01/09/2026
This is the movie that brought Monica and me together. I showed in on May 31, 1997 in my new “cult movie cabaret” Thrillville Theater (called The Midnight Lounge then) at The Parkway Theater in Oakland. My first flash bang marriage had just burned out and I was auditioning new lovely assistants as well as new wives. Monica was there that night and I was immediately turned on by this hot Latina pinup doll. Naturally, I chose her to help me give out prizes by spinning The Big Wheel and I gave her my personal “King Creole” towel. She showed me her tattoo on her lower back, a Navajo symbol embeded with the word “Elvis.” But she wasn’t alone and i wasn’t ready. I thought I’d never see her again.
Little did either of us suspect Elvis was just getting started with a warm up gig.
On January 8, 1998, I was hosting my annual Elvis B Day Party at the Ivy Room in Albany, CA. Lonely and depressed, I was standing in the doorway contemplating leaving my own party when this foxy mama walks up and says, “Hey, you’re the guy who gave me that Elvis towel!” She’d blown off a return trip to Graceland for an encore with the Elvis impersonator she met there the first time for my party, which a friend had invited her to back at the Parkway. I hovered around this honey like a h***y bee till I finally got the nerve to give her my phone number on the back of an Elvis photo. She called it. And so did I. Our second date was “Jailhouse Rock” at The Paramount in Oakland. Our first date was a bit more intimate.
Soon she was known around the Bay as The Tiki Goddess of Thrillville and Will the Thrill’s main squeeze. Though we had already booked Sinatra’s old joint the Cal-Neva Resort in North Tahoe the year before, on January 8, 2000 I officially proposed at Spenger’s Fish Grotto in Berkeley, then we announced and celebrated at the Elvis B Day Party I was hosting at nearby Trader Vic’s in Emeryville.
On May 31, 2001, exactly four years after we first met, we tied the knot at the Cal-Neva, with a Dean Martin impersonator officiating the cermony to the tune of Elvis and Sinatra songs sung in Spanish by a mariachi band from Oakland. Then an epic reception in The Frank Sinatra Celebrity Showroom and a dream honeymoon in Blue Hawaii.
We’ve been watching “Jailhouse Rock” every January 8 since. We plan on celebrating our 25th anniversary in London and Paris this May 31.
TCB, baby
