I Was An Internext Stuff Slut

(Las Vegas) January 6, 2004 - The Mandalay Bay Island Lounge. A band was actually playing The Girl From Ipanema. The free Flirt4Free Internext Expo bag, which had started off with a few sheets of sponsor literature and an official show guide, now bulged beside my chair with promotional items from the convention floor. My feet hummed a song of numb and my throat sizzled cool from draft administered in micro-sipped doses.

I had spent two full days hunting. The Internext Expo was over the hump of its 3 day run and still it felt as though the thing was just cranking up. I still had't gotten everything.

Though the CCBill PayDay candy-bar did the trick for a little, it was exhaustion that crushed my hunger until all I craved was beer. I waited as I crunched my last from the flatbox of HotMovies.com breath mints.

Actually I craved the girl from Ipanema, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Tomorrow would be the last day of the expo. From the booths on the floor, the call of stuff. Promo stuff. Much of it surprisingly useful and practical. Some silly. But it didn't matter. I had to have it all.

I had set off on day one with absolutely no criteria or strategy to amass the largest collection of promo stuff to be had at Internext, and now I feared I would fail at my goal. There was just too much stuff. And much of it alike, but I was bound by duty as a journalist and free stuff slut (a common journalist's trait) to get it all.

Some booths "sold" you their stuff by insisting on spieling, but most were peopled or organized by folk who know the value of advertisind and stuff sluts like myself. These happily delivered the goods with little struggle.

The Adult Internet Business has always been on the ball: on top or ahead of the game when it comes to online marketing. But is it at the same level when it comes to free stuff? Does it matter? Flesh Partners bowling pin keytags, enormous Club-XStream ball-point pens and Choopa.com t-shirts are tried and true, classic promo items and there's nothing wrong with that.

Every once in a while new-school web ideas such as RedRoomMedia's or GeorgiaAdair's free content disks landed in my bag, but most of the marketing stuff was carry-home traditional.

The most impressive booths were the big ones, with chill areas, or bars, with free stuff and services like chips and Budweiser at the Private booth, free Internet access at the SpaCash terrace, all of which kept me away from the overpriced food table at one corner of the floor.

My daily routine could consist of having eggs in my room with the OrderMachine.com habenero sauce, then lighting a cigarette with my Cyberotica lighter, and heading off to the booths. After lunch, I'd open my first Corona with the SpaCash lighter's other business end and settle down on a couch or stool to review some literature when my feet couldn't take the beat anymore.

Platinum Bucks had a classy booth serving free capucinno and espresso, and they seemed to have the corner on practical stuff, with calendars and notebooks topping my list - but also funky pens in snazzy felt holders, free-content CDs, and more.

At least my second goal was reached here in Vegas: with all the functional and useful free stuff from the last convention running out, I managed to fill up again. So I replaced my worn and scribble-full Epoch notebook from Florida for Platinum Bucks', got a few more pens, a new calendar, fresh t-shirts. And my last convention lighter ran out a little while ago, but Sex.com has a nice four-inch long one for me here. That's going to last at least to next year's Vegas show.

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