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February 11, 2004

Reflections On Yet Another Vegas Expedition

I had the good fortune to be able to spend a fun-filled weekend in fabulous Las Vegas. As is always the case, I was dead tired when I returned and spent two days feeling ill from exhaustion. I'm over that now, so I am finally able to collect my thoughts and put them into words.

• I think I really like Song Airlines. They didn't have all of their fancy new gadgets installed on the plane that flew us out, but it was new and clean. The flight crew was very pleasant and always happy to bring you another drink. One downside is that nothing is free except soda. A corresponding upside, however, is that they don't skimp on stuff that they're overcharging for.
  
• THE Hotel at Mandalay Bay is awesome. Our room had a separate living room, two enormous TV's, one-and-a-half baths and a flat screen TV in the full bathroom. This is what it means to live well in Vegas.
  
• The time between when you first land in Vegas and when you finally get to the gaming tables moves more slowly than any other time known to mankind. I'm sure that some women would argue that time moves more slowly when you're in labor, but I have my doubts. Even the joy of childbirth would seem to me to pale in comparison to that magical moment when the dealer slides your first two hundred bucks worth of chips to you and says, "Good luck, sir." It's a moment of pure elation.
  
• Speaking of elation, I offer to you the three stages of any weekend trip to Vegas:
  
  1. Stage 1: Elation The Friday night that you arrive in town is always the high point of any Vegas trip. Everything is shiny and new and you've got plenty of money and enough adrenaline running through your veins to revive an African elephant from a heroin overdose. You attack the gaming tables with gusto and down the free drinks as fast as the waitress can bring them. The next thing you know, it's 6:00 AM and it's time to get breakfast and perhaps sleep for an hour or two.
     
  2. Stage 2: Disenchantment By dinner time on Saturday, the combined events of your trip begin to weigh on you. You're running on two or three hours sleep. Since you woke up in town, you hit the tables and the drinks earlier on Saturday. This means that you've most likely already suffered through your first bad trip to the tables (the one that doesn't require a trip to the cage before you mope out of the casino with your tail between your legs) plus you're dehydrated and tired. The lights suddenly aren't as pretty and you're struck by how annoying the constant ringing of the slot machines can be. You have dinner and try to rally, but you find that you're playing not to lose rather than playing to win. Eventually, you give up and either plant yourself in a bar or go to your room and try to sleep.
     
  3. Stage 3: Redemption You wake up on Sunday in a funk. You've slept less than 8 hours out of the past 48, your digestive system is a complete wreck, and you're feeling mildly delirious. And it's the combination of that delirium and the realization that your hours in Vegas are numbered that suddenly snaps you out of it. You recall that you're in Vegas to have fun and you realize that you wasted a good chunk of Saturday being mopey and playing conservative. You take a few shots to steady yourself and attack the table with renewed vigor. Some of the best winning streaks in Vegas happen on Sundays because players throw caution to the wind and go for broke. By the time you have to leave for the airport, you may or may not be ahead, but you remember why you bring your entertainment dollar to Vegas. You take a cab to the airport and check in and drag yourself through the terminal and collapse into a chair in the gate area. And as you stumble down the jetway and the ringing of the slot machines fades away, you know that there will be a next time because you love Las Vegas.
  
  
• It seems that Ralph Engelstad finally realized what a waste it was to let Imperial Palace languish in its dumpy state and spent some money to liven the place up. The new blackjack tables look really nice and the dealers are at least 50% less surly. By 5:00 AM, the pit boss was happy to cut us a comp for free breakfast.
  
• On a similar note, Sahara has really improved their buffet since the last time I was there. Nothing makes a meal like 2 pounds of cold crab legs topped off with a slice of cheesecake.
  
• Nothing can make four relatively sane, normally trusting people believe that they are being driven into the middle of the desert to be robbed and/or killed than a cab driver who mutters to himself during a long ride to a place you've never been before. Trust me on this one.
  
• Turns out that the Air Supply guys are still alive. The show they put on at the Suncoast was pretty entertaining, but Graham and Russell were only part of the show. Among my noteworthy observations:
  
  • The bass player they're touring with looks like they kidnapped him from Ozzfest. Seriously, who expected to see a bass solo in the middle of an Air Supply concert?
    
  • Hardly a surprise, but funny nonetheless: During all of their sappiest 80's love songs (Making Love Out of Nothing at All, All Out of Love, One That You Love, etc.) they women in the crowd were singing along and swaying and swooning. The men tended to sit stiffly with their arms crossed...
    
  • ... except for the balding, middle-aged guy who bolted down from the back section as soon as a seat in the front opened up. He was singing along, word for word, and crying during the slow songs. There are strange people in the world.
    
  • It was pretty easy to tell the difference between the people who were attending on comped tickets versus the people who paid to be there. When the first set ended, about half the crowd headed for the exits, even though the house lights didn't come back up and the hardcore fans were already chanting for the encore.
    
  • The band was very gracious after the show, hanging around to take pictures and sign autographs for all of the hardcore fans. Russell though he was going to get past my friend Carol with just a handshake. He was wrong, of course.
  
  
• The Luxor is still an awful, awful place to gamble. Their $15 two-deck blackjack game took my money faster than I knew what hit me.
  
• When you need a couple of rounds of giant kamikaze shots to get yourself going in the morning, go to Claude's Bar at the Golden Nugget. They'll hook you up.
  
• I enjoyed the greatest hot craps run of my life on Sunday afternoon at the Las Vegas Club. No exaggeration, the shooter kept the dice for an hour and fifteen minutes and made nine or ten points. Serious craps players will understand what I mean when I say that my anxiety completely shifted from whether I had too much money on the table to whether I had enough money on the table. To kill the streak, the house suddenly brought in a new stick man. He wasn't wearing a dealer's uniform, he was dressed in street clothes. He was angry. When one die caremed off of one of the numerous stacks of chips on the table, he grabbed it out of midair and chastised the shooter for not getting it all the way to the far wall. I should have taken down all of my place bets at that very moment, but I was holding out on the hope that the shooter could pick up one more point and punish the house for sending this asshole to the table. But, alas, he was The Closer and the streak ended.

Posted by Dan at February 11, 2004 04:59 PM

Comments

Posted by: miles at February 12, 2004 07:42 AM

Posted by: Dan at February 12, 2004 07:45 AM

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