This is a picture of me two years ago in bunny garb. I eventually won the little girl over with Hershey's miniatures.

I was at the radio station in Las Vegas, and the promotions director asked if I had any plans over Easter Weekend.

I quickly learned this is a leading question -- it means either they want you to work or they have extra concert tickets. If you say you're busy, you could be missing out on scoring Sting tickets and free dinners at Hooters.

Because radio doesn't pay very well outside of a top 10 market, its commodity is all in comps. There were always movie passes and Fatburger coupons available if you did a good job. And then there were the listeners -- topless women walking around the station at dawn certainly helped boost morale.

The barter system was also intact. If we needed something (like renting an Easter Bunny costume), we would contact the establishment and trade a week's worth of on-air plugs.

I said I wasn't doing anything for Easter Weekend.

"How'd you like to be the Easter Bunny?"

Uh...

"Oh come on, it'll be fun. Be the bunny! Be the bunny!"

Um...

"We'll pay you $100 for an hour."

Okay.

Some calls were made and I picked up the bunny suit at a costume rental shop around the corner from Scores. I expected an elaborate get-up, with fittings and measurement tape. Instead, it was one size fits all.

I carried my costume out of the store alongside two other people holding the same pink rabbit heads, thinking I was auditioning for some sort of sequel to Donnie Darko.

Pauly was out of town, so we didn't get into any mischief with the costume. It would've been fun strip club hoppin' and getting lapdances in the bunny suit. (The year before that, Pauly and I had visited Treasures on Easter Sunday, where he had "the single worst lapdance" he's ever had. The club was completely empty except for that drunk dancer -- I guess even strippers need to go to church one day a year.)

At home I tried on the costume and looked at myself in the mirror, contemplating the bad choices in life that led up to this moment.

One ear had stuffing coming out of it, one eyebrow was missing, and peering through the webbed eyes had a blinder effect -- I could only see if I turned my head and looked straight on.

Although it was one size fits all, it seemed sized to fit Shaq.

Not to mention the faint smell of the previous renter's sweat and a little vomit.

I sprawled the costume on the couch to air it out for the night, then went off to Sunset Station to play some slots, get my free Fatburger, and prepare for my humiliation.

GameWorks has an upstairs garage right off the Strip, but I can never find it. This was made even more difficult Saturday, with the Strip filled with traffic, detours, and construction.

My fallback was the MGM Grand parking garage, where I parked and walked through the casino carrying the costume broken down into plastic bags. I flashed back to the Bugsy Siegel days of similarly passing through the casino with bags, only full of something other than furry bunny parts.

GameWorks was a madhouse. We were broadcasting live, and everyone from the station was there, along with a long line of parents and kids.

We had a raffle going, with tons of tickets, dinners, spas, t-shirts, and candy being given away.

And you know how depraved Las Vegas locals are when you see parents open their purses and rake in as many pieces of chocolate as they can, in full view of their children.

We traded plugs for a Polaroid camera and enough film to be able to give free pictures of your child with the Easter Bunny.

That would be me.

I ducked into a backroom and changed into my costume, and it was instantly 110 degrees. Lowering the room temperature didn't seem to help.

A girl who dressed as Sonic the Hedgehog sympathized with me. Apparently the Sonic costume costs a couple thousand dollars because it has an air conditioning unit inside. Plus it puffs up.

I took a deep breath, held my basket of candy tightly in my right paw, then opened the door to the onslaught of my pint-sized fans.

And as the Easter Bunny, I went all-out. I'm not going to be a grizzled, hardened bunny stinking of booze, I'm going to be a happy bunny that the kids will remember fondly.

I exerted more energy than I should've because of my own personal sauna, waving and hopping and working the crowd by throwing candy around and petting kids' heads. My bunny had a good response, with no one throwing anything at me and only one baby crying.

That's not to say I didn't use the bunny to my advantage. I took the opportunity of anonymity to also brazenly hug a few Hooters girls.

Then back to my photo op room, where I would pose for 80 pictures.

I stood by the wall beneath our promo posters, with the Sonic girl leading a kid to me, my handing them candy, then waving at the Polaroid. Got a few hugs from the Sonic girl, too.

A couple of the kids weren't kids but teenaged girls who fondled the Easter Bunny where they shouldn't have. They got pictures, and would've gotten my phone number if they were older.

One reason I kept being animated and moving around was because I was especially gassy from the previous night's Fatburger. Thankfully, none of the kids seemed to complain about a smelly Easter Bunny, even the kid who slapped me on my ass when I was trying to hold in a fart.

The costume was insulated so well that I had to suffer my own stink, but I was comforted thinking of the next unsuspecting renter's reaction.

After the gig, I changed into my secret identity and roamed GameWorks incognito, then relaxed and played some uneventful poker at MGM, looking at the Studio 54 crowd that fit much better into their Playboy Bunny costumes.

Being the bunny was the turning point for me at the radio station, with people at the station showering accolades on my impersonation.

But I still had to get up for work at 4:15 a.m.