viva, vegas
(After reading over this paragraph, there is one way to have a bad time: lose a lot of money gambling. Or spend a lot of money in a strip club. Or both. But it’s a part of life – you have to learn when to quit at the tables, even when you’re down, just like you have learn that for the same amount of money it would cost you for transportation, entrance, drinks and lap dances at the strip club, you can stay in your hotel room, drink the beer you’ve already paid for, and hire a girl to come over and give you all the lap dances you want – and much, much more. You know, from what I’ve heard.)
This is why Las Vegas is perfect for everyone. And this is why when I move back to NYC in December, the thing I will miss most about living in LA is its proximity to Vegas. Man, what a city.
Because it’d be impossible (and unreadable, for you) to do a play-by-play of everything that happened – not to mention get some of the guys on the trip dumped/divorced – some general highlights, in chronological form.
The open road
Now that I no longer drive to work and spend 2.5 hours a day commuting 35 miles, I kinda miss driving. As I’ve mentioned previously, I drive a black 1996 Lincoln Town Car, which looks a lot like a hearse and has slightly more sex appeal than a rape van. But one thing that it is certainly built for is long-distance travel in comfort (my old roommate and buddy Brian calls it a “hotel on wheels”).
Because three of the Philly guys (David, Jimmy and Ryan) were landing in Vegas at 10am on Friday morning, I left the office at 3pm on Thursday and headed toward Sin City. It’s about a 4.5 hour drive, and I didn’t want to wake up at 5am to head out there on Friday morning, nor did I want to do it in rush hour traffic or in the complete darkness. And sure, it took me two hours to go 45 miles within Los Angeles, but once I got out of LA, it was smooth sailing. There’s something really special about that drive out to Vegas, listening to my spectacular driving mix, nearly shaking in my seat with excitement, as my sexy (and comfortable) beast of a car ate up those desert roads.
However, it was not all serenity. A few miles after I stopped at Barstow for gas, combos and diet coke, my “Check Engine” light came on. This, more or less, scared the shit out me. It was about 6:30pm, still 95+ degrees out, I was in the middle of the desert, and I could not know less about cars. So I did what every self-respecting 30 year old man should do in such a crisis: I pulled over the side of the road, suppressed my tears, and called my dad, the mechanic extraordinaire.
The following is a rough approximation of our conversation:
Me: “Dad, do you have a minute?”
Dad: [putting out cigarette] “Yeah.”
Me: “I’m driving to Vegas, I’m in the middle of the desert of the side of the road, and the check engine light is on.”
Dad: “Does the car have enough oil?”
Me: “I don’t know.”
Dad: “Did you check the oil before you left?”
Me: “I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound like something I did.”
Dad: “You’re supposed to check the oil on a car like that after every second fill-up.”
Me: “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ve never done that in my life.”
Dad: [exuding practically audible disappointment/shame/frustration]
My dad talked me through checking the oil, which it turned out, was fine. He then said that I needed to check the antifreeze. I pointed out that it was about 108 fucking degrees out, so I didn’t need antifreeze. He informed me that antifreeze is actually a coolant, too. I made a joke about how, if that’s the case, “antifreeze” has a really improper name. He didn’t laugh.
But I couldn’t check the antifreeze until the engine cooled down. So with about 120 miles to go to Vegas, after checking the stupid stuff (i.e gas cap on, etc), I rolled further into the desert and toward Vegas.
By the grace of God, I made it. The weekend could begin.
Pool party
Thursday night was low key, because I knew that the circus was coming to town early Friday. As I mentioned, David, Jimmy and Ryan were coming in from Philly at 10am on Friday; Brian was coming in from LA at 8pm; and Kyle, the last to arrive, was landing in Vegas from Philly at 11pm.
David, Jimmy and Ryan got off the plane and were ready to go. After checking into the suite (more on the suite later), they wanted to hit Ditch Friday, which is the Palms Pool party on Fridays (we were staying at the Palms Place, the all-suite hotel connected to the Palms).
David, Jimmy and Ryan and I have fundamental differences about what it means to vacation. Their ideal vacation involves a far away destination with a beach or some sort of water, laying down, and being shirtless. My ideal vacation involves going to a city, finding a bar, and getting shitcanned (all while wearing a shirt, possibly even two shirts). So while I wasn’t opposed to hitting the pool – it’s Vegas, baby! – I wasn’t exactly prepared to slather myself in coconut oil.
(Whoa – I think I just got a little hard thinking of slathering myself in coconut oil. Did anyone else feel that?)
So to the pool we went. And of that experience, a few thoughts:
- I’ve never seen a petri dish of the herpes virus, but I bet if you magnified it one million times, it will look exactly like the pool at the Palms on Ditch Fridays. The amount of promiscuity in and around that pool was staggering. I didn’t even go in the water and I still took a saline bath as soon as we left.
- I’m 30 and I’m only coming to this realization now: If I want to have sex with the hot tan girls with the fake tits who wear heels at the pool, I’m going to have to get a lot (lot) more fit, and also several tattoos. Can I chew on this for a little while before I get back to you?
- Miller Lite had a few girls working the crowd, giving out trinkets and beads and such. My buddies and I decided that #4 on the top ten things you never want to hear your daughter say is, “Dad, I got a job in Vegas for Miller Lite. It’s, um, sales.” (Numbers one through three will be revealed at a later date.)
- I wore a blue shirt around the pool, because I thought we were going to the casino. Huge mistake. Thirty minutes after getting there, I was close to heat stroke. Eventually, we all took up a position near one of the bars (literally all of the chairs were taken), and I clung to the side wall of the bar, desperately in need of its shade. Have you ever seen those nature shows were they show a lion, sitting under a tree, looking tired and enjoying the shade? It was kinda like that.
- It was $10 a beer and a $52 for a round of four Jagerbombs (yes, I did Jagerbombs at a pool in Vegas – I don’t even know who I am anymore). That’s a pretty good racket they got going on over there.
After hanging at the pool for a few hours, it was back to the room to get ready for Friday night.
“So on Friday night, we [redacted]“
I’m not totally sure what I can say about Friday night, since, as mentioned, there are relationships that I don’t want to destroy (just kidding!) (for the most part!). So instead, let’s talk about the room.
I have mentioned several times that I plan on dying in a hotel fire, and if I could pick a hotel room in which to perish in a blaze, it would be this one. It was a two-bedroom suite with three balconies, four 42″ plasmas, a fireplace, two kitchens, two whirlpool tubs, 2.5 bathrooms, and just begged for people to party and subsequently orgy-ize each other in it. Good lord. There’s sex appeal, there’s when women wear button-down shirts and the buttons spread apart at their boobs and you get a sneak peak at their boobies, there’s Brooklyn Decker, then there’s that room (well, ok, maybe Brooklyn’s hotter than the room). But again, good lord. It looked even sexier stacked with the $250 worth of booze that I drove in from LA – all of which was consumed on Friday night.
So…um…that was Friday night.
The hangover
We partied until 4am or 5am on Friday night. This was ok for me, since I was on west coast time. Meanwhile, David, Jimmy and Ryan had woken up at 2am PST/5am EST to catch their flight out to Vegas, powered through it, and partied and drank all day and night on Friday, with no rest. The result? I don’t think the three of them left the room until dinner time on Saturday (one of them threw up all day – and I mean, almost hourly). Hell, Brian, who came from LA, was so damaged from Friday night’s fun that he slept until 7pm Saturday evening. So yeah, Friday night got out of control.
I was hungover, but not terribly so. So instead of vomiting or sleeping (or, you know, taking advantage of Vegas), I spent most of my day in the whirlpool tub, looking out over the mountains. Not the most eventful day for any of us.
Killers, fights, and dives
On Saturday night, David, Jimmy and Ryan had tickets to see the Killers, and had bought one for me. Since I’d rather watch my parents have sex than go to a Killers concert, I passed. It was an especially easy decision, because, in addition to the Killers being terrible, the Mayweather-Marquez fight was that night.
I’m not a big fan of boxing (any more, at least), but any time I have the opportunity to watch two minorities beat each other up, well, I’m all aboard. We looked into tickets for the fight, but they were exorbitantly expensive for good seats. So we figured we’d just watch it in the casino. The fight was going to start about 8:30pm, so after a good amount of pre-gaming, we headed down to the casino to place our bets and watch the fight just after 8pm.
But there was one problem: the casino wasn’t showing the fight. Nor we could order it in our room. Yes, the irony: in Vegas, the entertainment capital of the world, a mile away from where the fight was actually taking place, and we couldn’t watch it. WTF.
However, our buddy Cameron, who now lives in Vegas and was hanging out with us over the weekend, had an idea. But before we get into that, a word about Cam: terrific. He’s a great guy, and the last time I hung out with him was in NYC, when I had arguably my most favorite NYC day. It went like:
- While wandering around the East Village on a Saturday afternoon, I call my buddy Jeremy, who just happened to be with Cameron and his brother (both visiting Jeremy from Oregon), two blocks away at Veselka. We all shared delicious pierogis for lunch. It was lovely.
- With nothing to do, the four of us went to the Kabin Lounge on 2nd Ave for a beer. Four hours and way more than one beer later, we were still there. I realized that I had a double-date that night, and raced home.
- I fell in a pile of trash on this race home. Laying in a pile of trash in Chinatown, drunk: not my best moment.
- I met my date and her friends (a couple) at my friend Meredith’s restaurant. Though still drunk (but showered since the fall), I got to act like the cock of the walk, since I knew Meredith and we got free drinks and whatnot (which was not what I needed).
- After dinner, we went to another bar, where the other girl’s date introduced me to the wonderful world of Scotch. A few hours later, I’d dropped my cell phone in a toilet.
- I am pretty sure that I didn’t have sex that night, since I believe I was helped into a cab.
All of this transpired because Cam suggested we stop for that one afternoon beer. So, obviously, he’s an idea man.
With nowhere to watch the fight, Cam had another idea. He said there was a dive sports bar across the street called the Loose Caboose. While not nice by any stretch, it might have the fight. Since the fight was either soon to start or had just started, we headed over.
You can probably guess where this is headed. The fight was not showing at the bar, which was empty aside from a lone biker and some very local people playing pool. This didn’t stop us from sitting there for four hours, getting absolutely wasted, each taking turns playing songs on the jukebox (most of my choices were of AC/DC “deep cuts”).
So yeah, on a Saturday night in Vegas, me and my three friends spent most of the night at the local dive bar, talking only to each other, only about music and sports. And I had a blast.
(Does anyone have any social skills I can borrow?)
Goodbyes, a new pool, resignation
We actually did go out proper later on on Saturday night. We met up with the guys who went to the Killers concert back at the room after the show was over, and though they completely bitched out and went to bed, the Four Amigos from the Loose Caboose went out and gambled the night (and in some cases, their rent money) away.
Sunday morning on the west coast means 9am football (sweet! – and this is sarcasm). Since we were all checking out that day and David, Jimmy and Ryan were flying out at 2:30pm, we stayed at the Palms sports book watching the games. Unfortunately, the Palms sports book sucks, so I could barely see the Eagles game (which, as it turned out, appears to have been a good thing). David, Jimmy and Ryan soon left to head back to Philly, and me, Kyle and Brian checked out of the room and headed to Bellagio, where we were staying on Sunday night.
Look, you guys know me, right? And you know that I like to have a beer and a little fun every once in a while, right? I know that I’m getting older, but I still got my fastball when I need it, and I think I can really put it together and go all out when duty calls. But there’s something about Las Vegas…even though I didn’t do anything on Thursday, after three nights and two days of being there, I mean, the human body can only handle so much. My diet to that point had consisted of beer, red bull, Sonic and second-hand cigarette smoke, and ol’ Uncle Jason was starting to feel it.
Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Kyle and Brian were also hurting, so after checking into the Bellagio, all we wanted was to sit by the pool – which we did, and which was glorious (and yes, I did have a pina colada).
What strength we were able to get back after two hours lounging at the pool was wiped away by a visit to the Bellagio buffet. Though the price tag was a whopping $35/person, I made up for it by eating at least a dozen different animals (for fun: cow, pig, chicken, turkey, quail, shrimp, salmon, lobster, crab, scallop…actually, that might be it).
And so after the buffet, we hit a wall. While watching the Giants-Dallas game, I ordered a Guinness. I couldn’t finish it. I felt like if I tried to drink it, it would just overflow out of my mouth, as my body was so backed up with food and could fit no more. On our last night in Vegas, the three of us were in bed by midnight. We could fight no longer.
The long march back
If the drive to Vegas is exhilarating, the drive home from Vegas is deflating, demoralizing; I think the general mood on the Trail of Tears was more positive and upbeat than it is on I-15 S on any given Sunday. The good news for me was that I was making the drive back on Monday, so there was absolutely no traffic.
Before leaving the hotel, I checked in on the car, remember that the “Check Engine” light never went away. I popped open the hood to check on the antifreeze and learned that there was none – absolutely not a drop – left in the car. But I was a big boy now, a real Car Guy, so I calmly got in the car, drove to the nearest gas station, and bought and put in the antifreeze. Aside from this, the drive was four hours of uneventfulness (thank god).
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Sadly, this weekend was likely the last time I’ll ever drive to Vegas; my next trip will be from the east coast, probably several months from now. But if this is the case, and I don’t get back to Vegas for many months, well, I’m ok with that. While sure, I may have done some things differently, I can look back at this trip and say that I did the best I could. And if at the end of a Vegas trip you can say this, then it’s alright. It’s alright.
