Casino Royale with Cheese

This picture was taken at about 6:30 in the morning on Sunday.  We had just boarded the plane to go home after staying in Vegas for the previous 40 hours.  That may not seem like a big deal to those of you for whom Las Vegas is only a couple of hours in the car, but keep in mind that we flew several hours and through a few time zones on Friday only to return to the airport early Sunday morning.

We even flew through Phoenix. (Which, by the way, is a lovely airport. Free wi-fi and everything. Although we didn’t have more than a few minutes between flights to enjoy it.)

It was a weekend of indulgence for us — we’re nearing ten years of marriage and wanted to go someplace special which could bring us physically and emotionally far away from where we were. We were leaving the five-year old with his grandfather for the weekend — a first for us, as we hadn’t been away from him (both of us at the same time, at least) for a weekend ever before.  And we had frequent flyer miles to spend — especially since we didn’t know how long they’d actually be worth anything.  So — if we’re going to go, might as well go in style, right? First class!  Not something we had done before, and not something we were likely to do in a long time. And if we’re going to fly first class, a connecting flight really isn’t such a bad thing.

Las Vegas was awesome — a virtual oasis of … well, it was an oasis. Like most other tourists, we didn’t see anything aside from the Strip. In fact, the picture above really encompasses it well:  Just a bunch of magnificent buildings you can see from the runway at McCarran.  I’m sure there’s a lot more Las Vegas has to offer than that. But hey — forty hours!  Let’s concentrate on these six blocks…

Amazingly, we had a great time — even though we didn’t do many of the things that Sin City is known for.  In a place where pretty much anything and everything is legal and encouraged, we abstained from quite a bit:

* Neither of us gambled a single cent this time around.
* Neither of us enjoyed a cocktail of any sort.  In fact, the only alcohol we had was beer. A bottle for each of us. Light beer. Domestic.
* We didn’t attend any stage shows which featured nudity of any kind — pole or no pole.
* We didn’t eat at any all-you-can-eat buffets.
* We did not engage in any group sexual activity involving five or more people.

I know, I know. It seems rather prudish of us. But we still managed to enjoy ourselves. And although we didn’t gamble, we came out well ahead of where we thought we’d be.

A few thoughts about Las Vegas which, by the way, is Spanish for The Vegas:

(1) There is always an opportunity to gamble. We didn’t even get off the plane before we saw our first bit of excitement: the flight crew announced that the seatbelt light would go off when we stopped, but that they requested that we all stay in our seats for just a few moments as some airline personnel boarded. We thought that this might have been due to a passenger who may have been sick who needed to get off the plane first; we’ve seen this happen on flights before. But no — the door opened and two LVPD officers got on the plane and moved towards the back.  Since we were in first class (I love saying that!) we couldn’t see what was going on, but eventually they came back up from saying “Nope, that’s not him.”  Oh well — Welcome to Vegas!

As soon as you enter the airport terminal you’ve got slot machines.  Loads of them. Flashing. Ringing. The artificial sound of coins rushing down a non-existent slot which has since been replaced by a ticket dispenser. I can understand why people get addicted to them — the notion that there’s a jackpot just in reach which could change one’s life.  The concept that others are winning; why shouldn’t you win, too?

And even if you don’t play the slots? You can do what we did — and gamble with the ground transportation to the Strip.  We decided arbitrarily on one of the shuttle bus services (all of which charged $6.50 one way and $12.00 round-trip to the Strip hotels). We happened to pick the slowest one — which took upwards of 30 minutes for a shuttle to arrive and another 25 minutes for it to leave for the hotel.  (In our case, Bally’s — right at the center of the south side of the Strip.)

… which put us into a long line at the hotel lobby at around 5pm. On a Friday. When everyone else was checking in. We waited behind a bunch of biker enthusiasts from Italy who knew very little English. When we arrived to the check-in desk, we were given some news: our room wasn’t ready yet.

But we could take a bit of a gamble! We were told we could upgrade our room to a suite for $25 more a night — and it would be ready.  We decided we might as well. After all, it was a special occassion…

We got up there and couldn’t get in our room. The card key wouldn’t work.

Then came a good forty-five minute ordeal which involved hotel security, the front desk, the manager’s office and a guy who had checked out of the adjoining room but was still in there. Since the rooms connected, our room had been deadbolted. But they were going to leave! Eventually.

Whatever. I asked for a new room/suite; we got one three floors below.  Once we were in and had our keys it was already close to 7pm. We had been traveling for 12 hours at that point and were just looking for a place where we could shower.

I called the manager’s office again and expressed my concerns. And I asked that the upgrade fee for the suite be waived. Twenty-five bucks times two nights.  The manager-on-duty quickly made it so. Not bad — a bit of inconvenience, but a room at a suite rate!  Things were looking up.

(2) Nerds rule the world — and Las Vegas. We booked our trip because of the time we had available to us as well as the time my father could take Avi for the weekend.  So we had no idea what stuff was going on in Vegas that weekend. All we knew was that we wanted to see Cirque du Soleil’s Love, their show set to Beatles mashups.  And for Friday night? We could see Penn and Teller again, perhaps, but it wasn’t in stone.

And then I randomly stumbled upon something when going online to the website of one of my favorite podcasts, coverville.com: Apparently, in celebration of the 500th episode of the podcast, host Brian Ibbot put together a Coverville 500 Cover Party! (with an exorbitant cover charge — but there were some nice donated prizes.)  And it was going to be not only on the weekend we were in town, but at our hotel!

Only later did I realize that it was a party associated with that week’s New Media Expo — which had a lot of folks from the blogosphere, the podcastosphere and other facets of new media (mediasphere?).  Oh — and people in Star Trek costumes. Conventions seem to bring them out in full force, apparently. I can’t imagine a conference of chancellors of rabbinical schools continent-wide without at least one Ferengi in attendance asking about Semicha...

(True story: while we were waiting for hotel security to figure out what they were going to do in the room mixup, we overheard an announcement on their radios — a warning of sorts that an event would be occurring downstairs. And to watch out for people dressed in Star Trek uniforms. Them folks can be dangerous!)

But anyway — the New Media Expo sounded like something fun to do if we had time to kill on Saturday. And there were a few people in town I knew whom I could chase around and possibly see.  No matter, though —  we had a Coverville party on Friday night! Which began at… 7:00!  Quite early for Vegas…

The crowd was pretty much what I expected — bloggers, podcasters and significant others.  Some folks were making conversation at the tables scattered about the room. Some were rapidly Twittering messages every thirty seconds. Others were snapping pictures and video. And almost all were drinking overpriced beverages.

There were several acts that evening. Let’s just say that the show went on for five hours,  The two highlights were software engineer turned singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton, and final act Richard Cheese and Lounge against the Machine.

Coulton was great, starting out with his cover of Baby Got Back (which I placed on my list of top cover songs of all time).  The guy simply connected and blew everyone away. Some of the favorites were played, such as Code Monkey and Your Brains. In fact, there’s video of Your Brains taken from last Friday:

(Direct YouTube Link)

Kind of gives more of an idea as to the crowd, hmm?

Oh — if you look closely around 4:36 of the video at the right side of the screen, you’ll see socKs and me! I’m wearing what looks like a cream color short sleve shirt but is totally washed out by the yellow light, and socKs is right next to me wearing the green shirt.  We didn’t rush the stage like some of the other folks. Perhaps that was a good thing.

Although it isn’t the best ettiquette, we snuck out for dinner during the next act, Chance and the Choir.  But we came back in time for the headliner, Richard Cheese with two thirds of Lounge Against the Machine.  He’s been pretty adamant about not allowing unauthorized pictures or video being posted on the net, but you can hear most of his stuff and even see a clip or two with the proper search terms.  The guy was hillarious.  He came out into the audience many a time and had us all laughing hysterically.  Sadly, Mr. Cheese will be retiring in mid-2009; I hope we get the opportunity to see him live once more.

All in all – a wonderful evening. Cheaper than Penn and Teller tickets. Got to meet a few folks as well. We were exhausted afterwards and went to bed way before 1am.  Yes, in Vegas.

Tune in Tomorrow: and find out how we were literally given free cash for selling our bodies and souls to the devil!