With Snoop Dogg and the wild tummy shirt girls at Mardi Gras

"Everybody out!" came the yell, from a guy in a team softball shirt. "Now! Move it! Everybody out!" They cleared the place, as surely as though they were fumigating for roaches. All hundred guests were packed into a small anteroom one level down from the main party. Hulking figures barred the entryway. Everyone fidgeted. There was no open bar down here. The place hummed with small chatter.

A woman shrieked. Then another. Flashbulbs bounced off the walls. Several huge black men trundled through a Tour de France maze lined tight with spectators. Then Snoop came visible. Just for a second. He was hustled through the crowd by a phalanx of handlers whose vigilance made you think they escorted the crown jewels, the president or maybe God himself. Just like that, Snoop was gone upstairs.

The rush came just as quickly, as everyone tried to regain entry to the party. People grabbed at the plastic badges around their necks, brandishing them like bone-skinny immigrants at Ellis Island holding up their papers to the inspector. It quickly became obvious that no one was getting upstairs. No one except the women, and if you had shelled out for surgery, you had a better chance.

A guy approached with his girlfriend, both well-dressed and attractive. The bouncer with the shaved head gave them the once-over. "She can come up," he barked to the boyfriend. "Not you." The couple looked at each other searchingly. They had seen "Temptation Island." The girlfriend slipped from the boyfriend's grasp and sprinted up the stairs. She took them two at a time. The boyfriend looked like a wilted tomato. It may have occurred to him that there comes a time at Mardi Gras when you must ask yourself: Am I having fun yet?

Snoop had the cultivated look of a pimp. He wore a black fedora and diamond-encrusted black shades. He hung in the back of the room, away from the balcony, where his presence would have incited a riot on Bourbon Street. Snoop's crew included his uncle, who took naturally to tossing beads and Snoop promo stickers onto the crowd. And there was the man in the sequined pastel Technicolor suit with matching cowboy hat. His name was Bishop Don Magic Juan, perhaps the most famous pimp of his day. The Bishop had published an autobiography, "From the Pimp Stick to the Pulpit," and figured prominently in the 1999 Hughes brothers film, "American Pimp." But he claimed to have given up the pimp life years ago. Judging by the ghetto-dandy spectacle of his outfit, he hadn't given up all of it. His right fist was covered in the spilled gold of a huge ring that read "Juan"; the ring on his left hand said "Don." He and Snoop sipped from personalized golden goblets. Joe Francis, the prep school quarterback, chatted them up in his softball shirt.

This was an odd coincidence of cultures. Yet it was inevitable that these forces would locate each other. Last year, Snoop released his own hardcore porn video, "Doggystyle" -- an X-rated version of the standard mansion-bound hip-hop video. He had traded in thug friends for pimp friends. And after all, it was Snoop who managed to connect gangsta rap culture to the very frat boys who snatched up the Girls Gone Wild videos in numbers that allowed Joe Francis not only to own a private plane, but to upgrade to a larger one. For some women, rap videos made bootylicious a thing worth their aspirations. The Girls Gone Wild videos operated on the same principle. You could argue that without Snoop, Girls Gone Wild would not exist.

Three Girls Gone Wild cameramen weaved through the Bourbon St. throngs, which measured 50 men to every woman. Ultimately, they located four women huddled together. They were college students from Georgia, and their eyes dazzled at the sight of the bright camera lights. They knew Girls Gone Wild, and they played it coy. "Nah," said one woman, until her friend singled out the elaborate plastic flamingo bead necklace worn by one of the cameramen. She pointed, he nodded, she flashed, huzzahs went up from the crowd, and the flamingo beads were thus granted.

Back at the party, Snoop engaged in a handshake. His hands, like the rest of his body, were long and slender and in no hurry. "My new friend, Joe Francis, we're working on lots of different opportunities together." Snoop talked in the way he does, as though he had been hypnotized by a Siamese cat and had never come out of it. The world for him rolled a little bit slower than for the rest of us. "Joe suggested this was a good place to get together." What kinds of projects were they working on? The rapper mainly couldn't say, content with mystery. "Time will tell," Snoop said. He oozed a celestial chill. "We shall see." His words strung out as the video camera lights popped on, momentarily blinding a few unsuspecting bystanders, including Ricky Williams, the New Orleans Saints halfback, who strolled in from the balcony to replenish his bead supply.

A dark-haired woman in a Girls Gone Wild tummy shirt attached herself to Snoop's side. A crowd gathered. The cameras rolled as the woman began to wave to and fro in an S curve. She seemed restless and bothered. Snoop watched calmly. The woman continued to squirm as she tugged at her drawers, revealing a fully shaven pubic area. Snoop formed the slightest grin. The scene was done. The camera light clicked off, and so did the woman. She sank back into a soulless malaise as she marched dutifully back onto the balcony, which creaked under the weight of flesh and bone.

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