Estrella/Vegas '09 - Part 9 Hanging in Las Vegas With Cool People

I was woken from my nap to find that the others had arrived and checked in. We divided people among the two rooms and then met in the lobby casino for drinks. Beothuk has a funny story about the friendliness of the locals. It's his to tell though, not mine.

The next day we went to the Planet Hollywood resort (strangely, it contains no Planet Hollywood restaurant. Conversely, the Caesars Palace complex does) for the breakfast buffet. The five of us all over ate, which tells me I'd better be very very careful if I go to Vegas again for any longer period of time.

We then wandered over to the Bellagio (seeing the impressive water fountain display) to gamble and window shop. We followed that up by doing the same thing at Caesars Palace. This took several hours, about ninety minutes of which was spent goofing off in an upscale toy store. How can you tell we were all a big bunch of geeks? This was the most impressive store and nobody really cared about all the high-end fashion places.

This pretty much killed the whole afternoon. We went back to our hotel to rest for a bit then decided to go for supper. The others wanted to go for the cheap-ass steak sandwich specials that the casinos advertised. I discovered that Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville was in the Flamingo resort next door to us and I was hoping we'd do that. A 40-minute wait to get into the restaurant offering the cheap steak sandwiches put the others in the position of wanting to at least look at the menu to see if Margaritaville was at least reasonably priced.

We wandered through the maze that is the main floor of the Flamingo and finally got told a shortcut that worked by a tour bus driver that was wandering around.

The bus driver was a chatty sort and he decided to tell us some jokes. When he discovered that we were Canadians he tried to tell us that we we're, in fact, Americans! How's that we asked (suspecting the answer). "Canada is in North America, that makes Canadians Americans."

"Oh, I get it, just like Mexicans" added conejita_diabla. At this suggestion, his sphincter clenched so tightly you could hear it in the next state. I always knew there was some level of prejudice against Hispanics, but I'd never really seen it before (What can I say, I'm Canadian, we have our own set of shameful bigoted assumptions).

The guy followed this up with an Obama joke that made us flee. All I can say is that sometimes an offensive joke is coming from a place where offensive=funny and sometimes it's coming from a place of deep prejudice. In this case we sensed that it was the latter.

We took the shortcut and found Margaritaville. The menu was reasonably priced (for Vegas) andthe place was not super busy so we got seated immediately. Naturally there were lots and lots of margaritas on the menu and of course there was a Cheeseburger in Paradise. We ordered our food and drinks and settled in for a sociable dinner.

That was when the band started. Yep, this place is also a club. The band started and removed any chance we had for a pleasant conversation. We universally thought "Oh crap, this was a mistake".

They finished their song, we thought, "Ok, I hope this is a short set". They finished the second song, we thought, "That wasn't half bad". They finished the third song, we thought, "Actually, these guys are really good".

The whole set was probably about 30-45 minutes. They did a great job and we all enjoyed it immensely. So we did end up seeing a show in Vegas. We saw The Garage Boys and they played a set at Margaritaville.

After this we went to the Palomino Club to watch pretty girls take off their clothes for us.

Ok, these gals were light years ahead of the dancers I saw in Cowtown. I still prefer burlesque. It's just more fun.

Which is not to say that they weren't fun too. I certainly enjoyed myself. It just didn't turn me on. I haven't quite decided if this is because I had too much to drink or if I'm just not into strippers. Probably a bit of column A and column B. That the ladies would engage you in conversation didn't help my anxiety. Nearly-naked girls striking up a conversation with me? That's a recipe for turning into Bashful Buzzard.

The combination of alcohol, a long day and a need to be up early for my flight all conspired to have me drag everyone else away earlier then they'd have liked (I think it was about 2am when we left, but others wanted to stick around until the place closed at 4am). We had the coolest cab driver on the way back to the hotel. He get's his own entry though.

Sadly, we never got the chance to play roulette.

Tired

I really just want to go home and veg, but I promised I'd fight against the forces of darkness tonight.

Fess Up

Which one of you clowns put me on the American Family Association mailing list? I suppose they could just be spamming the members of dark_christian. Normally I'd find it funny and ironic, but I'm still trying to catch up on my writing.

Why Exactly Do People Put Up With Trolls and Bullies?

Council would have been smooth and short and uneventful, except the troll decided to show up and wave his dick around. And that's all it was really - an exercise in getting everyone worked up for no other reason then he could. If it wasn't the perfectly reasonable pet policy, then it would have been something else.

Unfortunately it's now exploded into a barrage of policy suggestions designed to reign in a fractured, possibly hostile council meeting. All completely unnecessary of course because the only person causing council to be fractured and hostile is him.

Oh well. I'm confident that the forces of good will prevail, because trolls have short attention spans and bullies eventually go after easier targets.