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Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.
friday 01/23/2004
Vegas the trip, part one
or �Another buffet? ... joy�
A straightforward day-by-day account of Kristen's and my recent Las Vegas trip is what this entry should be, but it's not what it will be. I'm in a mood to ignore linear narrative, which is hardly a surprise given my lazy assed nature. Besides, such a tale would start off last week late Thursday morning with my finishing packing a whole five minutes before we had planned on leaving, and continue on to a mind blowing account of a four hour drive, cutting through suburbia and desert; or if I were to be even more inclusive, I should actually start off with leaving work early Wednesday to get a hair cut and to watch TV like a mindless fool instead of packing as I had originally planned.
Either way, not exactly a thrill a minute way to start off a story, then again, the entire Vegas trip, while a much needed break, was not exactly a thrill a minute vacation either.
Not that it was meant to be. Although my instantly getting congested as soon as we drove into the haze of second hand smoke which smothers the city didn't help matters. Nor did the fact that my congestion soon turned into a full-blown cold.
Instead of mind numbing details, here are some massively disorganized highlights and factoids from the trip:
Big food: Big name chef restaurants are a big deal in Las Vegas. At Mandalay Bay alone, you could spend a butt load of money for the privilege of drinking vodka in the cold room, or spend buuco bucks to have someone mountaineer an obelisk of bottles for your wine. While I guess I could have technically afforded one such meal, I had no real desire to do so.
Not everything good food related is super expensive luckily enough, although it was hard to get overly enthused about eating at certain "name places." Eating at a Border Grill in Las Vegas isn't that big a deal, when I could have saved all the travel time and just eat at the one at home. Besides, I like Ciudad better anyway.
Um, there was a point to this, oh yeah, while most of our meals were fine/acceptable, they were also largely unexciting, although the lunch buffet at Bellagio was an exception. The food there was great. I ended up loading up with various chicken and meat dishes merely as an excuse to use the dead animal as a tasty base to pile on basil mashed potatoes. Despite not feeling very well by then, and being in the middle of losing taste buds to illness, I enjoyed the meal. Heck, even the miso soup was good. That says something I think.
The holidays: By the time we left for home late Saturday afternoon, it looked that all of the hotels and casinos had finished prepping for Chinese New Years. Displays of flower covered laughing Chinese children and rampaging monkeys filled the atrium at the Belagillo, red flags heralded the entry drive to Caesar's Palace, and the minimum bets at Pai Gow Poker tables had been raised from 5 dollars to 20 bucks and higher.
It seems that Martin Luther King Day is not a major gambling holiday, which in it's own way reassures me that not everything is wrong in the world.
The hotel: We stayed at the Golden Nugget, which turned out to be a nice hotel. I had looked at a hotel review site and the comments seemed to be fairly consistent: good hotel/sucky downtown location. Which was an accurate description.
There was also one lone wacky negative review, where the person writing it went on at length at how while the hotel being �boring and dull� was a minus for him, it was probably a bonus for all the senior citizens who stayed there. It wasn't until the second paragraph of his review that he let it slip that anyone over 35 was a senior citizen. From what I saw of the other guests in the lobby, we were all "seniors."
Oddly, I had a momentary case of heterosexuality as we checked in. A drama queen way of saying that as a boring looking man helped us at the front desk, I found myself staring at a very beautiful African American clerk/employee. I was being rude, but I just couldn't help but look at her. As we headed up to the room, we joked that the woman probably thought I was yet another lecherous married man.
Luckily, the heterosexualness didn't last long.
The shopping: It's written in the law somewhere that Californians driving to Las Vegas under penalty of pain and ridicule must stop at one of the local outlet malls and buy things they don�t necessarily need, so we did. Despite my normal lack luster attitude towards shopping, I did spend some money and now have some jockey merchandise that the husband will, assuming he knows what's good for him, reassure me that I look good in.
Besides the outlet, I also wasted an hour or so walking through the forum shops at Caesar's, but that was merely an exercise in idly passing time and not one in lighting my wallet. Not that I managed to not make any purchases. I somehow ended up leaving the place with a couple of sale books; a generic arty photo collection and nudie male collection, both for John and both from Virgin, breaking my �why bother shopping at stores I normally shop in anyway� rule.
The under endowed tourist trap: The Golden Nugget is on Fremont Street and I spent part of one of our nights walking around the street waiting for the "experience" to start. I would have better spent my time lying in bed vainly trying to fall asleep. I was still going with the insomnia and barely managed get four hours of sleep the two nights I was there. Sadly those hours were neither restful, nor contiguous. I am sleeping now, but that seems to be a disturbing side effect from the cold I am nearly over.
Anyway, I walked around the largely deserted street for a while, waiting for the midnight show to start and idly looking at groups of late 30's straight men drinking beer from large football shaped plastic containers yelling "Hey! Hey! Hey!" at a group of younger women. The women on their part ignored the witty, clever men and walked away, perhaps only slightly faster than normal.
By the time they had gotten a half block away and slowed down again, the show had started and loud electronic music was now playing and a fairly unexciting screen saver with wavy, squiggly lines was being projected onto the large overhang which covered Fremont street.
After a few minutes, it was over. Supposedly during some of the shows, there are floats and people trying to drum up excitement by throwing madi gras beads at people, but that didn't happen this time. There were no beads, only drunk tourists avoiding each other, and a cold, shivering young woman in a blond wig trying to lure men into a topless revue.
Straight, yet not: I've only to the city once before, about four years ago and for whatever reason, I didn't go to the Liberache museum. I was in an uppity mood or something. I went this time and was somewhat surprised that despite the rhinestone covered cars, the jewelry, and the outlandish costumes on display, the place is oddly straight.
I'm not sure how they managed that, but between the touring senior women talking religion and the older het couples commenting that Liberache was a pretty strong guy to be able to wear a feather and fake stone covered suit weighing a couple hundred pounds, the museum was not so much a tribute to homosexual camp as much as a memory of an oddly sexless seventies show business excess.
I may have missed it, but other than than acknowledging the cause of his death, there did not appear to be any mention of his sexuality, no explanation of who that man hovering in the background of some of the photos was, and no mention of lawsuits.
Even the gift shop was "safe." Had there been anything with a picture of Liberache dressed in his red, white, and blue hot pants outfit, I would have considered buying it, but there weren't. Instead there were mouse pads, hokey plastic pianos, and cutesy doggy things. The entire experience was slightly dissettling, or maybe the off kilter feeling was merely the cold medicine I had started taking that morning.
OK, enough of this for now. There should be a part two to this thing up here within the next few days. I just need to get the computer to accept that nipplege is real word.
more later,
nico
<<Vegas pics::::Vegas, part two>>