Monty's Vegas Adventure

Merry Christmas! To mark this joyous holiday, I'm going to tell you a story of how I went to a festive wonderland full of excitement and bemusement. Once upon a time, there was a place called Las Vegas.

That's right, I said "Las Vegas". And I'd say it again, too. There was a time when I lived only five hours from Vegas, but that was a long time ago. I haven't been to The Sleaziest Place On Earth in a long time.

I went there to meet and hang out with Strega, who was there as part of a Television Without Pity summit. There were one or two mentions of it on Damn Hell Ass Kings; Strega's adventures are here, but they only cover the time before I show up in the story.

I got to Las Vegas on Saturday, and my plan was to entertain myself that night, then meet up with Strega on Sunday, at which point we would rampage through Las Vegas like a pair of monstrous fire lizards, if Godzilla was really entertained by shiny objects. Because, you know, Las Vegas looks like it was decorated by deranged magpies. I can only assume that squads of trained lunatics went through the city, and anywhere they found an undecorated square inch, they added either a mirror, a light, or some neon. Or preferably all three, along with something that makes a lot of noise. It is not a tasteful city, and if that bothers you, why don't you go back to Russia, ya commie?

It turns out that early December isn't a great time to go to Las Vegas. Penn & Teller were dark. The pirate show at Treasure Island? Dark. I didn't even know pirates got vacation time. Cirque du Soleil's Mystere? Nope. But I had special plans: Joan Jett! That would make up for missing her show in February! And, because Las Vegas is all about Bonus Silliness, the opening act was David Lee Roth! Sweet! Except that Joan's show was "indefinitely postponed". You know, like how Firefly is going on "indefinite hiatus".

Strega and I only managed to see one show, and it was really terrible. It was called "Bottoms Up", and it's going to be hard to describe. It's a show that's been running for sixty years or something, and it combines topless dancers with terrible sketch comedy. Before the show, we tried to guess the sketches in advance, on the theory that any show with jokes that old should be relatively predictable. We didn't do very well, but that's just because we didn't guess obvious enough. How long has it been since someone tried to get away with the old Firing Squad sketch? It was like watching You Can't Do That On Television. Except for the topless woman. It seems like I ought to be able to come up with a joke about how you can't do toplessness on television, but it's not working. My point is that the jokes in "Bottoms Up" were even lamer than anything Moose and Alasdair ever trotted out. Remember the Friars Club Jokebook I read two weeks ago? There are whole sketches in there that showed up on stage. It was, literally, jaw-droppingly bad. There were many times where Strega and I looked at each other, slack-jawed in disbelief at the nonsense trying to pass itself off as entertainment. Although the absurd choreography employed by the dancers was pretty funny.

On Sunday, while Strega was seeing to the last of the TWoP thing (oh -- I was going to do this in some sort of chronological order, but then I decided that it should be confusing, just like Las Vegas itself! Plus, I forgot to take coherent notes), I hung out in the Sports Book in the Stardust. It was really cool, even though I don't bet on sports. It was like being in a really good sports bar; there were sixty screens, and since everyone in the room had several bets down, and the bets were evenly split within each game, any play on any screen generated cheers and dismay. It also meant that, since every football game was airing, there were always commercials. So wherever I looked, I could see Alf. That wasn't so great. On the other hand, hearing people say things like "Hey, mac" and "Every game is fixed" seriously? Hi-larious.

Also hi-larious: slot machine themes. It's not enough, apparently, to just have slot machines. They have to be "I Dream of Jeannie" slots. Or "Bewitched". Or my favorite, the slot machines branded like the "Winning For Dummies" book. You know the "For Dummies" series? There's a book about winning slot machines. And there are slot machines with that brand. Something's very wrong there.

Strega and I walked up and down a few miles of the strip each day, and it was pretty tiring. In retrospect, I think the mistake we were making is that we had destinations in mind. We'd set out from the Stardust and proceed directly to the Flamingo, where we would find out that Mac King's show wasn't playing (because like I say, it was December), and then we would walk back to the Stardust. After the first couple of days, we wised up and started breaking the walks up a bit more, going to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum (which did not include the Chamber of Horrors) and a really odd 3-D ride in the Venetian. We also saw penguins! And the outside of the Charo show! And Angel! Well, that was on television, but I thought it was neat to watch Angel with Strega, because her Angel-mocking skills are indeed formidable.

We also set out at one point to see the Billboard Music Awards at the MGM Grand. We didn't do very well, because we didn't know how much it would cost or how to get to it, so we gave up on that plan fairly early. We downgraded our goal to "see the red carpet foolishness" even though there was a danger we might see Robin Leach. To save on endless walking, we took the monorail from Bally's to the MGM, and then completely failed to figure out how to get to the red carpet. But instead, we got to see celebrities from the monorail, which is even more exciting. Because that's the power of the monorail. As far as we could tell, celebrities were being loaded out one of the MGM's back doors into a limo, which then drove around the corner and dumped them into a crowd of extremely excited people. Then the limo went back to get ready to pick more people up. We saw Avril Lavigne, Faith Hill, and possibly Tim McGraw, and we did all that from the comfort of a monorail. Whee!

There are probably things I'm forgetting, but that's what going to Las Vegas is all about. Merry Christmas!