At the wide-ranging Cosmopolitan, it’s not all Black and White

By John Katsilometes

Sunday, Aug. 28, 2011 | 9:57 p.m.

Editor's Note: Check back Monday for a photo gallery from AFAN's Black and White Party.

What’s amazing about The Black and White Party is you’re pretty well free to wear anything, so long as it keeps with the theme of the event.

There were several cases in point at Saturday night’s 25th annual event, staged this year at Boulevard Pool at the Cosmopolitan. I’ll choose the smallish gentleman hustling up the Cosmo convention center walkway into the big shindig.

He wore … well, nothing. Or close to it. He was wearing black leather briefs and nothing else. He was a smallish gent, standing halfway between 5 and 6 feet tall, and shone in a way that made it seem he’d been dipped in a vat of wax. He moved quickly, as he was actually in a common area, toward a ballroom where a large number of semi-formal-attired guests had assembled. They were kicking it up as part of a function for the bottled water company Asea. (The company actually could have dealt free water at the AFAN event and gotten some marketing mileage out of the partnership, hot as it was.)

Several guests wearing plastic-cased Asea name tags stopped and watched the AFAN crew guests, including the leather-briefs guy, weave toward Boulevard Pool. As the sounds of a house band churning out “Play That Funky Music” leaked out of the corporate dance party, a suited man standing outside the nearby restrooms shook his head and asked, “What is this?”

“The Black and White Party,” I said. Additional explanation would have only confused the matter further.

The Cosmo was again where worlds collided Saturday night, as 3,000 guests waded in and out of The Black and White Party, an annual fundraiser for Aid for AIDS of Nevada (AFAN). Similar to such previous AFAN locales as the Palms and Hard Rock Hotel (The Joint, specifically), the Cosmo is well primed to host an edgier flavor of event. As was reinforced Saturday, the Cosmopolitan is happy to bring in any form of party, whether it’s a collection of bottled water sales reps or the fun-loving guests who populate The Black and White Party every year.

Similar to last weekend, when coinciding shows by Adele and Death Cab for Cutie drew 7,000 music fans to the hotel, Cosmo was stuffed Saturday night. You wondered what would happen if the storm clouds that teased the valley earlier in the afternoon actually produced enough rain to chase the event indoors, which is what happened at the Hard Rock two years ago, and the party was quickly loaded from the Rehab pool to The Joint. There didn’t seem an indoor space at the Cosmo to put these thousands of AFAN folks, but the event did hold together, and it was a humidly entertaining poolside party.

Once again lending their time and star power to the event were Penn & Teller, who have made AFAN their chief charitable endeavor over the past decade in Las Vegas. KLAS Channel 8 anchor and reporter Chris Saldana, also a leading AFAN supporter, conducted the emcee duties for a third consecutive year (he made a pretty funny crack about being a “flaming” homosexual after a Fire Fan performance by members of Hayden Productions). “Absinthe” performers Melody Sweets and Angel Porrino also stopped in (Porrino was unable to perform for an injury, but show co-host Penny Pibbets did).

The assembled crowd was wide-ranging, from assorted media types to semi-costumed revelers donning all variety of black-and-white attire, from G-strings to tuxedos. Waves and waves of familiar faces were having a ball, from 2011 Miss Nevada USA Sarah Chapman to Las Vegas art collector Patrick Duffy.

There was no stranger newsmaker mismatch than at the pre-party VIP event at Marquee nightclub. Working the room, separately, were former Rep. Dina Titus (who has announced that she is again running for office, for Nevada’s new congressional seat) and “Holly’s World” co-star and Holly Madison entourage pilot Laura Croft.

Titus formally addressed the crowd and spoke of all the services AFAN provides, reminding that the foundation is the oldest and largest AIDS service organization in the state.

Croft informally addressed those near the bar by calling out, “I need whiskey!”

Sadly, these two did not meet for an only-at-AFAN summit. Maybe next year.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow "Kats With the Dish" at twitter.com/KatsWithTheDish.