(Preface: Shashana and I spent all of last week in California, had a lot of crazy adventures, spent a lot of time hunting for celebrities, and here is one of the many adventures we had. The moral of the story is that if you combine Miller Lite and the music of Neil Diamond, magical things can happen to you, too.)

Shana's friend Jason took us to this weird place in Orange. It was a club, in a strip mall next to a donut shop or something, called Club Fling. The whole place was kind of sleazy and cool. It's open everyday from 6AM - 2AM. We were promised that the greatest entertainer who ever was would be inside.

We go in, and the place is covered with red velvet wallpaper and lots of paintings of naked ladies. We sat at a table near the front by the "stage." The stage was kind of a bar, too. Behind the stage was a tiny little man with a huge pompadour...Phil Shane. We were told he would sing all the finest of Neil Diamond, Tom Jones, all the old greats. Jason starts buying us drinks.

He had some sort of big computer karaoke machine thing, and I don't remember what he was playing when we walked in. But he started breaking into some Elvis...and some Alan Jackson...random stuff. Then the Jones/Diamond stuff started, and I started to get a little too into it. I keep asking Jason if it was okay to make requests, and it was okay...and by this point I've had about 3 beers plus 1 at the restaurant beforehand. I scream out my request to Phil..."Thank the Lord for the Nighttime!!!!!"

He immediately breaks into it. Now, the whole time people have been dancing out in the open area. Mostly older people dancing two by two. Now, the song I requested always makes me dance. Hard. At this point no one is on the dance floor, and I decide to break it down for Phil. So I hop out of my chair and start dancing the hardest I've ever danced in my whole life. I'm pointing at Phil, Phil is singing to me, we're both basically performing for each other...it was so rad. And it was just like in one of those 80's movies, people kept cheering me on to dance more. (Or at least that's how I remember it.) Some scary lady kept coming up to me and kissing my head and hugging me telling me to "do it, honey."

So that was fun and funny. Apparently that made me popular, and these girls came up to me and pulled me out of the chair to go dance with them. I've never been popular so I got confused. Then more dancing and the beer starts hitting me harder...plus I was intoxicated by Phil's performance. I even let some other girl put a Phil Shane bumper sticker across my boobs! He starts playing "La Vida Loca" or something equally ridiculous...and I'm a ridiculous dancer anyway, so at some point I kind of start to fall to my knees and dance on my knees, and I end up doing a backbend for some reason. I don't know what I was doing, but apparently Phil thought it was cool.

Then they tell me what Phil does for you if it's your birthday. I'm drunk enough by this point that I agree for it to be my birthday. So I have to go sit right up front, in front of Phil, and he lets me wear one of his many flashy jackets. He hops up on the bar/stage, and his crotch is basically right in my face and he breaks into the "I stroke it to the east/I stroke it to the west/I stroke it to the woman that I love best" song and doing all sorts of pelvic thrusts at my head. It is a very dirty song and he starts asking me all these questions about "makin' luuuvvvv." It was so ridiculous.

So I got a Phil Shane comb with his hotline number, and the bumper sticker is the coolest thing I've ever seen and it says "Strokin' Thru the Phillenium with Phil Shane."

That is the story of Phil Shane and the evening I spent with him on March 15, 2000.

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