A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

Vegas '07 - Part IV

"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

The NFL season has now been rendered meaningless

And not because New England beat the Giants to go 16-0, though it was a mostly entertaining game (as is always the case when a Manning loses), or because the Texans and Bears are out of playoff contention, but because I lost the title game in my fantasy football league.

My team, the "Sucking Chest Wounds," cruised through the early part of the season. An injury to Steven Jackson was offset by the acquisition of Ronnie Brown, and picking up Derek Anderson and Mason Crosby proved fruitful. Even after Brown went down, SJ started picking back up. I finished the season 9-4, earning a first round bye.

The guy everyone figured to win it all - he had both Tom Brady and Randy Moss - went down in the semifinals thanks to inclement weather. I stomped my opponent 132-57 in the second to last game, and right away I knew I was screwed. The dude who beat Brady/Moss had Donovan McNabb, who once again waited until the Eagles were out of contention to have the best game of his season. Jackson and Marion Barber did all right for me, but I would've needed 20 points from Denver TE Tony Scheffler last Monday night, and considering he put up 16 against Houston the week before, well, that kind of lightning rarely strikes twice.

So congratulations to the..."Ass Thrashers." I still won my entry fee back, thus allowing me to justify continued participation to The Wife.

Vegas Part IV will be up tomorrow.

Vegas '07 - Part III

"I like elves fucking."

Friday dawned clear and windy. At least, I assume it did. It was clear and windy when we finally rolled out of bed around noon, anyway.

The first Vegas morning is generally pretty benign. Your system has yet to be overcome by the steady diet of toxins and fatigue, so it recovers fairly quickly from the initial night's excesses. In my case, a couple of aspirin, some Emergen-C, and a quart of Gatorade had me back on relatively steady feet, ready to face the day.

Dining options were limited, unless you want to chance the iffy Fremont casino buffets. We pretty much ducked into the first restaurant we came across, which I vaguely recall being named "Mickey Finnz" or some such. It had a half-assed beach theme, but the grub was acceptable to four losers in varying stages of hangoverdom. We actually lingered there for a couple hours, the better to rehydrate and appreciate the saucy waitress' lowrider jeans.

The Wife always asks me if I had any good conversations whenever I hang out with my friends. My response is invariably "Sure," and then silence. I rarely remember what was discussed, which is usually not that big a deal when the topic of conversation sticks to sports or debating the age-old questions (Ninja vs. pirate? Buck Rogers vs. Manimal?), but I remember Friday's discussion simply because it's the only time I've ever shot a liquid out of my nose from laughter.

It came about innocently enough. We were talking about things like Pandora and other taste aggregators that make movie or book selections for you based on your past interests, and what sort of criteria could be plugged into it. Things like: "seafaring epic" or "strong female protagonist" or "future tech," when TTTWLAM piped up with, "I like elves fucking."

After I'd wiped the coffee from my face and shirt, it was decided to get the hell out of there and do some gambling. We were joined that afternoon by The Thing's old college friends "The Pregnant God" (his chosen nom de blog) and "Beth Wexler" (christened in honor of her African volunteer past). They flew in from the East and West coasts, respectively, to help their old chum bid a sloppy adieu to bachelorhood. There was nothing for it but to seek out some adult entertainment.

More adult than gambling and drinking, I mean.

"You mean you only get one dance at a time?"

I mentioned the disconnect between how Vegas portrays itself and how it actually is in my last entry, using casino accommodations as the primary example. The same lesson could be applied to just about every aspect of the city's existence, however. Especially with regard to its strip clubs.

Honestly though, thanks to the philosophical similarities it's pretty impossible for a strip club not to succeed in Las Vegas. Both the club and the casino are out to extract as much money from you as possible with minimum effort on their part. The casinos ply you with free drinks, the occasional comp, and the remote-yet-tantalizing possibility that the next dollar you drop in a slot machine or plunk into a progressive poker ante might net you six figures. Clubs like Glitter Gulch or Cheetah's play upon the fact that most guys out for a guys' weekend aren't going to have the stones to simply call one of the bazillion escort services available in Vegas, opting instead for the - relatively - insertion-free option. There are many things a man will put up with to see some bared breasts, including enduring Glitter Gulch.

Glitter Gulch (oh, the imagery) is the only actual strip club on Fremont Street. That may sound crazy, but bear in mind that there are none on the actual Strip either (that I know of). Cheetah's is on Western, for example, while Sapphire on Industrial is probably the closest to the top-line casinos (it's easier to apply out-of-town admission charges when the customer arrives in a cab or limo, after all). GG exploits this to its best advantage, with Jumbotrons advertising its bevy of marginally attractive basket cases who haven't yet succumbed to the horrifying side effects of methamphetamine addiction. Not eager to tack on a $30 cab ride to what was already shaping up to be an expensive Friday night, the six of us ambled over for a little obligatory bachelor party nudity.

$20 cover gets you two drinks and a private mini-stage where you and your compatriots can get a much needed close-up of C-section scars and razor burn. I downed my duo of vodka tonics in about 90 seconds (as well as one of The Dave's Coronas, which he foolishly left unattended while chatting up our first dancer). Things grow a bit hazy at this point, but here are a few highlights from the subsequent few hours.

1. TTTWLAM got a stripper's business card. Her real business card. She was a real estate agent, I believe, and was apparently quite taken with the big lug. I suspect if I'd ever tried to seek out an exotic dancer's true identity, I'd be dragged by bouncer's to the not-so-VIP area and set upon with truncheons. That's probably because he usually has that goofy open persona and I look more like an aging sociopath who got used unkindly in white collar prison.

I mean, could you resist these charms?

2. I gave Cujo (so christened because his normal slobberingly friendly personality tends to give way to haphazard clumsiness and verbal abusiveness under the influence of hydrophobia 20+ beers) $35 for a lap dance. They're normally $25, but the extra tenner gets you into a more secluded room for your entertainment. Of course, the room is "secluded" from the rest of the club by a whopping bead curtain, you're stuck in there with about two dozen other saps, and a surly bouncer watches over the proceedings the whole time. Regardless, he returned some 10 minutes later with a chagrined look on his face:

Cujo: I'm out $100, man.
Pete: What? How did that happen?
Cujo: She charged me for each song.
Pete: ...Uh, yeah. That's what they do.
Cujo: But I thought $35 would get me three songs.
Pete: [feeling an aneurysm coming on] Where in the contiguous 48 states is there a strip club where you can get three dances for the price of one?
Cujo: [Names some dive in the rural fastness of East Texas where he went to college]
Pete: How old are you?

I feel I should point out two things. First, Cujo is over 30. Second, this isn't the first time he's made poor financial decisions in a gentlemen's club. At his own bachelor party in New Orleans, which I also attended, he had to be forcibly prevented from verbally agreeing to some VIP-room deal that would've cost us around $3000. In all fairness to him, he dutifully related the story to his wife later that evening. Her response: "You're a fucking idiot."

3. $8.75 for a beer meant yours truly left Glitter Gulch significantly more sober than when he entered.

More gambling followed. The Dave and I enjoyed watching a young fellow solidify his gangsta cred by loudly bellowing for his $2 in change from McDonald's, TPG whizzed off the balcony, and TTTWLAM and Cujo narrowly averted grievous thoracic trauma simply by the savvy and ninja-like brandishing of several Gatorade bottles.

Next up: the Spice Girls. Finally.

Arbitrary rankings for all

The Beast just released their list of the 50 Most Loathsome People of 2007. I think it's pretty solid, even if they include a larger number of pop culture figures (#50 Nicole Richie, #48 Carson Daly, #12 Michael Vick) than their apparent disdain for discussing such things would initially indicate. There's also the expected (#6 Rudy Giuliani, #20 Larry Craig), the really expected (#37 Mitt Romney , #23 Bill O'Reilly), and the "no shit" (#1/#2 Bush/Cheney, #13 Anne Coulter) selections.

Allow me to utilize the down time afforded by finally getting the house to myself for the first time in four days to share a couple choice excerpts:

14. Glenn Beck

Crimes: If Fox News isn't quite asinine enough for you, just click on over to Headline News, where the CNN brand is eagerly defiling its vestigial credibility by giving an hour a day to the dumbest dumbfuck in dumbfuckistan, Glenn Beck. A white-knuckle, dry drunk, closet case man-child with apparent xenophobia issues and a penchant for end-times theology, Mormon convert Beck is palpably horny for the apocalypse, passive-aggressively accusing even the world's most benign Muslims of plotting America's destruction and likening withdrawal from Iraq to slavery.

And my personal favorite:

9. You

Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism -- it's nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears' children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you're going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques." You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can't spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don't want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy's doing well. You're an idiot.

I thought we should've ranked higher, personally.

Vegas '07 - Part II

"Crackton! Next stop: Crackton!

Vegas doesn't lack for accommodations. Except, as it turns out, on rodeo weekend. We were scrambling for lodgings on less than two months notice, and while we were planning on staying downtown anyway, none of us were prepared for the unique charms of the El Cortez.

Better writers than myself have discussed the dichotomy between the public face of Las Vegas and the seamy reality, and if you've ever been there yourself, you get that in the first 30 minutes on the ground. Your surly cabby drives you past the 100-ft neon billboards advertising Cirque du Soleil's "Mystere" and Carrot Top at the Luxor (no shit) on I-15, where you get a tantalizing glimpse of the places like the Bellagio and the Palms, where people who can afford to ante more than $2.50 for Caribbean poker tend to stay, until you make the exit onto S. Las Vegas Blvd and get that first whiff of the real Vegas, an aroma reminiscent of desperation layered over abject failure.

The ElCo occupied a unique space, however. It's downtown, like Fitzgerald's and the Four Queens (two other places I've stayed), but just barely. Situated at Fremont and 6th, it is literally the last hotel/casino before the charming neighborhood we referred to all weekend as Crackton, where all-day buffets give way to discount hourly rates and wizened 20-something broads refer to passers-by as "Daddy" (as Cujo discovered on his daily forays for Gatoratde). Put it this way: if Fremont Street is the lower intestine of Vegas' alimentary canal, then the El Cortez is the spincter. Here's the view from outside our 5th floor room:

"Where the wave broke, and rolled back."

The ElCo was also where we met The Dave, the only one of those aforementioned grad school friends I still keep in touch with (and this in spite of his being an Oakland Raiders fan). He's been with me on all but two of my Vegas trips, including the time we drove from Houston to San Diego in his antiquated, un-air conditioned Ford Probe in the summer of '98. But that's a tale for another time.

We spent an hour or so shooting the shit in the ElCo's luxurious casino. No picture can do it justice, but trust me when I say it had the highest concentration of gamblers lugging oxygen tanks or tooling about on their Rascals that I have ever seen.

Not pictured: the multiple Elizabeth Taylor slot machines.

Impressed as we were by our $30 a night hotel, we were eager to head back up Fremont and hit a casino where the grim specter of Death didn't haunt our every echoing step. And so, after depositing our bags in our room (and trying not imagine the place under an ultraviolet light), we made our way up to the main drag.

The Greatest American Hero

We gambled some at Fitzgerald's and the new -and-improved Golden Nugget ("Now With 40% Fewer Suicides!"). I soured quickly on blackjack while TTTWLAM went up and down at the game in a dizzying display that would become emblematic of the weekend. I burned through about $100 in fairly short order, so rather than risk blowing my entire budget the first few hours - and less than enchanted with the slow drink service at Fitz's, I made a few runs back and forth between the casino and a gift store next door. 24 oz. beers could be had for $1.25, along with other, more outstanding items one could only find in Vegas.

For instance, if you were asked to name two of our nation's greatest icons, who would you choose? One might very well be one of our founding fathers; an inventor and statesman whom many credit with discovering electricity. Another, an orphan from the streets of New York City, who undergoes a remarkable metamorphosis after getting bitten by a radioactive arachnid.

Now imagine you were some sort of mad scientist and could combine the two. The result might very well look like this:

This t-shirt is so "full of win," as the kids say, I can't stand it. The head (and, presumably, brain) of Ben Franklin on Spider-Man's body. Spider-Ben would be nigh unstoppable. And his webbing? Money, motherfucker!

We were hypnotized by this shirt...with good reason, I might add. I have TTTWLAM to thank for surreptitiously buying this for me, because the shaky cell phone pics I took of it in the store didn't quite come out. It's also worth mentioning that the smallest size available was XXXL, though I'm not sure why.

That was the high point of the first night, as we eventually staggered back to the ElCo (TTTWLAM and Cujo a little later, thanks to the latter's desire for $1.25 pizza and blatant ignorance of his surroundings) and collapsed around 4 AM.

Next up: The Girls of Glitter Gulch and Spice, Spice, Baby.

Talk to me, Goose

Entry #2 about the Vegas trip is coming up, as soon as I resurrect my laptop from the bowels of failed power supply hell. While I'm borrowing someone else's, here's a story to put you in the mood for holiday gluttony:

For decades, a few simple slices of turkey were all it needed. But now even the traditional Christmas dinner has been supersized.

Multi-bird roasts, where different types of bird are stuffed inside a larger one, have become the thing to carve this year - and the more birds involved the better.

One of the top-sellers is the Waitrose four-bird roast: guinea fowl, duck and turkey breast stuffed inside a goose. Demand has soared 50 per cent this year - even though each roast costs an eyewatering £200.
[...]
The surge in popularity may have something to do with TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's creation of a ten-bird roast on his show two years ago.

He stuffed an 18lb turkey with a goose, duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and woodcock - producing a remarkable Russian doll-like dish.

But now his effort, inspired by recipes dating from Tudor times, has been dwarfed by a behemoth containing no fewer than 48 birds of 12 different species.

The species in question:

1. Turkey, 2. Goose, 3. Barbary duck, 4. Guinea fowl, 5. Mallard, 6. Poussin, 7. Quail, 8. Partridge, 9. Pigeon squab, 10. Pheasant, 11. Chicken, 12. Aylesbury duck

And some specs:

This massive roast, the proud creation of Devon farmer Anne Petch, weighs almost four stone (more than most airlines' baggage allowance), costs £665, and has enough meat to serve 125 people.

It contains about 50,000 calories and takes more than eight hours to cook in an industrial duck sized oven.

The spacing on that last sentence was screwed up, so I can't tell if that means the oven is sized for something called an "industrial duck," or if a regular duck-sized oven wasn't macho enough.

In any event, we have ostrich farms in Texas, right? I think you know what needs to be done.

Vegas '07 - Part I

Profit.

Don't "curse, smoke, or gamble." Dude sure knows how to pick his spots.

My first trip to Las Vegas was in 1997. I went with a bunch (okay, three) of my grad school friends (we'd all graduated a year earlier), we stayed at the Luxor, and of all the subsequent trips I've made - six as of last weekend - it's still the only time I returned "up," netting about $250. It probably had something to do with the fiendish nature of craps, which can fool a novice into thinking hitting a hard six twice in one roll is a common occurrence.

Truth be told, I hadn't anticipated returning again for some time. At least, not until my income topped $500,000 a year. Vegas can be a mite pricey, which is fine if other expenses in your life don't have you sweating that $25 double-down, like mine do. I'm not cut out to be a high-roller, I guess, because once I go down about $100 I clam up and lurk around my friends who are playing, muttering encouragement while cajoling free drinks out of the unfortunately costumed waitress. Circumstances changed, however, thanks to a confluence of events believed by most of the world's top scienticians to be statistically incapable of ever taking place. The first, mentioned here previously, was the wholly unlikely Spice Girls tour. I know how hard it is for most of us to believe that five singers as devoted to their music as Posh, Scary, Sporty, Ginger, and Baby would stoop to something so base as a "reunion" tour, but pictures don't lie:

Question their artistic integrity at your peril.

The second world-shattering event is the impending marriage of The Thing That Walks Like a Man. Some of you out there are probably having difficulty wrapping your heads around the idea that a (live) woman would enter into a legally binding union with such a person without the aid of firearms or near-lethal amounts of prescription medication, but I have met the young lady in question and can assure you their marriage will rival that of Tom Green and Drew Barrymore in longevity, if not fluid spillage.

Being Spice Girls "fans" from way back, and knowing that Vegas was one of their few North American stops, there was little choice but to secure overpriced tickets and airfare and plan TTTWLAM's last barbaric yawp of bachelorhood. We flew out Thursday night with a third traveling companion - dubbed "Cujo" for reasons that will become apparent later on - and 375ML of Tito's vodka smuggled aboard the airplane in a plastic flask (my ready excuse, if searched, was to claim I didn't realize vodka was a liquid).

The Proof (price obscured to preserve ticketholder dignity)

Hillary is the Anti-Christ

The flight, like most of the "to Las Vegas" variety, was barely tolerable. We had the usual assortment of reprobates: the Wannabe High-Rollers - usually rocking the "Turtle from Entourage" ensemble; the Girls Weekend Out-ers - who have forgotten (in the 20 years since college) how readily their screeching drunken voices send others fleeing their presence; and the Unfortunates - a handful of families and couples stuck on the plane until its final destination, somewhere in Calfiornia.

Curiously, nobody else seemed to be going to the concert.

I'm normally an unindicted co-consiprator in Vegas-related tomfoolery, but this flight was particularly irritating. The cackling hens behind us were bad enough (even drunk they were discussing home decorating and kitchenware), albeit more loudly than usual, but they were mere amateurs compared to the guy sitting in front of me, whom I'll unaffectionately refer to as "Big Tex."

Clad in pleated Wranglers, a khaki chambray shirt, boots of indeterminate origin, and topped off with a white Resistol hat, Big Tex certainly didn't appear any different than the few dozen or so other folks heading to the National Finals Rodeo (coincidentally taking place in LV that same weekend), except he was several orders of magnitude drunker than anyone else. And he was sitting directly in front of me. I've catalogued a few of his more egregious offenses:

1. Yelling "Put the spurs to her!" and "Yee-ha!" at various intervals while we were experiencing turbulence.

2. Attempting to engage the college-aged guy next to him, who just happened to be black, in a political discussion. He opened with thoughtful commentary about Barack Obama which actually included the terms "articulate" and "well-spoken," then claimed he had evidence that Hillary Clinton was, in fact, the antichrist.

3. Using the expression "Git R Done" on several non-consecutive occasions. Without irony.

4. Wearing one of those cowboy wallets that sticks a third of the way out of your rear pocket. I have nothing against such wallets, except when they're embossed with a frigging cross and worn by someone who loudly berates flight attendants and stumbles down the aisle during multiple trips to the bathroom.

TTTWLAM commented that Big Tex was the reason everybody else in America hates Texans. I countered that he was the reason everybody in the world hates Americans.

Three hours and change later, we touched down. Being men, and unsavory ones at that, none of us has checked any bags for our four night stay. We navigated the labyrinthine taxi line, secured transportation, and by 10 PM were headed downtown.

Next up: The Dave and (El) Cortez the Killer

"And I've a mind to go spit on his grave"

So I'm minding my own business in the kitchen tonight, trying to decide if I have to wall mount some shelves near ceiling level to keep our kid from constantly attempting to juggle the steak knives, when The Wife calls me out to the living room. And why is she interrupting my ruminations? To inform me that "Decoration Day" by the Drive-By Truckers is playing over the dénouement of Criminal Minds, one of the many fine network TV shows rendering jury pools useless across the country.

I'm not too worried about this heralding a Coldplay-like love affair between TV and the DBTs. Jason Isbell had the prettiest voice in the band, and he left last year. More likely somebody on the show did a Google search for song lyrics pertaining to family violence and "Day" popped up, even though its Hatfields and McCoys theme didn't quite fit the plot of the show.

None of this really gets me too worked up, honestly. I'm just trying to kill some time before I finish up the entry about last week's Vegas trip.

Convert to Judy's-ism

MikeD passes along this happy news:

Just thought you'd like to know that The Judy's have finally released Washarama and Moo on CD. They sound fucking fantastic.

We launched the site earlier this week: http://www.wastedtalentrecords.com

I know for a fact that they have recorded at least one new song, and an anniversary double album edition of Washarama is in the works (with completely different material than what is on the current release). I'll keep on kicking Jeff in the shins until they promise to do it...

A long time coming. Go order your copies. And Mike neglected to mention it, but you can also order a copy of Where's My Towel/ Industry Standard by the Big Boys (produced by David Bean). Finally a companion for my copy of Lullabies Help the Brain Grow.

"Ladies and gentlemen, and especially little children. I'm glad you're all here to witness what may very well be my grisly death."

As you may have noticed, whiterose.org was down for the last nine days or so while webmeisters Ginger and Michael fled the fetid confines of New Jersey for the Elysian fields of Austin, TX. While this really gave me an opportunity to send anonymous death threats to Reveille catch up on great works of literature, I was rather bummed I wasn't able to comment on the death of yet another of my childhood idols, Evel Knievel:

Evel Knievel's hard life killed him -- it just took longer than he or anyone else might have expected.

The hard-living motorcycle daredevil, whose bone-breaking, rocket-powered jumps and stunts made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs. He had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his many spills. He also suffered two strokes in recent years.

I was a typical '70s kid in a lot of ways: I saw Star Wars about 20 times when it was released, I pleaded with my parents to let me stay up on Saturdays to enjoy the exploits of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, and I watched Knievel's exploits with the kind of gape-mouthed fascination peculiar to boys who have yet to reach double digits.

I had the Stunt Cycle, I watched the shitty movies, and I died a little inside when the chute deployed too early on the disastrous Snake River Canyon jump.

Unsurprisingly, A&E re-ran their Knievel Biography last weekend, and I was reminded of my favorite story; the time Knievel went after the author of an unauthorized biography with a baseball bat...and two broken arms.

He was a womanizer, an insufferable egomaniac, and a glorious bastard, and the world is a duller place for his having left it.

Rest in as much peace as your shattered bones will allow, Evel.