Friday, May 1, 2009
Breakfast at the Paris buffet. Paris’ buffet used to be one of the great breakfasts in Vegas, but it’s really come back to the pack the last couple years. I can’t put my finger on it exactly; maybe it’s just that they have “whipped spread” instead of butter, or maybe it’s that the crepe-makers don’t seem to know what they’re doing anymore, or maybe it was the horrific Eggs McBenedict thing. It’s still fine for a Vegas breakfast buffet, but nothing like what it was. A mulligan pour vous, Paris. I hope this was a blip on the radar; I’m just going to need a couple of drinks next year before we go in.
Fortunately, the wine shop next to Le Buffet makes that very possible. I went in to see if it was a decent wineshop, or a lot of overpriced slop. Surprisingly, it’s both nice and not horrifically marked-up. You know those vacuum-boxes of wine French Rabbit makes? They make them in 250ml size, too. My thought process went roughly thus:
“Hey,they have little boxes of French Rabbit. Never seen those. Boy, they look just…like…juice…boxes…how much cash do I have?”
We made, all told, maybe a half dozen of these grownup Capri-Suns — instructions are on Facebook — and they led directly to Notorious buying gold teeth.
We should have bought the big boxes, we realized, as the buzz from a quarter-liter of wine doesn’t have a lot of legs. Fortunately, there was a kiosk in Planet Hollywood selling “Mother Pucker Shooters” for a buck apiece. A Mother Pucker Shooter is half Pucker and half Everclear. The flavor options were red and green. Unable to decide between such options, we each had one of each flavor, and then went off in search of sunglasses for me.
Everclear is a strange intoxicant. You don’t get the same sharpness and shudder you get with shots of your weaker-proof liquors like whiskey or tequila. You slash it down, and you don’t feel anything odd, except sort of an astringency on the back of the palate. Then you notice a sort of spreading warm numbness radiating outward from your center. It’s interesting, because you can feel the stuff equalizing in the bloodstream, as though you were a laboratory frog injected with dye. To feel your own blood circulating is a most peculiar sensation: Half fascinating physiological study, half disquieting sense that something must be profoundly wrong for you to detect the sensation.
As long as the blood kept flowing, though, I was still going to need sunglasses. I have a number of issues in regard to buying sunglasses:
1) I like only polarized lenses.
2) I need fairly wide frames.
3) I tend to scratch glasses.
4) I prefer not to look like an insect.
5) I think $20 is a high-but-reasonable price to pay for good sunglasses.
So basically everyone bought new sunglasses but me. I tried on a pair I liked a great deal, bu they were $50, and I am not yet wealthy and famous enough for that kind of eyewear outlay.
The text I had been awaiting came in at last: Dragon was in visual contact with Las Vegas. We returned to the Hilton at great speed, and spent a couple hours in the pool, with drinks and cigars, catching up with him. Big D took a new job just about a year ago, and essentially vanished from the face of the Earth, so it was a great pleasure to catch up.
Rub at Rio for dinner. Discussion this year was not 5% as good as last year’s fetish-invention, and centered instead on speculation as to whether or not our server, after telling us she had three children, was an adoptive parent or a stinkin’ liar. We also got three baskets of the deep-fried bacon appetizer, which was not enough.
We ambled around the Rio a bit, after dinner, as Andrea wanted to catch the sky show. I thought I was aware of most things I liked, girl-wise, but black lipstick on blondes was a welcome addition to The List. Also walked with Dragon down to the winecellar below Cafe Martorano, in the space once occupied by Napa, which has a display of Chateau d’Yquem that belongs in a major museum.
We messed around at Rio a while longer, then went back to Caesar’s. There is a new Chinese restaurant, near Payard, with interior walls composed entirely of goldfish tanks. It’s the most extraordinary restaurant design I have ever seen, but it would be very difficult to order shrimp toast there.
Pastries at Payard, cigars and drinks at Casa Fuente, and another day in Vegas wrapped around two.