Monday, September 03, 2007

Las Vegas Wrap Up!

I need a vacation!

The problem with Vegas is that it is a city of excess. You indulge in all of these behaviors that you know are not good for you - and you keep doing them. Hell, everybody else is! So the casinos are open 24 hours, and they serve drinks 24 hours. I am not a morning person... but I usually am not still up and having a beer at 6am. I love to eat - and it shows - but I usually don’t eat until I feel like I’m going to explode (“It’s wafer thin!”) every day. You go to a buffet at the Rio and it’s all you can eat and the food is good and you want to get your money’s worth and... well, next thing you know you feel like you’re going to pop and you aren’t sure you can walk. Now, if you did that once a week it would probably not be good for you... but once a day? Every day? And one a couple of those days I did an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet where I think I may have ate my weight in bacon. I love bacon. I never eat bacon. When I have a massive heart attack next week, it was probably the bacon.

So my vacation was eating too much and not sleeping enough.

Now I need to sleep and fast (or, at least eat smaller portions of foods that are better for me for a while).

And it’s hot as hell in Los Angeles. I expected to come back from hot Las Vegas (where everything is air conditioned up the wazoo - and you know having a cool wazoo is the key) to about 10' cooler weather. No such luck. It’s so hot, it takes about 2 hours to turn my apartment from Oven to Can Sustain Human Life. I could just keep my A/C on all day, and hand over my next script check to the DWP, but it doesn’t make any sense to me to pay for a cool home when I’m somewhere else...

In Vegas, I was hardly ever outside. Sure, you take the elevated walkway from one casino to the next - but that’s just a couple of minutes. Earlier today it took me longer to get from vehicle to Starbucks... in a freakin’ oven of an underground garage,

Okay, okay... I can stay here as long as I don’t talk about the heat.

One night I was awakened by cannon fire and explosions. Lots of them. I thought that maybe the terrorists had gone after Vegas. Bright flashes from the curtained hotel window. I throw open the shades, expecting to see the Stratosphere in flames... but instead I’m treated to a *wild* lightning storm. Hundreds of bright strikes. Loud thunder. For a second, night turns to day... then BOOOOM! Lasted for about 2 hours. It was too loud to sleep through, so I just watched the show. Went back to bed after it was over. Next day, I caught the news - sections of Vegas (residential) had flooded. They called it a 100 year storm. A whole lotta inches of rainfall in those 2 hours. People’s homes - ruined. Some people plan on suing the city, others wonder why they didn’t have flood insurance.

The next day I’m in a really nice casino on the strip, starts with Bel, ends with Lagio, and I’m playing a slot machine near the hotel elevators, and the doors open and out comes the skankiest whore I have ever seen in my life. I felt sorry for the security guard gripping her arm - I would have worn rubber gloves. Then burned them afterwards. What was strange to me - anyone staying in this hotel could afford a much better looking, smelling, etc hooker. So this unclean thing had to be a *choice*. Weird. Someday a real rain will come and wash away all of the scum and... oh, sorry, I Bickled for a moment.

I had a day where I left the casinos with almost exactly what I started out with for that day... but managed to drink 8 free beers at a variety of casinos. That was my most successful day, under the Bill “Gambling Is All About Free Beers” theory.

One thing that often amazes me is how well people remember me. I was in one casino a couple of times, and the cocktail waitress actually brought me the brand of beer I would have ordered *before I ordered*. She saw me, put the beer on her tray for me. This was strange - and kind of like the Starbucks out in the butt end of the Valley that I go to maybe a half dozen times a year when I have to pick up a package at the UPS warehouse near Van Nuys Airport... and they remember my name and what I drink. How can people I never see remember my name... and why *me*? Now, maybe it was because I tip cocktail waitresses (but doesn’t everybody?) Or maybe it’s because I always say Thank You (and mean it) (but don’t most people?) Or maybe it’s because I just have a friendly and memorable face. Who knows? Anyway, they also remembered my drink at a Vegas Starbucks I worked in every other day.

And this was a working vacation. I actually managed to do my 5 page a day quota on SLEEPER two days in a row, and did some okay work on other days. I finished Act 1. Sure, there were days when I didn’t really do much, but it was still a vacation. There were days were I goofed off.

Now I’m back and I need a vacation... But I have pages to write.

- Bill

7 comments:

wcdixon said...

"I Bickled for a moment."

Too funny. You win this round, Martell!

Anonymous said...

that is a good verb.
your hint for Tuesday hit me...in DODGEBALL, I swear the main character was written for Bill Murray, all the lines and reactions are *him*, but Vince Vaughn got the part and did well with a Murray imitation.
-obidon

Unknown said...

There you go, Bill - it's The Taking of Las Vegas! Could be a sequel to The Taking of Beverly Hills - I hear Ken Wahl is available.

-danny boy

English Dave said...

"I Bickled for a moment."


Voice?

Anonymous said...

Wooden it B good if you had a place on your website for comments about each day's Tip? That way, I or others could make relevant remarks...like I have something else to say about SWORDFISH, which is today's premier example you cite and nowhere to put it. Flustrating.
-ObiDon

wcmartell said...

Go to message boards (you've been there before) and there is a section for site & tip feedback.

- Bill

PS: If you haven't seen FLIGHT OF FURY with Steven Seagal yet, it's a remake of BLACK THUNDER... and Fox Hinkle is still a character.

Anonymous said...

Bill wrote: PS: If you haven't seen FLIGHT OF FURY with Steven Seagal yet, it's a remake of BLACK THUNDER... and Fox Hinkle is still a character.

I'd love to see my avatar in action yet again, but on Netflix where I booked it, people are saying it's a worse-than-lousy, phoned-in performance from Seagal. Nevertheless, I'll get it. Did you get writing credit on it?
-ObiDon

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