Pix And Chicks From Hefner’s Playmate of the Year Dinner

Maloof to girlfriend: ‘For now, you’re the one for me’

There was a friendly tit-for-tat going on in a Palms ballroom on Saturday night, where Hugh Hefner and more than 50 Playmates from the past 55 years crowned the new Playmate of the Year — Ida Ljungqvist.

While introducing the "legendary" Palms owner, George Maloof, host Brande Roderick said he's dated almost as many Playmates as Hefner has.

“Thank you, Brande. That’s really funny,” Maloof quipped dryly.

But Maloof really has dated around the horn of the Playboy Mansion. So he played along and mentioned that several exes were among Playmates in the room.

Then he cracked the joke of the night in a shout out to his girlfriend in a front row.

“Hi Kelly — for now, you’re the one for me,” Maloof said.

Maloof said people often ask him if he could be the next Hefner but that there is only one Hefner. George: if you not you, then who?

Brande Roderick vs. Joan and Melissa Rivers

Roderick (Playmate of the Year in 2001) is one of the last remaining contestants on “Celebrity Apprentice.” One of the rivals she has beat is Joan Rivers’ daughter Melissa, who just got fired on the show.

Melissa left “Apprentice” by calling Roderick and poker star Annie Duke a “cabal” of “whore pit vipers,” a clever spew of venom. And Joan Rivers called Roderick a stupid blonde.

So while sharing the Playmate of the Year limelight on stage, Roderick boasted she made the final four of the reality show and raised $200,000 for charity.

“If that’s what a being a dumb blonde is, I’m proud to say I’m a dumb blonde,” Roderick said.

That was Roderick taking the high road.

The Playmate of The Year Won’t Be Posing Again

There in the ballroom, fully naked posters of Ljungqvist draped the walls. But the Playmates and everyone else were clothed. They ate crab cake and beef cake supplied by celebrity chef Kerry Simon.

Ljungqvist — the magazine’s first African-born Playmate of the Year — stammered, hooted and teared up at the podium in accepting her award. She was a ball of emotions.

Before the dinner, she walked a red carpet with other Playmates then shared with some of us in the media that she is completely done with posing naked, forever and ever. She was happy with how this Playboy “miracle” turned out. But nude exhibitionism isn’t her thing, she said.

Two years ago, she was working in a Beverly Hills boutique, Bebe, when 2007’s Playmate of the year, Sara Jean Underwood, discovered her and introduced Ljungqvist to Playboy.

She posed in the March 2008 magazine. Readers voted her Playmate of the Year. Hefner gave her the news after a Playmate dinner-and-movie night at the Mansion.

She’s working on a charity, Empowerment Works, which focuses on HIV-AIDS research, children’s care and other concerns around the world. She will be fundraising and sending nine orphans to religious universities, she said.

Her Playmate of the Year awards: $100,000, a car and a bottle of tequila.