With Leather editor/patriarch Matt Ufford is in Arizona for Super Bowl festivities.  He will file daily reports from Arizona until at least Monday, February 4th.

The Penthouse party was built for the ogling, not meeting, of girls.  Held at the sprawling Venue of Scottsdale, it was an array of ass: fishnets, knee-highs, spandex, cleavage… especially cleavage.  And, for better or worse, they were all paid to be there.

From the bartenders to the cocktail waitresses to the booty dancers to the Penthouse Pets milling around in evening wear, you couldn't turn around without launching into another X-rated fantasy, and since the invited guests were almost all men, there were probably more dirty thoughts at the Venue on Saturday night than at a prison screening of Wild Things.  It makes for a different dynamic than the ESPN or Maxim parties, where the hot girls are actually guests; the Penthouse party has more of a strip club feel, where you're encouraged to sit back and eye-fuck 'til your heart — or something — is content.

And I'm okay with that.  Especially if there's free food and free booze along the way. 

Anyway, I'll get to linking to NSFW galleries of the Pets in a moment, but first, a few details.

There were craps and roulette tables in the back.  You couldn't play for real money because America has a bunch of super-gay laws about letting me gamble where I please, but Agent Steinz didn't know how to play craps, so as the reigning champion in the World Series of Dice, I had to teach him.  Granted, gambling for chips that count for nothing is a lot like drinking non-alcoholic beer: you're just going through the motions and there's no real pleasure to be had.  However, what it is good for is appearing learned and teaching the attractive women at the table how to play.  And if I know anything about women, it's that they respect a man who's really passionate about gambling.

A few Jack and Cokes later, the non-dancing-girl entertainment began.  Artist David Garibaldi went onstage and painted portraits of Beyonce, Marilyn Monroe, Mick Jagger, and Snoop Dogg while dancing around to related music (see his YouTube page for more).  My first thought was, "Wow, that's really cool."  My second thought was, "Holy crap, this guy must get more ass than he knows what to do with."  Acting like a rock star on stage while painting?  All he needs to do is a find a way to finish his set by making women think of their fathers, and it would be the perfect storm.

Yadda yadda, more drinks, and Snoop Dogg finally gets onstage.  He's a great performer, but something definitely felt amiss.  Then I looked into the crowd, and it was a whole bunch of whiteys.  Don't get me wrong, I think white people are great, I just felt wrong standing with a crowd of them watching Snoop.  So I wandered to the small upstairs area for the first tie all night.  And holy crap!  All new hot girls!  Hooray!  (Note: This is also where the VIP-ish section was.  Willie McGinest was up there hitting on a petite blonde, and I ended up in his little circle of people after getting another drink.  I introduced myself, and he blatantly gave me a fake name.  Dude, I KNOW you're Willie McGinest.)

So, that was the night.  Drunken, ogle-riffic fun.  A final note on the Pets: even though you can can see them naked all over the Internet, they are somehow more alluring wearing clothes and in person.  It's like, "Wow, she's gorgeous, AND I know what's going on under there."  And in case you don't know what I'm talking about, you can click on any of these NSFW links: Jamie Lynn was in a distracting low-cut blue dress with generous decolletage, Heather Vandeven's dress barely covered her ass, and petite Krista Ayne was packed into a short strapless number that was, um, distracting.  No one, however, looked quite as good as Justine Jolie, who had a bob haircut that showed off the tattoo on the back of her neck and a dress that was shorter than Heather's.  Oh, and just for posterity: here's Justine and Heather naked on the sybian together on Howard Stern.

No KD this morning, kids.  Saint Andrew's Net today is devoted to catching you up on the Super Bowl Reports you may have missed over the weekend.  Chronological and shit:

• Went to go watch people golf.  Ended up hanging around annoying Pats fans.  Hey, how'd the game go, guys?
• ESPN Party, Part 1.  Me and Rick Reilly, kickin' it.
• ESPN Party, Part 2.  Bill Simmons is wary, Michael Irvin dislikes Scottsdale's puritanical 2:00 a.m. bar closures.
• Photo evidence of the Bud Bowl.  Still "in": breasts, asses.

The photo above is from Saturday night's Penthouse party; the report from that night will drop in a few hours.

With Leather editor/patriarch Matt Ufford is in Arizona for Super Bowl festivities.  He will file daily reports from Arizona until at least Monday, February 4th.

My conversation with Rick Reilly was really the highlight of the ESPN party.  (I mean, besides all the hot young tail.  Obviously.)  After that, it was just your typical party — what do you do, where are from, blah blah blah.  A cute Filipino girl stuck her freezing hands in my armpits to warm them up, which is the first time I haven't had to pay for that. 

Then the lights went on and talk turned to after-parties.  I was sober and thinking about going to bed, but I was too curious to see what ESPNers do after hours.  Maybe I'd see Chris Berman doing blow off a hooker's ass.  Maybe Erin Andrew deep-throats bananas as a party trick.

What I got was Bill Simmons and a Real World cast member at a hotel bar.  After last call.

Oh yes, Simmons and the Real World.  I didn't recognize the RW guy — I haven't watched the show in ten years, and all the dudes look pretty much the same any more anyway.  But apparently he's an actor now, and the two were having an LA sort of conversation when I introduced myself.

[A disclaimer here: I don't have any kind of animosity towards Simmons.  I used to read him religiously before I found sports blogs; now I don't read his work at all.  I'm more interested in his role ushering in a generation of bloggers than I am, say, denouncing him or calling him the Urtard or putting a bounty on his hands.]

And so I joined in the conversation — hey! I've been to LA! — and we all got along very nicely, me being the genial guy that I am.  Then came the questions about my occupation.  I'm a writer.  What kind of writer?  A sports writer.  Who do you write for?  Blogs.  Which blog?  With Leather.

"Oh," Bill said, "that's a good one."

"Oh.  Well thank you."  (Note: Sooooooooooo glad I didn't mention Kissing Suzy Kolber.)

"All of this is off the record, by the way."

And, well, that kinda sucked.  Because I'm not out to get anyone, and if I could share the conversation we had, he might come off as looking like a cool guy.  I told him not to worry, I'm way more interested in writing about athletes and hot chicks than I am sports writers, and that I'd only written about him once, when he donned the spandex suit for NBA Live '08 [Ed. note -- after checking the archives, I was mistaken about that.  Also, that image by 289 was hilarious.]

So the conversation rolled along, we'd be enjoying ourselves, and he'd express an opinion or dish some dirt about a fellow ESPN employee, then look at me and say, "Don't write about that, either."  I understand: he wasn't being a douche so much as we was trying to protect himself from possible fallout, but c'mon man!  Give me something!

And that's when he said, loudly, just as I was making my exit, "Is that Michael Irvin trying to steal liquor from the bar?"

Sure enough, there was Irvin, dressed all in black at the far end of the bar.  I can't say what his intentions were, but to me, he appeared to be leaning over the bar and casing the joint. When Simmons spoke, he looked up with a hand-in-the-cookie jar kind of look, then broke into a warm smile and headed over to us.  He embraced John Walsh — the elderly, bearded albino whose behind-the-scenes work brought SportsCenter to prominence — then greeted us with handshakes and smiles. 

I can see why it took ESPN so long to fire him: the guy is impossibly likable.  And he likes coke and hookers!  I should have asked him for tips on body disposal.

With Leather editor/patriarch Matt Ufford is in Arizona for Super Bowl festivities.  He will file daily reports from Arizona until at least Monday, February 4th.

When did the Bud Bowl stop being about beer bottles playing football and start being about pole dancers?  I applaud the decision.  I think more campaigns should go that direction.  Like, Barack Obama should stop touting hope and change and just get a bunch of tight-bodied former cheerleaders to shake it.  That'd get my vote.

I should mention that I did not go to the Bud Bowl party last night, but a camera-toting tipster did, for which I'm obviously thankful, even if certain bottle blondes should get their roots touched up and smile more to soften their features.  I was at the Penthouse party, which also had pole dancers (there will, I repeat WILL, be pictures), and which I will be writing about once I conquer this magnificent hangover and finish Part 2 of the ESPN party (read Part 1 here).  Sheesh, who thought going out to parties and writing about them would be so much work?  Boo hoo hoo, poor me.

With Leather editor/patriarch Matt Ufford is in Arizona for Super Bowl festivities.  He will file daily reports from Arizona until at least Monday, February 4th.

It was 9:00 on Friday night, and I was reading in my hotel room.  The remnants of tortilla soup and a chicken sandwich from room service sat on a tray across the room.  The prospects for the rest of the evening looked dim — certain friends who I had enlisted to go gambling with me had backed out once they gained entry to fabulous parties where I had no connections, so I was prepared to put on some comfy pajamas, eat a pint of Haagen-Dazs, and watch Grey's Anatomy all night when I decided to give it one more chance: I put a call in to a friend who is friendly with some ESPN people.

"Sure," he said. "C'mon out — the rest of the people I'm staying with are going to other parties."  So we met up at the Scottsdale Civic Center — the party was held in an open area between the library and Town Hall — got our tickets, and went in.  What was supposed to be a longshot ended up being simple, and what looked to be a quiet night was ruptured by the throbbing bass of Ludacris playing to an eager crowd.

One of my favorite things about the Phoenix area is that everything is really fucking far apart, cabs are expensive, and the police are famously bullish on drunken driving.  Fucking sweet.  So I was thrilled to hit up the open bar and get a bottle of Aquafina for free.  WOOOO PARTYYYY!!!

To be fair, ESPN threw a pretty good party.  The evening was chilly, leaving most of the gorgeous, scantily clad women freezing, which in my mind was a way of encouraging them to numb themselves with booze.  There was no shortage of muscular badasses that I didn't recognize wearing expensive clothes, so the NFL seemed to be represented well.  Hidden away from view was most of the four-letter's on-air talent: I saw Stuart Scott briefly on the red carpet but not again, and I heard reports of Chris Berman rolling in with a blonde on each arm, but I never saw the sweaty swami.  I didn't even see Michael David Smith sucking off any ESPN execs, but then I didn't spend much time looking in the bathroom stalls, either.

I did, however, have a couple run-ins with a couple of ESPN writers.  Fantasy guru Matthew Berry, for example, was friendly to me, if somewhat terrified that With Leather's editor was wandering around behind friendly lines.  I assured him that I wouldn't cause any problems (thanks a lot, sobriety).

Later, I spoke with former SI back-pager and soon-to-be ESPN columnist Rick Reilly.  I told him I'd seen him at the Varsity Letters reading in New York a few months back, and complimented his performance.  He said, "What the hell were you doing there?"  I responded, "I'm part of that blogging crowd."  That began a candid conversation that lasted several minutes; Reilly good-naturedly voiced his displeasure with blogs while acknowledging their impact.  He didn't like that blogs don't have editors; he felt that this led to bloggers "writing 10,000 words when 800 would do."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I said.  "You have no business saying that when you work for the same company as Gregg Easterbrook."  He laughed.

He went on, complaining that Deadspin's Will Leitch uses a photo of him in a dress every time he writes a post about Reilly [Not true: more like every other time -Ed.].  I didn't disagree, but I pointed out that Leitch is terrifyingly open with his life, putting all the photos from his private life on his flickr page for all to see.  It seemed to earn Leitch a bonus point from Reilly, but he still wasn't pleased that Deadspin ran an item from Every Day Should Be Saturday, where an anonymous tipster claimed that Reilly showed up at an LSU game looking "drunk/stoned," with the anonymous tipster's friend's wife describing Reilly's blonde date as "looking like a stripper." 

"Where's the journalistic integrity?" Reilly asked.  "He has my email — why didn't he try to verify it?"  Indeed, the blonde that "looked like a stripper" accompanied Reilly to the party Friday night, and he confirmed that she's his live-in girlfriend.  In my opinion, she's a lovely woman who looks nothing like a stripper.  I would be more likely to use the term "cougar"… but since Reilly was so friendly and engaging, I won't.

UP NEXT: After hours with Bill Simmons!

lost my digital camera.  But I rallied yesterday.  After all, I'm a writer, dammit!  I don't need pictures to tell a story.  People come to With Leather for my dynamic prose (ummm… right?).  Besides, I still have my cell phone camera.  In your face, Zapruder!  Ehhh… when God gives you lemons, make vodka lemonade, yes?

With this newfound positive attitude, I set out for the FBR Open, which I had never even heard of until Thursday, because really, fuck golf.  But apparently it's a huge deal in Phoenix.  I guess it's just some big party where people crowd the golf course and get boozy all day; one local told me that the FBR was expecting 200,000 people to attend today.  200,000.  There are less than 65,000 seats for the Super Bowl.  And as I drove out to Scottsdale for the FBR yesterday, all I could think was, Parking is going to be a world-class clusterfuck.

Getting to Lot H at the FBR was pretty easy: Mayo Avenue dead-ended, then I simply continued on hard-packed dirt that took me into a semi-groomed chunk of desert where parking attendants directed cars into lines that stretched for hundreds of yards.  I steered around a desert willow, parked, and the attendant told me that the shuttle bus pick-up was straight ahead.  I looked straight ahead and saw nothing but cars, but I took him at his word and five minutes later arrived at the bus stop, where all kinds of people were queued: a man named Wyatt in expensive khakis, button-down shirt, and shiny loafers; a group of college kids that included three guys in extremely distressed jeans and unsuccessful facial hair, plus a girl named Chasey who was so tan I at first thought she was black (they talked about turning 21, and how to get booze before then); gorgeous, stiletto-wearing women struggling in the sand as their gym-rat boyfriends stood by, oblivious.

Since traffic, parking, and the shuttle made my arrival later than I intended, I passed on surveying the course and went straight to the Bird's Nest, the sprawling outdoor party that feeds people's alcoholism once the 18 holes are done.  And what do I see but a makeshift football field, and some guy trying to warm up a sparse crowd for The Best Damn Sports Show (Or is it The Best Damn Sports Show Period? Did they drop the spelled-out punctuation?).  I wasn't particularly interested until they offered free beer for anyone who came up the edge of the field.  Well, mister, those are the magic words.  So I got a piece of prime real estate… right next to a pair of extremely vocal Patriots fans.

After nearly assaulting one of the beer girls for a couple of Coors Lights, Tommy and Mikey from Quinzee shared nuggets like, "Hey, did ya heah Ray Allen didn't make the All-Stah team?" then they'd shift directly into yelling at the quasi-celebrities meandering around before the show. "HEY JOHN SALLEY!!!  WE HATE YOU!!  YA KILLED US!"  Then four of the Phoenix Suns dancers came out as part of the festivities, and one of them shouted, "I LIKE THE CELTICS DANSAHS BETTAH!!!" before high-fiving his friend.  Then to Brody, the guy warming up the crowd: "We're big Celtics fans."  You don't say.

There was a lot of hate for the petite Suns dancers, even though any of them were worth going to federal prison for.  Two girls behind me went on and on: "Tell me those are teenage girls and not women… They had some kind of surgical procedure to stop aging right as they hit puberty… They don't eat; they're not allowed to eat."  Let's take a quiz: Were these catty bitches (A) young and beautiful, or (B) used-up skanks who looked older than their years?

Finally, the guests showed up, and you haven't seen bullshit until you've seen Snoop Dogg clap hands and hug Ben Roethlisberger.  I'm sure Snoop just loved Ben's work with the Povertyneck Hillbillies.  Pats fan: "I STILL LISTEN TO DOGGYSTYLE!!!!"  Ugly skanks: "GIN AND JUICE!!!" … (several moments of thinking) … "THE DOGG POUND!!!"

There's only so much of this a man can stand.

So, even though Snoop and Ben were pushing around Giants and Patriots fans in human-size hamster balls, I'd had enough.  Besides, they weren't giving out any more free beer.

UP NEXT: Inside the ESPN party on Friday night!