New Year's, Vegas Style: A Victim's Story
or
NO FEAR, JUST LOATHING
Being on what might be described
optimistically as a
shoestring budget, we
parked our car at the
one end of the
Strip. We were giddy. We had a
babysitter. Whatever.
We threw a few nickels away in the slot
machines at
the
B-line for Circus Circus. Personally, and naively, I
expected something
like the scene I remember from Fear
& Loathing, where midgets and rabid
badgers make up a
small, but
significant contigency in the whole
ramalamadingdong
shindig party scene. Wake-up call
for my fellow
lame-asses: Circus Circus is Chucky
Cheese with gambling. And good luck finding a bar -
they had to put them
way out of the way for the sake
of all the Vietnamese
children playing Skee-ball.
Speaking of alcohol. Dear friend, a quarter of a
million people on the
Strip means YOU DON'T GET
COMPED. Sure, if you buy one of the casino cards and
sit at a machine for
several hours, maybe. Or if you
can fight your way to
a card table with a minimum bet
less than $100, good
luck. We decided, at any rate,
to blow our wad on
something concrete, so we had a
very nice meal at a
restaurant in the Venetian, where
(unless it happens to
be New Year's Eve) you can enjoy
a gondola ride
through the casino/hotel complex. We
had some alcohol and
stumbled for the exit and found
ourselves in a crowd
around a stage where Sugar Ray
was pumping out the
jams. Lame like partying with
Microsoft tech guys. The Stones were supposed to play
at some unforeseeable
time later in the evening, but
we got tired of being
jostled and groped by the
Vietnamese-Mexican mafia, so we fought our way
back to
the strip and found
ourselves at the Bellagio.
You know the gimmick with the Bellagio is the
dancing
water fountain music
extravaganza. If you don't know,
you can look it
up. What you might not know is that
there's music that
goes along with the water show.
Celine Dion.
Then we went to the
away some more
nickels. Oh yeah, here's a word to the
not-so-wise: If you show up in Vegas with a pocketful
of dimes, you ain't
doing shit, because they won't
change 'em and the
slot machines won't take 'em.
drink. Whaddevah.
On towards
accosted by some
short stumpy Asian lad talking like a
from-the-hood
negro. Yo, dog, my man was wai'in in
line a long time,
yo. Yo, yo, DOG. DOG, yo.
I
suppose I'm pee-shy,
but Mr. Softy can't evacuate when
there are culturally
confused cretins shouting at the
back of my head. Solid.
Then we tried to get back up the strip to the
parking
garage of the
at the
fireworks. This turned out to be easier
said
than done. Let me drop the numbers down at cha:
250,000 drunken bastards - 4.5 MILES back to
the
almost an hour to get
half the way there even after
leaving the Strip and
trying a side street. In the
end we gave up and
sat down on a curb and watched the
fireworks spew from
the tops of the major hotel
casinos. Synchronized. Pablum.
Mass exodus to the end of
the Strip. No, a death
march. Minor puking. Small drunk people blowing
horns. Miscellaneous wet patches
on the sidewalk.
So my advice to you is:
-if you are looking for a gritty, hard-edged
sintastic
time, bring a hell of
a lot of cash and maybe try
another city
altogether
-if you're looking for joyous coming together
of New
Year's revelers to ring in the New Year, bring
a hell
of a lot of cash and
maybe try another city altogether
Chucky Cheese and I don't win when I gamble,
so I
don't enjoy it,
either. Go figure.
So there it is, the
entire ejaculatum. No punch line,
no moral, no actor in
repose, just a whole lotta
asshats. Hail Satan and to all a good night.
-Rev. Hoek.