Wine Spectator Grand Tasting or Jay-Z After Party…hmmm

So I had a semi-defining moment this weekend. I was in Vegas for my annual “guy’s weekend” with some buddies. It started off as a way to get golf in with some friends and, now in its 7^th year, has become a way for us to get together as we’ve moved to different areas and don’t get to see each other much. So there were two big things going on this weekend:

Wine Spectator Grand Tasting
Oscar De La Hoya versus Floyd Mayweather “Fight of the Century”

I didn’t know either of those were happening before I showed up. More importantly, for item number 2, Jay-Z was having an after-party at a new part of Tao called Tao Beach. As much as I like the Grand Tasting and don’t get to go too often, I was WAY more interested in figuring out how to get into the Jay-Z after-party. (pictures at the end) Through serendipity, I happened to have a reservation at TAO for dinner (as its a fancy restaurant as well as a club) so I was going to be there anyway so that made my choice easy. When I got to TAO, I checked in to my reservation and started talking to the hostess. While I was talking to her, she took a reservation for a “Ferrell, Will”… I said “is that THE Will Ferrell?” to which she replied yes and we proceeded to chat about him. She told me Jay-Z was having a private event upstairs and he was performing in the club and then going to the upstairs part. The whole thing was pretty disorganized and it became obvious that they were hell bent to have a grand opening of the new club this weekend because it wasn’t a crisply executed as you might thing a big club opening would be.

So the hostess told me that if I got a “favorable” guy-to-girl ratio in my group she would get us stamps to get into the private event upstairs. If you’ve ever been to TAO you’d know that this wasn’t going to be a problem as 70% of the people are women. So during dinner we chatted up some cute women at the table next to use (seen here – I cut off a really cute one, had a couple in me at this point) and got a 5–to-7 ratio going. Later that night, the hostess came back around and gave us stamps to get into club, past the line, and straight up to the after party area. So basically, while Tom Wark was watching a TiVO’d replay of the De La Hoya fight, I was partying with more stars than I had ever seen before. Pictures are below but here are the names I can remember (and there were models and stuff that I wouldn’t know who they were if the press people weren’t snapping off photos too) – John Cusak, Will Ferrell, Sasha Baron Cohen, Jay-Z, Usher, Nelly, Jermaine Dupree, Too Short (or so I was told), Champ Bailey, Alan Iverson, Alonzo Morning, DeWayne Wade, Charles Oakley, some chick from “The Player’s Club”, Luke Perry, dude from Six Feet Under, Bob Sagat (that was random), P-Diddy, Jerome Bettis, Keenan Thompson (from SNL and Nickelodeon), Heavywieght Champ Lennox Lewis, Floyd Mayweather, and so many more. I certainly enjoyed my weekend! Enjoy the Wine Life and some pics!