After a full day of work and with my belly full of tacos, I headed back to Culver City (yes, again!) to the Denizen Design Gallery to drink some absinthe, look at art by Terrell Moore and listen to beats by Jason Eldredge. It's the kind of effortlessly cool thing that Flavorpill usually touts in their weekly letters.

The artist: Terrell Moore

The DJ: Jason Eldredge

I arrived just as someone was sparking a doobie. The smell wafted through the gallery, and no one seemed to notice or care. A beautiful dog, a weimaraner, wandered around and deigned to let you touch it.

One of Moore's claims to fame was that his work— cool subtle minimalist pale paintings—were featured in scenes in Iron Man.

There were a few interesting pieces — bright and colorful, candy-like that were appealing if only I had several hundred or five thousand dollars to blow.

On a table there was a collection of hats. Trucker hats, to be specific. Now, there's one thing I hope doesn't come back. Still, this fashion no-no didn't stop people from taking the some of the hats and walking around. Managing Editor of Flavorpill LA Shana Nys Dambrot yelled at one person walking by, half-jokingly, "Those are a $100, did you buy it?"

However, the main draw, as was readily apparent by the soused state of the revelers still clinging to drinks during the last hour of the party, was the Absinthe. The much-maligned liquor has been banned in this country for most of the last century; it garnered a reputation during the run up to Prohibition as being much more dangerous and psychoactive than regular old alcohol, and it was found that Absinthe made with wormwood could be deadly. This new shiny Absinthe is sort of like Absinthe-light; so in other words, lacking much of the psychoactive properties, but keeping the disgusting medicinal look and tastes. (Yum, green!) Also: it's not as fun, as you don't do that cool light-the-sugar-with-a-spoon-thing you do with straight up Absinthe.

I tried a shot, made it a third of the way; gave the Flavorpill "Orange Fresh" a try, which wasn't orange or fresh, and couldn't stomach that, either. But this was not the case of my companions. Whatever the Absinthe is made of, it seemed to be working.

Any way, that wasn't the highlight of my evening. About halfway through, I met this guy, Brandon Maxwell, who was very nice and chatty.

Then, I started to wonder if maybe I was actually high.

He is working on a short instructional film about men having multiple orgasms. He proceeded to explain that men are actually very repressed when it comes to talking and thinking about their sexuality, and are stumped when it comes to achieving the multiple big O. Did I mention that this film has cartoon illustration? Oh, and it's called, The Multiple Maxwell Climax. He has a blog, called "Master Your Johnson," and a website, climaxwell.com.

At the end of the night, Shana whips out her camera and Brandon asks if we can pose together. He bends down and says, just before she snaps the picture: "Pretend like we're dating."

Exit stage left.

And scene!

The building houses Basque Nightclub and Restaurant, but it was not open at the time and no one is said to have been inside. Towering 40-foot flames shot through the roof of Basque Nightclub and smoke could be seen and smelled for miles.

The greater alarm fire started just before 5:30 a.m. and quickly spread to other businesses inside the building.

More than 100 firefighters battled the blaze, which was knocked down just before 8 a.m. Crews made an aggressive attack on the fire, using aerial ladders to pour water on the flames from above.

In addition to the TV report above, introduced by a too-perky-by-half anchor (this is Basque we're talking about! Where Lindsay Lohan had a premiere night she'll never forget! At least pretend to show some grief), here's some amateur footage on YouTube that shows just how close the smoke and flames came to the Capitol Records building. We urge everyone to climb atop a wobbly V.I.P. table at Les Deux tonight and toast a glass of Perrier-Jouet to the fallen social institution.

• Fire tears through Hollywood nightclub [abclocal.go.com/kabc]
• basquehollywood.com
• Hollywood & Vine Fire April 30, 2008 [YouTube]

Unsurprisingly, Britney Spears' name comes up; not only is she guilty of using her handlers to hijack an evening's set list with overplayed Madonna and Prince tunes, but the only reliable method for curtailing her attention-whoring activities is to humiliate her off the stage with the music of her currently much more successful devirginizer. Also revealed: Brad Pitt possesses the ability to dance, and Hillary Clinton thinks that she can connect with young voters through 16-year-old Jesus Jones songs.

• Yo on E! [E! Online]

• TMZ on TV [TMZ.com]

I am contacting you as I represent BOULEVARD3, the venue that is located next to Social Hollywood. The Cal Spas hot tubs that were delivered last week were actually delivered to BOULEVARD3 for an amazing special event - thought up an carried out by BOULEVARD3's owner Peter Famulari.

Famulari, who is always looking for new ways to excite his guests and encourage more genuine interaction within the crowd, hosted a hot tub party last Friday night. Details on the event are below.

BOULEVARD3's First Annual Hot Tub Party

Entry is via RSVP only (as it always is for the venue) additionally there is no cover charge (as always.) We will be selling hot tub packages as we would sell tables for the evening. The package is listed below as well as the food and entertainment that everyone can enjoy on Friday.

The HOT TUB PACKAGE includes a Garden Room with their own private Cal Spas Hot Tub; a bottle of champagne, a bottle of premium liquor and mixers, a bucket of beer, and they will have access to unlimited energy drinks and water from 2-3am.

There will be a complimentary BBQ from 9-10:30pm created by Chef Joseph Ojeda that will include:

Grilled Caribbean Chicken Satay w/ mango salsa
Grilled Coconut Shrimp Satay w/ lemongrass and cilantro ajillo
Fresh Tropical Fruit Salad "Martini"

Other highlights during the event include:

"Beach volleyball" on the dance floor

2 Fashion Shows -Mia Presley Luxury Swimwear & Skin Flick and Lime. The models are a mix of former Playboy Playmates and Penthouse Pets

The venue will be open until 3 am.

• Previously: The Mystery Of Social Hollywood's Hot Tub Delivery [Defamer]

• Delivery at Hollywood Social? [Curbed LA]

• Knocker Out! Catfight at Les Deux! [TMZ]

CELEBS can expect privacy at the Tower Bar at the Sunset Tower Hotel in L.A. Last week, an entertainment freelance reporter for one of the weeklies was unceremoniously booted after she was caught texting people that Jennifer Aniston was there with her new beau, Paul Colford. "

Security was called and she was told to never come back," our insider said. But the journo didn't go quietly - "She made a huge stink and started screaming." As she was being tossed, "The entire bar - including [Aniston], Bernie Brillstein, Kate Hudson and [former Paramount head] Donald Deline - started applauding, and some people even stood up."

The high-powered crowd's spontaneous expression of gratitude over the Sunset Tower's commitment to their privacy quickly became one of gape-mouthed horror as the unwelcome freelancer was escorted to the hotel's roof, where she was briefly dangled by the ankle before being dropped into the pool several stories below. But as her broken body was being fished from the perfectly chlorinated waters, the applause gradually resumed as patrons realized that such drastic measures are necessary to ensure that the controversial drink orders of marginal movie stars, retired managers, and ousted studio executives alike remain a fiercely protected secret.

• NO-SPYING ZONE [Page Six]

"She had two Jack [Daniels] and Cokes and an orange-flavored martini," Lola's manager, Sylvie Haines, tells Us Weekly, adding that "her whole visit was pretty low-key and she didn't seem drunk."

This is good news: Not only does Spears's newly demonstrated ability to enjoy three drinks without succumbing to a head-shaving fugue state reinforce her belief that her stint in Promises was unnecessary, but by the time she returned home, her blood-alcohol content was probably low enough to open the Breathalyzer-protected lock on her sons' nursery, allowing the dedicated mom to get in some quality time with the kids before heading off to bed.

• Britney Spears Drinking Again [Us Weekly]
• Previously: Role As Billboard Novelty Kook Not The Return To Radio Britney Spears Had Envisioned [Defamer]

We knew that it was only a matter of time before a news organization with Us Weekly's vast investigative resources would finally marshal the courage to finally expose Hollywood's Drug Problem, a social scourge that threatens to devour our finest, excess-prone famous people, greedily gnaw at what's left of the meat on their malnourished frames, then vomit back up their coke-bleached bones into the nearest luxury rehabilitation receptacle, preferably one with easy beach access. How bad has the crisis gotten? Says a highly placed Us "scenester" who's obviously been to at least one bar in WeHo in the last two years, "Coke is so not a big deal for young stars in Hollywood. It's like having a drink." Indeed, the public consumption of illegal narcotics is now so accepted that many of the city's finer nightlife establishments will deliver punchbowls brimming with blow (in a variety of flavors) directly to one's VIP booth, where parties can unashamedly blow rails at their leisure, eliminating the onetime annoyance of having one's drug use rushed by a bitch with a shy bladder constantly banging on one's bathroom stall door.

• Drugs & Hollywood [Us Weekly]

• Beatty and Hyde [TMZ]

The Standard Hotel: You are likely to find at least three things at the Standard: a plastic but beautiful bartender, some leggy drunk girl toppling over her shoes, and a c-list celebrity doing coke in the bathroom. The odds just work out that way. Whether the rampant cocaine use in the nicely modernist bathrooms have anything to do with HotelChatter editor Davie's love affair with the place is unclear.

Star Shoes: Great music venue and band hang out, this former shoe boutique is all 50's formica and American irony. They have DJs and live soul, funk, and hip-hop, and it feels less like LA than most places in Hollywood. Maroon 5 used to hang out here back before they hit it big. And you can bet Adam Levine was coked up when he wrote "Hard to Breathe" and the porcelain toilet top is infamous as high-quality blow snortpad.

Voda: Our LA operative says, "A little less celebrity and a LOT more douchey, Voda is an insufferable vodka bar in Santa Monica that I've started writing about three times but each time I have had to give up because I couldn't think of anything nice to say." Aw, well here's a nice thing: they have a waterfall, 50 types of Vodka and long lines of coke in the women's bathroom.

The rest of Gridskipper's list is here. But should you find venues open to the general public too inclusive for your tastes, Star magazine reports on two other options popular with VIPs: drug parties in the Hills, and Lindsay Lohan's bathroom.

• Long Lines in LA [Gridskipper]
• Secret Drug Parties Of The Stars [City Rag]

• JoJo: Hyde's Resident Jailbait [TMZ.com]

· In easily the most newsworthy development of the night, TMZ found itself caught in the middle of a fight between general-use celebutard Paris Hilton and semi-famous Dancing with the Stars contestant Shanna Moakler, a shocking episode of Mutually Assured Bimbo Destruction that ended with both filing police reports, and during which at least one weave was tragically sacrificed to Travis Barker's irresistible charms. [TMZ]
· Can Bobby Brown get into Hyde on a Tuesday night? You see this one coming all the way down the Sunset Strip, but we must: Hell to the no. That didn't feel very good. [TMZ]
· In stunning role-reversal between doorman and prospective bar patron, some guy from Prison Break whom we've never heard of (i.e., it wasn't the Human Stain guy) spoke truth to power, telling a bouncer that his shaving habits should keep him on the wrong side of the velvet rope. [TMZ]
· Famous-type people Dave Navarro and Michelle Trachtenberg were allowed entry to the club, as was infamous Paris Hilton nightvision doggystyler Rick Salomon. [TMZ]

Flavored cocaine is nothing new, we're told. Law enforcement sources tell us that since the 80s people have been buying coke in all sorts of flavors, including rum and cherry, and now it appears strawberry is back and all the rage.

Law enforcement sources tell TMZ that strawberry flavoring is added to the drug to give it its fruity flavor. Years ago just adding food coloring was a big thing— brown and red cocaine were the talk of the town. Theoretically, you could make or add any flavor you'd like to the drug.

Hollywood insiders tell TMZ that this drug has exploded in the club scene, and not only has cocaine made a huge comeback, the strawberry version is definitely rearing its ugly head again. Like leggings and skinny jeans, this dangerous pastime is back full force.

Sadly, we have no firsthand experience with strawberry-tinged booger sugar, as our dealer stubbornly refuses to offer anything but the traditional Cocaine Classic™ flavor. But we're intrigued by TMZ's bold piece on retro-blow, and invite our readers to pass along their encounters with it (either through e-mail or in our comments section) so that we can stay current on this explosive, fruity trend.

• Hollywood's New Fruit Addiction [TMZ.com]

• Jeremy Piven Stole My Car! [TMZ.com]

The makers of deceptively named new energy drink Cocaine insist that their product has been made 350 percent stronger than now-pussified jitter-beverage Red Bull by 280 milligrams of street-legal caffeine, not, as you might hope, by a secret, powdery ingredient imported by tied-off condom in the digestive tract of Colombian mules. Still, we assume that the company will do everything they can to fully leverage the power of their adorably controversial brand, from handing out free cans from crowded stalls of Hollywood clubs to paying millions of dollars to officially sponsor the next five years of Lindsay Lohan's life. Really, the marketing campaign writes itself.

• The Ultimate Energy Drink: Cocaine? [ABC News via WOW Report]
• Cocaine [DrinkCocaine.com]

THR, Esq. reports that photographer Jodi Cobb is suing Geisha House, the Hollywood eatery owned by Big Brother All Stars winner/Jack Shack proprietor Mike "Boogie" Malin and B-list restaurateurs Ashton Kutcher and Wilmer Valderrama, for the establishment's alleged liberal, unpaid use of her geisha photography in their decor and marketing materials. Geisha House's management counters that they're not so much "stealing" her images as "knocking them off so they don't have to pay":

[Geisha House proprietor Lonnie] Moore, who is represented by Geoffrey Gold of Rutter Hobbs & Davidoff, said the lips photographs featured in the restaurant are not the actual "Lips" photograph by Cobb. The restaurant had tried to work with Cobb to use her photograph, but "she wanted too much money," Moore said. So the restaurant created its own version of the photograph.

"It's similar, but it's different," Moore said, adding that various elements of the picture, including the angle, the lighting and color, are different from Cobb's version. [...]

Moore said he doesn't see the reproduction of Cobb's work as damaging to her reputation. If anything, he believes they benefit her.

"It actually makes her more well known," he said. "It's the ultimate respect and we're showing reverence for her. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery."

This all seems like nothing more than a simple misunderstanding of how celebrity-backed enterprises remunerate their business associates. Once someone explains that Cobb will become wealthy beyond her wildest dreams when a Geisha House flack tips Page Six that Valderrama was caught digitally penetrating (or "canoodling," in the tabloid parlance) an Olsen twin beneath a reproduction of one of her conspicuously attributed photos, we're sure she'll quickly drop the suit as other restaurants come clamoring to work with the hottest photographer in town.

• Photographer Alleges Geisha House Photos Infringe [THR ESQ]

But the real action was happening inside the Sunset Boulevard club, where, sources say, Nicole Richie was getting into the party spirit with her spirit of choice: Tequila! "She was so wasted!" said an attendant, who also said that Ms. Richie's drinking partner, Mary-Kate Olsen, was not doing anything to help the situation. "She was dancing on the tables and then she started giving lap dances to her friends and random guys, too."

And then it happened, under the copper ceiling, amidst the hanging candles. "Nicole puked right on the floor, like right in the middle of the club," said the source. "Everyone saw! But I guess she didn't care. She kept partying."

"She loves tequila," said the source, a friend of Ms. Richie's. "But you know, she's so small—and she probably didn't eat anything that day. So you know, she probably had a couple shots and it just happened. She was just having a good time."

It might seem odd that Richie would act so nonchalant after vomiting in the middle of the club, but as a VIP patron, she knew that a Hyde staffer would quickly alert her if her body had thrown up a critical internal organ after finding no recently consumed food to reject. Hot clubs like Hyde know that if they don't provide that level of service to their cherished celebrity clientele, they'll just take their gilded puke to a more welcoming establishment up the street.

• Letter From L.A.: Nicole Richie Lapdances, Blows Chunks At Ronson Bash [The Transom]
• Previously: Healthy, Glowing Lindsay Lohan Drinks Bottled Spring Water At Hollywood's Most Wholesome Clubhouse [Defamer]