Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

NORM: Porn star's book walks wild side

Jenna Jameson gets into the details. Mark Cuban gets to be "Benefactor." Ron Jeremy gets kicked out. Queen rocker Brian May and bandmate Roger Taylor are to be inducted into the RockWalk.

Jenna Jameson's tell-all book is causing heartburn for some very nervous local bigwigs.

In "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star," Jameson, who grew up in Las Vegas and was on the stripper pole by 17, hits close to home.

She doesn't name names, but she dances tantalizingly close to revealing her best customers.

Jameson, who grew up as Jenna Massoli, said she was hired at the Crazy Horse Too by a "tan, well-dressed Italian man with salt-and-pepper hair."

After taking the stage name of Jennasis, her first regular, she writes, was the president of a large Las Vegas hotel. "He gave me $2,000 to chat with him for two or three songs."

One of her best customers was a "local politician who liked to be dominated." We'll skip the yucky details other than to say the politico tipped her with a pink slip: a receipt for a brand-new Corvette.

Before reaching the status of porn icon, she recalls her desire to follow in her mother's footsteps and become a showgirl.

Her first stop: the Folies Bergere at the Tropicana, where her mother had been a principal dancer in the 1950s. After rejections up and down the Strip, Jameson landed a job as a showgirl at Vegas World.

During high school, including a suicidal year in rural Montana, the daughter of a Las Vegas cop often courted trouble.

For fun, she and her Las Vegas accomplices would steal apartment fire extinguishers and "go down to cracktown and see the crack hos on the corner and we'd fog 'em up," leaving them "coated in white."

The Scene and Heard

Two Las Vegans are in the running for the $1 million prize that goes to the winner of "The Benefactor," which starts airing Monday from 8-9 p.m. on ABC. The 16 finalists include Dominic, a waiter-model and Femia, a disease intervention specialist. Billionaire businessman and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban found them at an audition at the Palms. ...

After tonight's gala opening of "We Will Rock You" at Paris Las Vegas, Brian May and Roger Taylor, founding members of Queen, will be inducted into the Hollywood RockWalk at the after-party. Their handprints will be taken back to the RockWalk, which is at Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard. Robert De Niro, Garth Brooks, Meat Loaf and Ben Elton, writer and director of "We Will Rock You," are among the VIP commitments. ...

A Motley Crue reunion, of sorts, is taking place this week. Former Crue frontman Vince Neil and bassist Nikki Sixx are recording four new songs at the Palms. Sixx, who owns a record label, wrote most of the songs for the band, which sold more than 40 million records. ...

Let's try this again. That mangled last sentence about "Havana Night Club" in Tuesday's column should have read: The show is too good not to get picked up soon, and the good news, I hear, is it will be back at the Stardust in November.

Sightings

Porn star Ron Jeremy, miffed that he was thrown out of the Hard Rock Hotel's penthouse suite Sunday after crashing a steamy Paris Hilton-Fred Durst horsing-around photo shoot in the bowling alley. Security told Jeremy to split. ... Grammy Award winner Michelle Branch, in a party of four Saturday at N9NE in the Palms.

The Punch Line

"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't." -- Margaret Thatcher.

Norm Clarke can be reached at 383-0244 or norm@reviewjournal.com.COMING THURSDAY