A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

Vegas '07 - Part IV

Posted by pete at December 31, 2007 5:17 PM

"People of the world"

Certain jokes have a way of spiraling horribly out of control, mutating beyond their humble origins and, in the process, ceasing to be humorous at all. Case in point: Tyra Banks' talk show. Or, more on topic, my long-standing "love affair" with the Spice Girls.

When they first hit the scene back in '96, Just about everyone in the explored universe immediately recognized them as a Lou Pearlman-esque conglomeration of simplistic archetypes, only without even the former Backstreet Boys manager's remedial subtlety. Oh, and with ovaries. They were given monikers like "Posh," "Baby," and "Ginger" to help us all tell them apart (in case you didn't realize one was a fashionista, one a schoolgirl fetish object, and one a redhead). Their songs were intermittently catchy trifles, remembered less for their orchestration than for the singers' propensity for spandex and Wonderbras.

Then they became successful, which shouldn't have surprised anyone. We're a culture that can't get enough coverage of coke-addled hotel heiresses and "reality" programming that would make P.T. Barnum hang his head in shame. Given that, what's another flash in the pan pop group with marginal talent backed by an aggressive marketing campaign? How about that famous cross-demographic appeal, for starters? Girls, young ones at least, were drawn in by the easily identifiable characters and the laughable calls to "Girl Power." Parents - mothers, mostly - could take comfort in the Girls' relatively wholesome image; "Say You'll Be There" was the group's most risque video, featuring some mild midriff baring and a couple of shirtless guys (put that up against Christina Aguilera's "Dirrrty" or a pole dancing Britney). As for the men...well, we all have our weaknesses:

She's a little too angular for me these days, but more on that later.

When Spice World the movie came out, it was time for all the "real fans" to put up or shut up. At this point, I probably could've bowed out graciously. My interest in the group was half unapologetic ogling of Ms. Halliwell and half snickering at my cleverness in publicly extolling a group the 25-year old me wouldn't have used his Replacements t-shirt to put out if they spontaneously combusted. Of course, I never laid claim to much in the brains department.

To that end, and (mostly) unironically, TTTWLAM and I were there opening weekend. We were easily the only heterosexual dudes in the audience who didn't have the convenient explanation of children dragging us along to justify our presence (an occurrence with eerie parallels to our recent travels). For all that, the movie was largely inoffensive. Modeled on A Hard Day's Night but executing more like Night of the Living Dead 3D, there were no pretensions to art. Indeed, the Girls exhibited a glimpse of self-awareness, elevating the film over similar efforts by the likes of Mariah Carey or Hillary Duff.

Fast forward to 2007. I was, of course, keenly aware of plans for the Spice Girls reunion, even if the initial list of remote venues seemed like it would afford me an easy excuse for skipping out. Then TTTWLAM got engaged, and all bets were off. That about brings us up to date.

"Say Mandalay! Say Mandalay!"

The show(s) - they played three nights in Vegas) were scheduled at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. This would comprise our one and only trip to the Strip during that weekend. Four of us (The Dave flew back to SoCal earlier that day, allegedly for law school finals, but more likely to avoid the career-killing taint of being seen with us at the concert) hopped a cab in front of the ElCo and motored up to Mandalay Bay. The helpful Romanian cabbie informed us the Strip - from Mandalay Bay to the Stratosphere - runs 6.2 miles. I helpfully said, "Ten kilometers?" almost causing the guy to stroke out from excitement: "Da! Da! Ten kilometre!" We disembarked before he could hold forth on why Nicolae Ceausescu was so misunderstood.

Like all of the Strip casinos, Mandalay is ridiculously huge. We wandered aimlessly for a good half hour, backtracking at least once, before coming across a place to eat. The restaurant was called Raffles or Nipples or some such. The important thing was the food - specifically, that they had some, and the cranky server who would've given Flo Castleberry a run for her money in Waitress Thunderdome. Our behavior probably didn't help matters.

But then, somebody had to impress all the 16-year old girls sitting nearby. Amazingly, I may be uncooler now than I was 20 years ago.

After downing what felt suspiciously like a last meal for the condemned, we returned to the casino proper. Of the innumerable differences between the opulent Mandalay Bay and the pungent ElCo, three sprang immediately to mind:

1) There are no "high roller" rooms in the ElCo. We saw $1000 minimum bet tables, and a few that must have been higher than that, cordoned off to separate the gamers from the reeking masses.

2) The pit bosses actually look Mobbed up. In contrast, we had a "boss" at Fitzgerald's that was a dead ringer for my kindly Aunt Pat.

3) The cocktail waitresses were uniformly younger than 35 years of age. And all appear to have been selected for other, more...pronounced reasons.

We watched The Pregnant God make a quick $150 at the $25 blackjack table, then decided it was time to join the rapidly growing line snaking through the casino and leading to the Events Center.

It's funny, the only other time I'd been to a concert where you had to queue up in another venue in order to get to the arena was in 1990, when Basshole and I saw Jane's Addiction at the Bronco Bowl in Dallas. The non-concert portion of the Bronco Bowl was an amusement center, with batting cages and an honest-to-Harold II indoor archery range. That assemblage of Goths and alterna-whatsits wending its way through a center of family friendly Texas fun was signficantly more out of place than this one, as one of the few places a slew of trannies, queens, and Posh wannabes won't stick out like a sore thumb is Las Vegas.

So once again, we found ourselves quite possibly the only straight guys in the audience without kids in tow. The bulk of the crowd, however, consisted of mothers and daughters. Recall that a lot of these kids were tweens when the Spice Girls were at their peak. Now, ten years on, they're in their early 20s. Combine that with parents who aren't about to send their precious blossoms to Sin City unattended, and you get scads of moms and daughters in attendance, all trying to out-skank each other. It was a nigh unending parade of scantily-clad femininity, and I am equal parts chagrined and relieved to report that I was much more interested in the mothers. It seems the closer I get to 40, the more all women under the age of 30 look 16 to me. Case in point, these two young ladies who had the misfortune to sit next to us:

How nature says "Do not touch."

The show started a mere hour late, but since there wasn't an opening act (and ready access to beer) this wasn't that big a deal. Still, for a supposedly "sold-out" show, there were quite a few empty seats:

But the presence of Tom Cruise and David Beckham more than made up for it. Honest.

Finally, around 9 PM, the lights went down. Say what you want about the Spice Girls' music, but they put an energetic show.

There's the last photo any of us took that even vaguely looked like it was taken at a concert.

I don't remember a setlist, and I'm happy to say I didn't bother to write it down. They opened with "Spice Up Your Life," making their entrance in appropriately updated costumes:

I bet somebody they wouldn't play longer than 90 minutes, and I was right. Not to say their catalog is a bit lacking, but easily a fourth of the songs were covers, including Geri singing "It's Raining Men" and Mel B doing an...arresting version of "Are You Gonna Go My Way," in which she flogged a member of the audience. There were also several dance numbers, which gave the Girls time to complete their half-dozen costume changes. They also closed with a 'reprise' of "Spice Up Your Life."

And while I freely admit to being a Geri devotee at the outset, I believe I've been won over by the reliably curvy Mel B:

How much does "Masturbating Dancer #3" make per show, on average?

TPG - about whom I'm reluctant to talk shit, since he blew a good chunk of his blackjack winnings buying me $7 beers - insists that he's forever a Posh man. My response? Leather pants shouldn't sag in the ass. Victoria Beckham's skeletonization was only enhanced by the Jumbotron-magnified glow from her spray-on tan. I know now who Hollywood can call when they remake Boris Karloff's The Mummy.

All too soon, it was over. The Girls had two more shows to play in the coming days, but we weary four were left to slouch back to Fremont. Frankly, it was a relief. The Strip is nice to visit - one should certainly experience the opulence of the Belagio and the Wynn and enjoy the newly ribald pirate show in front of Treasure Island - but I think I'll always be more comfortable downtown. Less image conscious, more relaxed, and you can't buy these bad boys anywhere but Fremont:

Cujo's a little shy when he's sober. Hence the bars.

Up next: Dénouement