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February 2013​
LAS DAMNED
VEGAS!
There was another trip to Las Vegas in February of this year. This one was accidental as we were originally planning to go to Miami, FL for their Art Deco Weekend. Unfortunately, we gave up after five days of pulling the flights and hotels cohesively together and then watching it all pull apart. Thus, with hands up in the air out of frustration, we switched gears and ended up booking a Vegas trip, which took only two hours to do…..complete with three shows that were on sale.
This was an active Vegas trip thanks to these shows….and yes, two of them were Cirque du Soleil shows: Ka and Love. On the night of our arrival, I planned to see Penn & Teller, again. I enjoyed their show a couple of years ago and they did mention that they rotate large parts of their show every year to keep things fresh. Well, two years afterward, I figured I’d check back to see what was up.
Apparently, quite a bit. Mixed into their hit list of tricks, they snuck in a newer one where Penn picks up Teller and pours him like a tea cup and, well, out came some tea. During this fancy foot work, Penn leads the audience into ‘I’m A Little Tea Pot’ sing-a-long. I haven’t heard this song since my English grandmother was around 19 years ago! The song selection was so un-Vegas, it was hilarious.
At the end of each P&T show, they both run into the lobby and do the meet and greet with the audience. I joined the audience for this after show meet & greet the last time, but I felt self-conscious asking celebrities for their autograph, I only got Penn’s signature on their program and from that I gave up and shook Teller’s hand and left. As you can guess, I didn’t stick around this time. An interesting detail about this part of this post-show is that both P&T referred to everybody as ‘boss’. Penn had previously mentioned that their real boss of their ‘self-employed job’ was the audience who pay to see them
However, I was tempted to get a copy of the Bill Of Rights from their gift shop. It was featured in one of their more thought provoking tricks with a metal detector, it was a bit more of a demonstration of how weak the detectors were in the first place and to show it, they used a pocket-size metal copy of the Bill Of Rights. As Penn proudly pointed out, this Bill of Rights is guaranteed to jam up metal detectors everywhere! Oh, and P&T are proud Libertarians, too.
As for KA? The production was so elaborate and gigantic that it almost got lost in the plot. Visually, there’s a couple of huge moving rotating platforms where the cast/dancers jump, dance, pounce, toss over each other like salad. Can’t knock it! Damned impressive. As for the plot, well, you have to guess it out as the cast talk in some theatrical gibberish, possibly a much higher level of the French language that Quebec citizens managed to developed JUST to be more annoying. From what we gathered, the plot starts off with a spoiled royal family having a joyful picnic and then is attacked, captured and/or separated by an opposing fraction and thus they spend the rest of the show getting back together and getting revenge on the pissed-off party.
In the end, a fine show, but if a wandering plot and freaking looking people bouncing around you (as they did near the start of the show) talking gibberish into your face make the hairs fall off the back of your neck, you might want to avoid this one.
Been planning to see Beatles ‘Love’ for some time but the show’s fractured ticket web site and its persistent ’sold out’ status wasn’t helping! Well, we survived the stupid ticket site by by-passing it and went straight to their toll-free number. I actually heard the operator laughed when I happily proclaimed to my Mom that “we got a human being!!” As for the show itself? Wonderful. You don’t have to be a Beatle fanboy to enjoy it. There’s no plot stringing through the production, just slightly connected moments with each song played and sampled. Plus, there was no strange language to confuse you, just the studio chatter and singing of The Boys pushing things along. Instead of two behemoth stages floating in front of you, you’re sitting in a theater in the round setting with the floor continually shifting with amazing props and dancers climbing in and out.
We were so jazzed from the show that we end up getting the CD/DVD set on the way out at gift shop price no less!! Such prices can make one gullible, but it was a hell of a show and we didn’t care.
However, there was some wee bit of drama waiting for us back at the timeshare later that night as we had to fly back home the early next morning. I spend a long time trying to print up the boarding pass for our return flight but it wouldn’t budge. Well, I took a closer examination of our documents and discovered a small mistake. The date of our return flight was listed as MARCH 12th, not February 12th.
What followed was frantic panic mode. Especially, when we finally got the airline on the phone and they told us our original flight was sold out and the only flight to near where we lived that was available was three days later. We had to jump on top of that one and one level of panic was eliminated. Now, where are we going to stay for those bonus days here? 15 minutes later, THAT problem was solved as the desk clerk casually added those extra days in our room. A total disaster was more or less averted. Even though we blew the return flight back, we caught it just in time to make some adjustments while AT the timeshare and not at the airport early next morning. It could have been worse.
…...which, against better judgment, reminded me of a much more disastrous Vegas trip from the late 80’s. It was Christmas holidays and my sister invited herself and her family to our house for a week. For a group of people who invites themselves on a regular basis, it was typical that they made a mess out of our house. My sister’s two kids got flu and were puking everywhere, her and her boyfriend at the time where having sex every morning in the guest room…..right next to mine, kept leaving the front door open as to combat her kids flu (don’t ask), etc., etc., Needless to say, the end of her stay couldn’t come fast enough…..or so we though, when on the seventh day, my sister announced that she is planning to stay another week for New Years.
Within a couple of hours of this bold announcement, my mom and her boyfriend hatched a plan to get my sister and her destructive clan OUT of the damned house. It was the boyfriend who had a “gift” for me and my mom…..a trip to Las Vegas! However, we had to leave as soon as possible due to the hotel reservations. Fortunately, it worked and the clan quickly packed up and left. Once they were gone, we figured we’ll do a weekend trip to Ventura. However, we all said “Screw it! Let’s go to Vegas anyways!!” and off we went. We didn’t really know it at the time but our nice little diversion plan had just turned into the worse idea ever as we were going to Vegas on New Years week without ANY reservations at all!!I won’t drown you any further with the details here, but after seven days of hustling for ANY available motel room once every two days (and nearly freezing in two of them) and fighting, the general mood was dead. We didn’t even talk to each other on the long drive back.
Back to the living, more bearable present…..
In one of the visits to the Emergency Arts Center in downtown, I bought Constant Rider Omnibus by Kate Lopresti from the zine library, which was the appropriate book zine/book to read while riding up and down on the local bus between the Strip and Downtown and the long minutes at the bus stop when the tourists, who never ride their own local bus systems, figure out how to talk to the bus driver and the fare machines. In a separate E A C visit, I got carted while entering a poetry reading. Outside of the usual airport ritual, this was the first time in 30 years I had to show the card!
I made a pit stop at the Alternative Reality Comics on Maryland Parkway and ended up buying a Vegas comic anthology called ‘Tales From The Boneyard’, a collection of stories that’s loosely based in the Neon Boneyard that houses The Neon Museum. I almost got the Neil Hamburger comic, but I was in a legitimate Vegas mood than a satirical version of it. Sorry, Neil!
In one of my urban archaeology trips through the town, I bumped into Davy’s Locker bar and its groovy old sign on the corner of Maryland Parkway and Desert Inn road. For an old building freak like me, this was a real find.
One small token that the local economy is picking back up was that Binion’s (formally The Horseshoe) brought back their free promotion of having your picture taken with a million dollars. As I did this photo opportunity in the early 80’s, I figure I’ll do it again, kinda like a now and then mindset. As you can tell from the pic above, even with the geeky smirk and thick glasses of yore, there hasn’t been much improvement with age, especially with my old-fart level. Screw it! I was never a smiling kind of person anyways. One small note on the old picture, you might notice the UNLV Running Rebel t-shirt. This was the closest I ever got to sports in my life and it was ONLY because they were in Vegas and I had zero interest in basketball…..Thank god inc. Earth Wind & Fire rocks above that older shirt!
As far as gambling, or lack thereof on my end of the trip, I got quite lucky as I made out $75 on top, all of which thanks to the Grease machine. This is a personal surprise as, on a more basic level, I freakin’ hate the movie. This flick reminds me of all the things I can’t stand about the 50’s, it was made for and by people who prefer Pat Bone’s versions of Little Richard records than Little Richard himself. For you youngin’s, google and/or Wikipedia both of these names and puke on you own keyboard at this sad piece of rock history.
Well, bitching aside, I gave the Grease machine a shot and 5 minutes and a $50 profit margin later, I wasn’t hating Grease as much. A few days later, I gave Olivia Newton-John another shot and she gave me 25 bucks in return.
Ending this trip in what the reader might think as an anti-climactic way, I was taking a camera through the downtown area, but not through the more famous Fremont Street. The area between the Stratosphere and Downtown is where the REAL old Vegas is these days; a collection of very old and usual buildings and apartment buildings, a rustic arts district, old neon signs and whatnot that regular tourists look over on the way to Downtown (IF they ever bother with this side of the town). In other words, all the stuff regular people find boring as hell and delights my urban antique interests. While digging the usual old stuff, I saw a little detail that delighted me silly. Lot of the bus stops in this area uses old photos of Vegas past for historical decoration…..and I saw one from the 70’s that included an old AMC Pacer parked in front of a liquor store (right). Now THAT’S vintage, bubba!!
It was during this trip that I bumped into a few small piece of a celebration Las Vegas had during their 75th anniversary time mark.They are located in front and to the side of the Union Plaza....and no, I haven't taken picture of the 100th anniversary cement plaque.
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