The same was true for the girl who got picked to play Daisy. It meant we all thought she was hot.) So you can imagine the reaction the girls had when I showed up at school one day with John Schneider's address. I had copied it out of a Teen magazine I spotted when my friends and I were stealing candy bars from CVS.

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Working out can pay off, even if you don't lose fat and gain muscle -- I'm living proof. About two weeks ago, I returned to the gym hoping to discharge some of the goo that had accumulated around my middle since I hyperextended my knee in February. Climbing back on that horse was difficult. I was winded before I walked in the door.

But there was light at the end of the treadmill. As I glumly suited up for what promised to be 90 minutes of confidence-shattering misery, who should walk into the men's locker and glimpse me in all my glory? None other than Kramer himself, Michael Richards. He moved past me with grace and ease, casually yet deliberately averting his eyes. Wisely deciding that this was hardly the moment for an introduction, I let a pithy joke about my own Kramer go unsaid.

Now, this was not my first encounter with star power at the gym. Several months earlier, I had seen David Hasselhoff in all of his glory, sort of. I was heading out to the balcony for a stretch in the fresh air when I ran smack into a view of some guy's ass as he leaned over the railing, chirping into a cellphone. Not unlike a Randy Johnson brush-back pitch, his jeans were riding unfathomably high and deep. They formed, in fact, an unspeakable crevice, shadowy and strange enough to possess a magnetic power all its own. I didn't mean to look at his ass, I had no choice. My eyes were literally sucked in.

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It was Pam Brady's birthday last week (Pam's one of the "South Park" writers), so where else could we go but Vegas? We couldn't simply have cake and ice cream. For Pam, ultrashenanigans had to ensue. And that could mean only one thing: Caesar's Magical Empire.

The cheese factor was high as our mysterious, robed maitre d' guided us into a circular room and began speaking in sync with recorded music and cued flames. Suddenly, the ceiling began to rise, climbing farther and ... No, wait! The floor was actually dropping! They fooled us!

That's how the evening went. You never knew what was coming next. And after several carafes of vino, my eyes were even less attuned to the world around me. No matter, it made the magic much better.

After a sit-down dinner and magic show, we were led off to see several other performers. First was Sophie the fire-eater. Dressed in what would best be described as a Roman bikini, she did much to boost our morale. But then she accidentally spit her flame goo onto Kyle.

The next act was a snorefest -- a guy in a tux made apparently unbroken metal rings attach to and detach from each other. Plus, he didn't have a hot assistant. The last act, however, did.

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Something gives way in my head when I go to Hawaii. Something about traveling over water allows me to divorce myself from my mainland concerns almost instantly, which is good, because at present I have a large number of mainland concerns. Primarily, and trust me I hate to say this, I think it might be time for Bachelor No. 1 to settle down and get serious with just one woman. The problem is, women are tricky.

In my younger, more naive days, I thought there was only one type of woman. We went out, spent some time together, then she, unfairly or not, started expecting emotional responsibility on my part. Either I was up to this challenge or I wasn't. Mostly, I wasn't. So, in order to avoid this, I kicked off all relationships by clearly outlining my main objective: to remain emotionally irresponsible. I would usually say, "Baby, I am so far from being ready for a relationship!" If she was what I called a Type I girl, then she'd say goodbye. However, another type of girl said, "Oh, that's fine by me. I don't want you as a boyfriend. I don't want you calling me every day. We can just be friends and hang out." I called her a Type II girl.

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Like so many before me, I came to California brimming with hopes and dreams -- and neglected to go directly to the Department of Motor Vehicles to apply for a California driver's license. I pushed that off for several months, risking enormous fines, because California sets the deadline at two weeks and that's just plain unreasonable. Fuck you, state of California! I've got to find a place to live and settle into my job and find the nearest goddamned grocery store first, OK? Is it all right if I get a roof over my head and buy some food before shelling out hundreds of dollars in smog fees, registration fees and California insurance? Is it OK if I get my life squared away before dropping myself down the rabbit hole that is the local DMV office? Thanks.

So it's June 1998. My buddy Eric and I have both registered our cars, but have put off dealing with the driver's license -- mainly because of the test. By all accounts, it's tricky. Not "two trains leave Chicago traveling in opposite directions" tricky but, rather, "Can you park your car at a white curb if you're a veterinarian carrying a dying raccoon?" tricky. You can get only three wrong. And who wants to study? I mean, I've been driving for 13 years by this point. However, if we get pulled over with California tags and out-of-state licenses -- so busted. (I have three friends who are police officers. They have assured me that this is a particular pleasure.)

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(Everything started out fine.)

A couple Saturdays ago I was at home, doing laundry and baking cookies. By Monday afternoon, I was on a plane headed for London.

"South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut" is being released on video in England, and a new season of the "South Park" series is starting in France, which meant Matt and Trey had to jet over there and do all sorts of press. Two days before departure, Trey calls and invites me. I am not entirely surprised.

(What has happened to me? Have I lost all perspective? What kind of a dick goes on an all-expense-paid, first-class trip to London and Paris and is not fully blown away by it? Yes, I am very grateful. No, I don't think I deserve it. It's just that this life has afforded me so many opportunities, each new one makes the last one less distinct. Just when I think things can't get better, life cranks up a notch. And it seems like it is never going to end. But it has to, right? My favorite -- and the least likely -- termination scenario involves 10 more years of playtime, another five or so for reflection and mental percolation and then two more to write a novel. More likely, there will be a plane crash.)

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On March 12 I turned 30, the same age as my dad when my parents had me. This might give another man pause, but I hate children, so I don't have to worry about feeling left behind. However, the unexamined life isn't worth living, and hitting this milestone meant it was time to stop and think. So I thought, Holy shit, I'm 30. I have to go to Vegas.

And now, back home Monday morning, haggard and unclean, I think: God, I wish I were still in Vegas. In fact, I'm thinking of scouting around for a book deal wherein the publishers fund an extraordinary number of trips to Vegas, in return for which I produce a slim volume of mostly useless information about the town. Because that's the real lesson, I think. No matter how honestly you write about these breathless moments -- like hitting a hardway at the craps table, or watching Cirque du Soleil's "O" for the first time or turning around to a tap on your shoulder at Cheetahs and hearing a dancer say, "How about a cocktail? You have the cock, I have the tail" -- you can never quite capture them fully for the reader. So why even bother?

On the other hand, it was my "magical birthday weekend," so I have to try:

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A funny thing happened on the way to the luau. Actually, I was being pulled by a speedboat. One minute I was up, poised gracefully atop my Big Kahuna wakeboard, the next I was upside down, underwater, in terrible pain. Something had gone wrong in the area of my left knee. I say "area" because you never know where your knee is going to end up in cases like these. And of course my brain, my own brain, provided no comfort. The instant I felt the pain in my knee, my mind only made matters worse by running through an ESPN-like highlight reel of football's worst injuries: repetitive knee snaps and stunned players who do not realize what they've done until they look down to find a floppy limb situated several inches over from where it belongs.

Turns out, I had a pretty severe hyperextension, with a possible ligament tear, so my Hawaiian holiday abruptly ended. But you know me, I always try to turn my misfortunes into an opportunity to meet girls. And with the brace and crutches, sympathy levels were running high. Flight attendants gave me free drinks (which I used to chase down my pain medication, called, believe it or not, Roxilox!) and other passengers offered to carry my bags.

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Dear Button,

It sits nestled in the majestic, snowy mountains of Utah, far from the maddening Hollywood crowd. From this vantage point, it can spot a struggling independent filmmaker from miles away. Wings outspread, it swoops down on the downtrodden and lifts them to soaring new heights of creativity and autonomy. It is, of course, the Sundance Film Festival. And everything I'm saying is, naturally, utter horseshit. Except the part about Sundance being in Utah.

During one of the many stints when Trey lived on mac and cheese and had fungus growing on him somewhere due to substandard living conditions, he made a film. It was at CU-Boulder. He had sloughed off the rest of his classes and focused all his energy, day and night, on researching, writing, scoring, producing, directing and starring in his student film, "Alferd Packer: The Musical." (Now called "Cannibal: The Musical.")

The story is just like any other, except people eat each other. Packer was hired in Bingham Canyon, Utah, to lead a group of miners to Breckenridge, Colo. Well, along the way they got a little lost, got a little cold and then, one by one, got a little dead. Come spring thaw, the only one to emerge from the dreadful cold was Packer. Lots of questions ensued, and finally Packer admitted that he and the men had resorted to cannibalism, and that he had been forced to kill the only other survivor, Shannon Bell, in self-defense.

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Let me just warn you that this letter may be a scramble as my brain is deeply entrenched in Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon,"
a book that can best be described as "head-explody." Ostensibly, it is a tale of the serious business of code breaking, primarily during the Second World War. But it is also sending feelers down into my mind and tickling the nerd center. Lots of number-play with heavy use of coincidence and primes. I'm spinning.

But that all seems boring when I have tale to tell of Al Yankovic (aka "Weird" Al, although he has since dropped the "Weird"). Have you kept abreast of VH1's winning series "Behind the Music"? Despite being (basically) the same story again and again, it is quite good. A band gets together, usually in the '80s. They get big. Then they get really big. Now it is the early '90s. Parties and chicks and drugs and excess. But inevitably the bottom falls out, always around 1992. Narrator: "When we come back: In 1992 the bottom falls out of Mvtley Cr|e's rock 'n' roll fantasy." In fact, the segment of the hour-long show from 30 to 45 minutes is called the POF, or "Price of Fame," segment. The exacted toll usually includes, but is not limited to: overdose, death, betrayal, divorce, institutionalization, wrecked cars, jail time and loss of limb. The final 15 minutes, however, mark the band's return -- Present Day.

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My first day back to earth, post Scandinavian babe contingent, was a Monday, and I was feeling pretty good about life. I was on the verge of falling in love with my reflection in the glossy surface of the hot tub. It was one of those days.

Then, as if things could get any better, the call came: I had just won the office football pool for the third time.

Needless to say, I high-tailed it to Vegas.

Touch down at McCarran by 4, in the Rio at 4:20, at the craps table before 5. Tom is anxious to hit the strip clubs early and threatens to break off from the herd. According to the Las Vegas code of conduct, he is well within his rights to do so. In truth, he could abandon us at the airport upon arrival and not show his face until boarding the flight home. All bets are off; nothing that happens here over the next two days will be spoken of, ever, except by the person who did it (and even then, he is not allowed to say who he was with).

But we want to wait for our final musketeer to arrive, and Trey is not due until about 7. Tom acquiesces, content to have some drinks and nose around while John, Frank and I whet our craps appetites. Jun heads off to the new Monopoly slot machines.

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"A man who takes nothing but his wallet to Las Vegas is no one to be trifled with."

There comes a time after you have lived in a new place long enough that you finally feel at home. Mine began in January of this year when I boarded a plane bound for Las Vegas to see the Mike Tyson/Frangois Botha fight:

Scampering down the jetway, I'm carrying nothing but my wallet and a particular type of excitement, a confident bubbliness over things coming. I am not giddy because of the possibilities of what might happen, I am giddy because I know exactly how the trip will go. That confidence, I know now, is what marked the switch.

Squeezing through first class, I glance around a few arms and shoulders and a beautiful blond woman catches my eye. She has an empty window seat next to her.

"Of course that's my seat," I say to myself. I check my stub. It is.

About halfway through the flight, this woman and the man sitting next to her (recently married, I assume, because of how vigorously they hold hands) decide to look at a photo album. I'm thinking wedding pictures. But of course they're not wedding pictures, they're pictures from the nude photo shoot on the beach the blond woman had done recently. And, surprise, she's not shy about opening the book wide enough so that it gently bumps my thigh. She wants me to look.

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A couple of Fridays ago, I danced myself into a froth at St. Mark's, in Venice, where our friend Keef deejays sometimes. But I am getting old, so I had to cut out and head home at a little past 4.

I roll up to the house, and there across the street is Dian's old, rusty, clunky Monte Carlo ... just begging to be smooshed by a compactor and stacked away for eternity. Well, Dian had been waxing proud about a contingent of beautiful Swedish strippers he was going to bring over in that very car. But Trey and I didn't bite. Because it's Dian.

Now, Dian's really not the Little Bitch they made him out to be in "Baseketball" -- in fact he's very sweet and rather gentle at times -- but when it comes to girls, he tends to exaggerate. What he wishes were the truth and the actual truth are like distant cousins who are not even speaking to each other.

So Dian talking about five hot Swedish strippers sounded to us like it would translate into one semi-pretty girl with kinda-blond hair and her four lame friends.

Needless to say, my climb up the stairs to the kitchen was not undertaken without trepidation.

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Before regaling you with promised Halloween bash dish, I must first tell you who I met last night. That's right, John from "CHiPs"! There I was, minding my own business during a little celebratory soirie at Taverna Tony in Malibu, when who should appear but Larry Wilcox himself?

He was bedecked in an expensive-looking Italian number and running around singing the praises of his latest acquisition: a keypad/pager/e-mail/Internet device the size of a credit card. I asked to see it as he was introduced around -- it was small and lightweight and impressively futuristic. Larry joked that he was planning to go sit out the party and play with his new toy. Everyone laughed cordially as he scampered off. I didn't think he was kidding.

So, you wanna hear about Halloween?

I arrived early to beat the rush and help tie up any loose ends. I was promptly informed there were no loose ends, so I stood outside and early greeted some other pre-punctual friends. My car was parked by the entrance in anticipation of the valets, but my buddy Jason and his posse (including, it turns out, the hot, pierced, tattooed girl) told me there was parking close by. So I uncharacteristically decided to park myself. (This story is actually going someplace.) I asked my buddy Ward to take the half-block ride with me. We slid into my car and were about to slide out when a paramedic truck cut us off. Now, because I live in L.A., my immediate mental response was, "Thanks for cutting me off, asshole!" Then it sunk in that paramedics help injured people, pick up the dead, etc.

It turns out that our fearless co-leader Amy Cohen (party patron, namesake and originator, off whom we suckle party energy like babies and around whom we revolve like spokes in the great party wheel), had fallen victim to gravity. Half an hour before the shindig began, she took a spill from high atop her roller skates and broke her ankle in three places.

With Amy in the hospital, the lovely Jennifer was running the show on her own. Now, I have personally witnessed Jennifer simultaneously reshuffle Matt and Trey's schedules, deal with press, arrange interviews, make appointments, order beefy lunches and make reservations for a huge dinner all while Matt yelled, "I hate you!" at her and Trey put things from her purse in his ass. This woman can handle pressure. But the Halloween party did present some unique problems.

Put yourself in her place, if you will. It's 9 p.m. on Saturday night and a thousand people are driving to your party. Your partner has just been whisked away screaming to the hospital and the valets have not arrived. You don't have the valet company's name or number because that was one of your partner's jobs. What do you do? If you are anyone else, you lock yourself in the bathroom and cry. If you are Jennifer, you kick your way into the storeroom, rifle around for the number and get on the horn.

Then you find out the valets are scheduled for the next night. One thousand friggin' people driving straight at you right now, and not one valet in the city is even thinking he should be anywhere near your party. What do you do? OK, nowyou go to the bathroom and start bawling like a child. That's what I would do.

Jennifer, however, is a different entity. She gets on the phone and gives the valets hell and tells them to get people down there right away or else. And they do. And no one even knows who fucked up in the first place. Problem solved.

Then Neve Campbell shows up without a costume. It was a costume-mandatory affair, and Neve comes as a rule-breaker. (Hey, Neve, get over yourself. I don't care that you came with John Cusack, that's the whole point of the night. John, at least, came as a werewolf.) I also saw James Woods early on, but I think he was leaving. No matter, because Neil Peart was there, dressed as Mandy. Big black motorcycle leathers, enormous blond wig and makeup. The greatest living rock drummer now a hulking transvestite. The guys from Rush are fans of the show (as we are of them). They sang "O Canada" for the "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut" soundtrack.

So, things are finally silky smooth again and I'm making out with lots of different people and our friend Keef is spinning really well and everyone is in the same space mentally and the groove is hitting -- when suddenly the fire marshal shows up and says we've got too many people.

Too many people means that everyone who went out for air or to smoke or to use the outside bar or the outside bathroom or just to look for a friend is stuck outside. And they're lucky, because outside the outside party area is a line of people down the block who haven't even gotten into the outside party area. Well, this just won't do. But what does one do in the face of Mr. Marshal? (I, of course, would still be in the bathroom crying.) Jennifer, however, takes him aside and within a few minutes everyone is freely moving in and out, and the line down the block is gone. The woman is grace under pressure personified.

Perry Farrell was also in attendance, and strangely, he looked a little dressed down for Halloween. Last I saw him -- backstage at the KROQ Acoustic Christmas Concert -- he had Christmas lights strung through his hair. So I guess he'll always seem dressed down to me from now on.

Which reminds me, after that Christmas concert, Trey mentioned overhearing Perry doing press (we hadn't met him at this point) and said he was spouting all this bizarre, whacked-out-sounding stuff. I had seen plenty of wine bottles rolling around, and had also caught some of (guitarist) Dave Navarro's antics. There was a palpable tension backstage and lots of whispering as we all tried to gauge whether or not Jane's Addiction would even be able to go on stage.

Now fast forward to "Chef Aid: The South Park Album." Frank and Perry have become better friends and Perry agrees to do a song for the record. Trey's driving over and can't help wondering what the hell is going to happen. He's the boss, and Perry is definitely an X factor. Sure, Perry's spent gobs of time in the studio, but what if he's all prima donna? What if he goes nuts? What if he doesn't show? What if ... what if ... what if? Perry is a rock and roller.

So Trey gets there and starts singing vocals so that Perry can hear how the song goes. He does this two, maybe three, times. Perry doesn't even seem to be paying close attention. But then Perry gets in the booth and begins dancing and singing and swirling about until everyone is infected with his energy and the whole studio comes alive, and he nails the vocals on the first take. He was prepared, professional and inspiring. Just blew everybody away.

And speaking of albums, South Park is putting out "The Mr. Hankey Christmas Album" sometime around Thanksgiving, and there is one song I think you'll particularly enjoy. It's called "The Most Offensive Story Ever Told." I'll send you up a copy.

And now back to Halloween. Well, no one else so exciting was there. My friend Celeste was in town, and she's quite exciting, but she's never strung Christmas lights through her hair. Not that I've seen, anyway. All in all, it was a good, safe, loving time. Every cloud has its orange and black lining, as it were. The indomitable Amy even wound up holding court in the Moroccan room by about 1 a.m., fresh from the emergency room with a soft cast and a surgery appointment.

I think everyone will be back next year.

Love,

David

P.S. I've got some sad news from the world of "South Park." Mary Kay Bergman, who did all the female voices in the show and the movie, passed away last Friday. She will be sorely missed.

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If I challenged you to a contest to pick the most disparate
group of seven people to sit around a table at a Jerry's
Famous Deli, do you think you could beat me? Go ahead,
think ...

OK, now here's my list: ubiquitous porn star Ron Jeremy; Joey Buttafuoco; some unnamed white supremacist guy whose favorite line for the evening is "niggers is property"; his two polite, Southern belle daughters; Trey Parker and his Japanese friend Jun.

Do I win?

Anyway, the racist is saying that Hitler was right and we should kill all the Jews, while Ron laughs -- despite being Jewish. Then Ron tells the story of doing a sex scene with an 87-year-old woman (Nasty Granny or some such name). He tells Trey he'll send him a copy of the tape. Trey declines. The daughters meekly ask Jun where he is from. Ron tries to explain to Jun the story of Joey Buttafuoco and the Long Island Lolita. Jun does not understand what the fuck is wrong with America.

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Things down in the "South Park" offices have been hectic. But we have had time for a couple small excursions. Trey wanted to see Cirque du Soleil. Have you ever seen it? Here's how it works: The lovely and talented Jennifer calls William Morris. William Morris calls Cirque VIP, and then blah blah Hollywood handshake blah, next thing you know four of us are sitting fifth row in the big yellow-and-blue tent on the pier in Santa Monica. And of course it's all fantastic, the tumblers all hit their marks and the juggler doesn't drop his balls (he went up to seven). But what really sent it over the top was the music being played live. Total blowout -- especially the male singer, whose falsetto fooled us into thinking he was a she. Then, after a couple of numbers he dropped out of the higher registers and into his wheelhouse (as they say in baseball) and we all nearly burst into flames. As Trey said after: "It's good to have something kick your ass once in a while."

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Did you watch "The Price Is Right" when you stayed home sick from school? Even if you pushed the little lederhosened mountaineer off the cliff, there was still a chance for you at the wheel. A second chance for you to be a winner. The American Dream, Hollywood-style. I couldn't get enough. I wanted to stay home everyday. Same with "The Tonight Show." There was no backstage. It was all Hollywood magic. Everyone just sort of appeared. Jetted in, jetted out. Lying on my parents' bed laughing at Johnny's monologue I was overcome with the promise of the entertainment industry.

But then Matt and Trey were on and I was backstage in their dressing room and in comes Jay with the scripts. They had done a pre-interview over the phone the day before and some PA had typed it all up and here was Jay to go over everything. It lost so much charm right then. Then, when they were on a second time, we were backstage and I went to pee and when I came out of the bathroom (you could still hear the toilet flushing) I walked smack into Jay and he remembers me a little and so like a gentleman puts out his hand and receives my dry shake. No post-urination wash-up. There was a slight pause of recognition between us and then I slithered away. (What Jay doesn't know, however, is that I was a left-hand operator on that particular occasion, and he had nothing to fear.)

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