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 troupeTELEVISION16 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