9am. The team assembles at what would later become our loitering delinquent area and departs for breakfast at Bouchon.
Bouchon’s breakfasts are simultaneously hilarious and majestic. There’s a “gratin of the day”, yes. But they also do a “Breakfast Americaine”: Bacon, sausage, eggs, pancakes. It’s the Grand Slam you would find in a Denny’s from heaven.
Digression III
(Good luck getting this bad bitch out of your head:
Every time it rains it rains
Denny’s from heaven.
Don’t you know each cloud contains
Denny’s from heaven.)
End Digression
Walking from the Flamingo to the Venetian, one passes a handful of small, low-rent casinos. One of them, Casino Royale, had a big sign out front. “$1 Michelob Ultras”. All righty then. It’s well after 9am. Eight please. Yes, we’re turning back the clock. A toast to the fallen, winces all around, and we resume the procession to breakfast.
I’ve described Bouchon in detail before, so we’ll stroll right into the Venetian for the postmeal constitutional.
One of the newer traditions among the girl persons on these trips is to go into the kind of store that attracts the third wives of major CEOs and try on clothes and shoes that cost more than I used to think clothes and shoes could cost. Luna put on something pink that fit like masking tape ($1050) and $395 worth of shoes, then enabled the same thing in 21. Except the dress was $1400. There was some consternation over the aggressive changing-room assistance from the Person of Sales until it became clear that his interest in the girls was entirely aesthetic. The man was playing with Barbies.
It had been nearly ninety minutes since we’d had a drink, so someone engineered our meanderings to pass Double Helix. Placing a very good bar thoughtfully among the expensive frooferies, is a practice of which Woodfield might make note. Some of us relaxed with drinks while others went shopping.
Right around the corner from Double Helix is one of the Sushi Samba chain.
The floating rep company spans the spectrum of food adventurousness, from those who find fish wildly exotic to those who would jump off a bridge if Tony Bourdain said to. This in mind, I stopped off at Samba to see if they had sawagani that day. They did. Excellent.
Sawagani are tiny Japanese crabs, flash fried and eaten whole. They are delicious, but to eat the first one takes some guts. It looks like a tiny red tarantula, and as you prepare to piehole your inaugural critter, you can almostfeel the little guy springing to life on your tongue. The imagined sensation is not unlike a mouthful of pinchy Pop-Rocks. The expression on Vacation Wife’s face in the Facebook album is delightful.
Me (texting Luna and Patti the Mayor): Donde esta?
Patti the Mayor: I can’t decide if I want a top hat. It’s $80 but adorable.
Me (texting the Arbiter): Does Patti the Mayor buy a top hat? Pros: Hot. Cons: $80
The Arbiter: Legal feels a top hat is an essential part of a complete wardrobe. Approved.
Me: 10-4
Me (to Patti the Mayor): Arbiter rules in favor of hat.
Elapsed decision time: 2.3 minutes. Two years ago this decision would have loomed over the trip for at least a day. I will be assigning an arbiter to every event of greater than six people for the rest of my life.
Following the top hat and crabs, the girls went to Sephora, and the guys meandered back toward the Flamingo with the vague intention of smoking cigars.
Until we met the midget.
The midget was standing out in front of O’Shea’s. (A casino name that always makes me laugh, because every time I walk by the marquee, I hear the beginning of “Doing Dumb Shit” in my head: “O’Shea! O’SHEA! Getcho ass in here, boy! You hear me callin’ you? O’SHEA!”) Furthermore, the midget had a Mr. Microphone, and was urging us to come in for “$2 Guinnesses and $3 Irish carbombs”.
Twist my arm.
Like baseball, Vegas has a lot of unwritten rules. An unspoken Code of behavior, you know? This trip I might have tried to suss it out a little more than in the past, in an effort to get the team back on track. And one of the unwritten rules is “Promotionally discounted drinks must be ordered two at a time.” I think seven of us ordered eight Guinnesses and twelve ICBs.
Me: En route back. Meet you by Flamingos. Want an Irish carbomb?
AD: Of course.
So we’re all sitting out in the sun, by the flamingos — the Flamingo has actual pink flamingos in the courtyard — smoking cigars and drinking Guinness. Delightful.
Me: Cigars by flamingos.
Luna: Me and Patti the Mayor and the Hydrogeologist on way.
Me: What drinks?
Luna: ML for Patti the Mayor, ’something fruity’ for the Hydrogeologist, surprise me.
Miller Lite, Mai Tai, Goldschlager rocks, coming up.
One-thirty rolled around. We decided we needed sandwiches and bassoons.
Digression IV
For the uninitiated: “Bassoons” are those three-foot plastic glasses generally filled with frozen drinks. They were so named after I saw a friend buy one that came with a strap by which you could hang it around your neck, to sip hands-free. She drank three of them that day, filled with raspberry beer. (She had a baby suspiciously close to nine months later. Do not trifle with bassoons.)
End Digression
Everybody trooped off to Planet Hollywood. I had placed a bet on The Oaks for bondgirl, so on the way Big Man, Patti the Mayor, and I peeled off to Paris to watch the race. We realized that 21 had never bet on a race before, and that was something that needed attention. Ten minutes before the Kentucky Derby is not the time you want to walk up to the window at Caesar’s with a twenty and say, “Um, here. This on the grey horse.” So we walked into the Paris book, translated the bet — $10 on Quiet Anger, who ran like a three-legged goat — and watched the race. We got drink tickets out of the bets, of course. Good drink tickets, at the Paris Book. We transmuted them into a tequila and tonic for 21 and a bottle of Fat Tire for me. The TNT went over so well 21 kept the glass in her purse for three days.
Many of you are familiar with the guys aggressively handing out hooker-ads on the strip; the “pornslappers”. 21 wasn’t,and didn’t want to be rude, and wound up basically with a deck. Turns out you can play a hell of a game of Go Fish with those. I mention this only because there is a FANTASTIC shot of this game on Facebook.
We regrouped at the Bassoonery. Note to Self: Not a place you want to arrive drunk. We ordered bassoons — well, everybody but me did. I ordered a dozen Mother Pucker Tooters. Dollar apiece for test tube shots made of, I believe, kerosene and Dimetapp. The first two were rough.
No, I didn’t drink them all. Even I wouldn’t do that.
There were twelve of us. We had a toast. To what I have no idea, but it was long and eloquent. I’m sure. Whatever was said, it moved 21 to go buy a plastic guitar filled with something that tasted like homebrew hooch made in a country whose major agricultural staple is Dreamsicles. This was a SERIOUS beverage. By this point, we were past the point of drunk. I had a tiny headache over my left eye, something I attributed to the prior five hours’ consumption of the Michelob Ultra / Champagne / Champagne / Guinness / Guinness / Carbomb / Carbomb / Miller Lite / Double espresso / Fat Tire / Tooter / Tooter / Tooter combination.
And when you are a little headachy and a lot drunk and it’s 230pm and you’re in Las Vegas and the sun is a physical force on your head, well, as my Grammy used to say, it’s time to go see an Elvis impersonator the size of a Volkswagon Beetle.
Big Elvis has a regular gig at Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall. (Formerly the Barbary Coast.) Big E does an all-request show the way DJs on B96 do all-request shows: He shouts out “Anybody got any requests?” and then waits, sometimes for an uncomfortable length of time amid a dwindling number of shouted titles, for a song he was prepared to sing already. It’s a nice show, partially because he is exceptionally talented and partly because you cannot help but enjoy the show all the more with heightened senses, since you are forced, however nice a person you are, to conclude there is at least a ten percent chance that each show could be his last,and you are prepared the whole time to rush to his aid. He doesn’t move much, which helps — think “Elvis the Hutt” — but when he does there is a lot of man in motion. We also concluded there was at least some chance that Big Elvis is in fact Real Elvis, post-faking his own death, fulfilling a small-town southern boy’s dream of getting humongous and singing in a casino.
And that, my friends, was not sarcasm. It was magical. You do not merely watch the Big Elvis revue, you savor it. I am afraid, to paraphrase Jimmy Kimmel, that Big Elvis is someone we will miss very much very soon.
My head still hurt, but through the crappiest times of suffering crappy jobs for crappy pay in crappy weather, Patti the Mayor and I have clung to images to get through. February and March are a sad dead zone, generally, basically from the day after the Super Bowl Party until we break the back of winter. I have – well, had – the prospect of the freelance gig with The Onion and my daily joke-writing to cling to. Patti the Mayor had Sunset Cocktails At The Stratosphere. Not missing that.
So my mild headache and I ate a handful of pills — two aspirin two Advil half a xanax and what I think may have been a Tic-Tac that I took in the hopes it wasn’t – and chased them with one of the ten best discoveries of the year, a Starbucks short redeye. We jumped in cabs with those interested in looking at the Strat, the sunset, or the World’s Greatest Photographer.
We got out at the landing pad of the Strat’s newest ride, a zipline that allows you to freefall from the top of the tower – that’s the 109th floor – right into the taxi line. I don’t know what the Strat calls the ride; I will forever call it “The Pantscrapper”. Dear god.
As we looked up the cables, idly wondering why they were shaking like that, a jumpsuited person came screaming down the lines – literally – and bungee-braked on the pad. Notorious and I discussed the suit at some length, and concluded that the only possible reason for wearing this jumpsuit on this ride is that it is woven from a special titanium, and the purpose is not lookin’ sporty, but containing the abruptly-transformed organic slurry within in the event of an equipment failure.
(I started to write “serious equipment failure”, but when you’re clipping a carabiner to a thousand feet of vertical aircraft cable and jumping off a skyscraper, there is very little that constitutes a “minor” equipment failure.)
We had a few drinks atop the Strat, took some pictures on the Observation Deck – clear night, thank you Jesus – and decided to go to the Wynn buffet for dinner. So we got in the elevator for the long, fast ride back down to the ground floor.
And that’s when my headache burst.
One minute I was bounding up and down enjoying the weightlessness, the next minute I knew what the last nanosecond of life felt like for John F. Kennedy. I was just talking happily, minding my own business, thinking about eating crab legs, and my left sinus frontalis hosted a tiny supernova. The pain was really just breathtaking. I clearly remember dismissing the possibility that I had had a stroke based entirely on the fact that I was walking.
We got to the Wynn – I have no memory of this - and I took a couple tries to find the buffet. Which should give you some idea. I got disoriented 1) in a casino, 2) looking for the buffet. That’s never happened in my life.
We found the buffet, and while we waited for the group to assemble -
DO NOT READ THIS PARAGRAPH
- I went off to the bathroom with the idea of throwing some cold water on my face. I had some clogginess in my throat, too, up behind my upper palate, and I wanted to clear that. You have to be 100% for dinner at the Wynn. So I did that kind of throat-clearing suction-thing one does with a clotty throat. Which produced something roughly the size of a double-A battery that looked like a picture you might find in a Sci-Fi wildlife magazine. “Save the Klingon Blood-Slug” or something. Horrendous. And insult to injury: The Blood-Slug had apparently been blocking some prodigious sinus output for a while, because there was some major drainage going on. Great. I thought about going back to my room to lie down, and possibly die.
Digression V
Wednesday, June 11, 1997
“The Flu Game”
Jordan woke up nauseated and sweating profusely. He hardly had the strength to sit up in bed and was diagnosed with a stomach virus or food poisoning. Bulls trainers told Jordan that there was no way he could play.
But Chicago needed their leader in this crucial swing game.
Jordan was visibly weak and pale as he stepped onto the court for Game Five. Luc Longley and Scottie Pippen did their best to keep the Bulls in the game. But Jordan turned it on late, including swishing a three to put the Bulls up for good with thirty seconds left.
Jordan finished the game with 38 points, including an impressive putback dunk, seven rebounds, five assists, three steals and one block. Jordan stayed on the court for 44 minutes, resting for only four minutes while being perpetually at the brink of fainting. With only a few seconds remaining and the game finally in hand, Jordan collapsed.
End Digression
But not at the Wynn.
Not today.
I went back to the buffet, grabbed a piece of sushi, and frosted it with a lump of wasabi the size of a golf ball. Sat down at the table, ordered a Diet Coke, and swallowed Dr. Al’s Patented No-Fail Faucet-Flo Sinus Drainage System.
Whole.
Holy jesus god. Imagine chasing a shot of gasoline with a cigarette.
But it worked. I was breathing fine and I could taste. For now. How much time I had was anyone’s guess.
Got to go to work.
My memories of the buffet are hazy. I remember clinking plates with Annie D, which was a majestic idea I am STAGGERED we never thought of before. I remember Notorious discussing plans for Red Rock Canyon. I remember crab legs and pizza and an “Italian Pierogi” and tagliatelle with rabbit and octopus ceviche and sushi and shu mai and lambchops. I remember the Texan asking if we thought they’d just give him a whole rack of lamb, an idea that devolved quickly into imagining him snatching it from the carving station and running like the family dog, while cooks chased him with brooms, shouting “NO! Bad! Give it! Giiiiiive iiiiiiit….” while he gnawed the chops and snarled at them from under the table. I remember dessert, vaguely.
If not for the plate porn on Facebook, I would not remember any of the food after the wasabi. (Okay, maybe the rabbit.) But I did it justice. That’s the important thing. I did it justice.
I got into a cab on autopilot, went back to the Flamingo, and collapsed into bed around 11. The rest of the team…I have no idea.