By Frank Lovece
A: the world might've been a
stage back in Willie Shakes-
peare’s day, but then, Shakespeare
didn't watch TV. Or MTV. Now, all the
word's a staged event, and the cable
rock channel one of the ringmasters.
With a wave of its baton, MTV de-
clared Susan Miles winner of the MTV
“Party House,” and for the weekend of
July 20th to 22nd, she and 20 annoint-
ed friends got wild in the wilds of John
Cougar Mellencamp's Bloomington,
Indiana. For MTV, this was the capper
to its carnival of promotions, the big-
gest the cable service has ever run
For Susan, it was the “fifteen
minutes” of fame Andy Warhol once
predicted everyone would get. Just
you 'n’ media, kid
Susan wasn't complaining, of
course. Who would? Certainly not a
22-year-old community-college stu-
dent from Bellevue, Washington, who
works parttime at a clothing store.
Can you imagine that? The Susan
Miles? They asked if | knew I'd won,
and some people called wanting to
‘come along.
Part of her prize was a catered,
three-day bash for her and 25 friends.
Susan invited school chums and “par-
ty friends,” as well as her Washington,
D.C. brother and his girlfriend, and a
cousin and his wife. “These were my
closest friends that | invited, so all my
acquaintances understood” why they
weren't asked, she says.
‘The fantasy weekend began as nor-
mal weekends do, on a Friday.
‘Susan's entourage traveled by com-
mercial airliner to St. Louis, made the
connection to Indianapolis, and by
chartered school bus took an hour's
ride to Bloomington. On Saturday
came ceremonies, a living-room con-
cert by Mellencamp, a barbecue and a
movie; on Sunday came an hour's
worth of house-painting and more
eats. There was—shades of Grenada!
—a press blackout at the insistence of
Mellencamp’s management. Faces
———
clips rushing through them and music
blowing from speakers, waiting for a
party. MTV video-jockey Martha Quinn
showed up, fresh from taping seg-
ments in New York. The reps took
‘Susan out back to see her pink Jeep. It
had a manual stick, not automatic
transmission. If she couldn't drive with
a stick before, observes Susan, “I can
drive with one now.” Some people
played volleyball, some just hung out.
“Then,” the winner relates, “John
pulled up on his Harley-Davidson. His
band was right behind him, and they
were all so nice. John and I talked for a
little bit, he gave me a hug, we met the
band, and then John organized a game
of touch football.” The cameras docu-
mented everything. Susan's only
respite was a motorcycle ride with
Mellencamp, down to nearby Lake
Lemon. By all accounts, the current
‘contender for champion of blue-collar
rock gave much more freely of his time
than strictly necessary for promotion,
Later, he even went so far as to offer
Susan's Jeep asylum at his own house
If MTV just gave you a house, a jeep, a stereo system,
a projection TV set, enough fruit punch to knock out a
heavyweight and a weekend party with John Cougar
Mellencamp, wouldn't you be tickled pink? Uh-Huh!
Specifically, Susan won a one-story,
two-bedroom house, with a den, an en-
closed porch, central air-conditioning
and an acre of land. Painted pink (but
that came later). Pink, as in the pink
houses of “Pink Houses”, Cougar
Meliencamp's hit from the album Uh-
Huh, Pink house as in the lyrics, “Ain't
that America, home of the free / Little
pink houses for you and me.” Mellen-
camp was lamenting the dark side of
the so-called “American Dream”; he
certainly wasn't celebrating that
deathtrap-suicide-rap. Face it, though:
If you just won a house, a jeep, a
stereo system, a projection TV set,
enough fruit punch to knock out a
heavyweight and a weekend-long par-
ty with Mellencamp and band playing
in the living room, would you chuckle
over the irony?
Susan was too happily stunned. “I
couldn't believe it when they [MTV]
told me I'd won. I'd seen the contest
promo on TV and just thought I'd enter
it. Then for the first couple of weeks.
people were calling all the time, want-
ing to find out if | was the Susan Miles.
14 FACES
nonetheless was there. Somebody had
to be.
Friday night, MTV reps greeted
Susan and her jet-lagged troupe at the
University of Indiana campus “hotel”
where each person would get his or
her own room for the weekend. They
had pizza and soft drinks and Susan
got the appropriate star treatment.
At 10:15 the next morning, everyone
‘met in the lobby for coffee and donuts
and fruit and punch (which would flow
like the Red Sea all weekend). Then
‘once more into the bus, and finally to
the countryside surrounding Bloom-
ington and to the house itself. You
couldn't miss it: On its hedges was
painted a red and blue MTV logo.
“When I got off the bus,” says
Susan, “all | thought was, ‘Wow.’ It
was hard to imagine that I'd become a
homeowner overnight.”
‘The cameras were running. Susan
toured the house, decorated in MTV
Modern. There was no furniture to
speak of, but the stereo-system prize
was in place. So was a projection TV
set, alongside smaller ones with rock
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK WEISS
until she could return to drive it back
to Washington.
More food then: Barbecued chicken
and ribs, baked beans, bisouits,
salads, apple butter, fruit and, for
dessert, brownies. The band played,
and not for a token little while. Susan
recalls: “When | walked in, everybody
was sitting down. The band kept on
playing, though—they ended up play:
ing for about an hour before they took
a break—and you could tell they were
having a great time. After a while |
couldn't sit still anymore. | just said
‘no way,’ and soon everybody got up
and the place started getting wild.
During the break came pomp and
circumstance. Monroe County
Superior Court Judge John Baker pre-
sented Susan the deed and keys to the
house. Reps from Riva/PolyGram rec-
ords presented Mellencamp with a
double-platinum album for Uh-Huh’s
success. Then the band presented the
audience with about a half-hour more
playing, climaxing with “Pink Houses.”
Come the morning was a coffee-
and-donuts replay. Then the troupeTELEVISION16 FACES
trooped back to the as yet little white
house. Mellencamp arrived about
noon, everybody put on MTV painter
overalls and John mugged into the
ever-present cameras, "We're gonna
paint this mother now!”*And they did
so, with wide brushes and rollers and
strange energy; they painted that
house Fiesta Pink.
Susan plans to rent her pink house
out, after having vacationed there for a
couple of weeks in August. A week
after winning, though, she still hadn't
faced such homeowner tribulations as
real estate taxes and insurance.
Realities tend to diminish fantasies,
after all. And this weekend, conjured
like a rabbit out of some shiny silk
tophat, was a fantasy. “Everybody was
so nice,” Susan exclaims. “They did
so much for us, they couldn't have
done anymore.” An MTV spokesper-
son says, “You're never too big for pro-
motion.” Everybody got what they
wanted. Ain't that America? C1