Tony was lying on the bed while I was packing things up in the bathroom. He was watching the news as they reported about the “black ice” that was covering half of the northeast and killing about five people, and he called out to me, “Hey where are we heading to?” I answer, “Pittsburgh”. “Oh” he says, “That’s nice. That’s where all that black ice is.”

You know not many people know this in the feature industry business, but this is the time of year where you have to watch the weather channel before you get to your gig to figure out if you can really make it there or not. This is not like school where you have “make-up snow days”. No, it’s more like FedEx because you absolutely, positively HAVE to be there. Like a soothsayer, the television reported of the blizzard that was to come by the end of the week and like a psychotic madman we jumped into our trusty work horse and head straight for it.

We got to the hotel and it was about twenty degrees. The bellman threw our bags on to the cart with as much finesse as a bull in a china shop. I looked at his paper thin jacket and I asked “Aren’t you cold?” “Yeah, I am, but you get used to it” he responded. Since we pulled in the same day as the booking started, we headed over to the club. Blush is also a historic old hotel, so it has an elevator from the 1920’s, with a cage and an up and down person, guy, bellman thing. We cruised down the time machine to do the first show, which rocked because Mr. Rainmaker Rodney was there. It’s like being in a snow globe when he is around. Now Rodney is a great customer and he has such a fun time tipping, but you would think that after all of these years of doing that he would realize one thing and that is when he makes it rain, half of the money ends up on the floor. There is a technique to this and that is to throw the money at the back of the stage then it ends up landing in the middle.  If you throw the money at the front of the stage, it lands on the floor, simple paper aerodynamics. But I love all the guys who try.  Before we headed out that night I checked my schedule for the rest of the week. Mon.-Thur. had show times, then I got to Friday. Next to Friday it simply said ALL DAY. For those of you that don’t know, when this is posted, which it hardly ever is, it means you will be chained to the club all day and beaten without food or water. Not really, but you’re not leaving…ALL DAY.

The day of Five Show Friday arrived and we were prepared. If you are going to lock us up in a club all day, then we will need two things… guns and Greygoose. We held up two bell men that day, but they had little money. It was the day of their Christmas Party so there was ample food all day. The club brought me two pieces of cake, which Tony promptly ate. Our trusty assistance, Rich brought us some fixins for the greygoose and some food from the party. He also brought in an extra space heater for our room saying, “I know you guys are from the south. I figured you weren’t used to the cold here.” We finished out Five Show Friday having only held up two bellmen, one waitress and a delivery boy.

Saturday, the blizzard slammed into the northeast dropping about twenty inches, but the gods were kind and spared us. The storm just missed Pittsburgh however Philadelphia was hit hard leaving fellow feature performer and porn start Monica Mayhem unable to finish her gig or fly out. What a difference a couple of miles makes. As we closed the night and finished our gig, Rich our assistant brought in the best Christmas present ever… a pizza! Because we didn’t eat bad enough the day before, we continued on this winning streak with finishing the pizza before we passed out for the night. Sunday morning the snow was still on the ground, but we were off to Florida for our Christmas vacation and nothing was going to keep us from that. We were going to sled through to the south no matter what. After Christmas vacation, our New Years Week will be in Baton Rouge at the Gold Club, by the way, that’s also in the south so…let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

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