Nipples, IPads, and Foreign Relations (Vegas, Part 2)

When we last saw our intrepid hero, he was being summarily kicked out of a Bass Pro Shop for having friends who are just shy of being legally retarded.  This also meant that I now had to make good on the long-delayed promise to take the womenfolk somewhere for wine and horse dervies (I’m sorry, that’s hors d’oeuvres to you uppity, pinky finger sipping, civilized types).  Still playing the odds, the trick was to find someplace that had good wine, yet still had a decent beer selection and horse dervies that a Man could actually eat in public without the need for gender re-assignment surgery.

A quick search of Yelp and we arrived at Mandalay Bay and the restaurant, Aureole.  Aureole, which is French for “nipple” I believe, has this ginormous wine tower that women on ropes swing through to get the wine you order.  It's a fascinating sight, actually and would be better if the women were naked.  But I digress. There has to be several thousand bottles of fine wine in that damn thing, and rest assured, after the Bass Pro Shop debacle, the ladies tried to drink every damn on of them.  The servers were very nice (at least they kept laughing when we asked them where the box wine tower was), and it was nice without being overly pretentious.  We were dressed in jeans and they didn’t seat us in a closet, so I give them props for that. 

They also had the class not to ask us, “Do you think you can really afford that?” as the bill soared past the national debt of Paraguay, though I could have sworn I saw the wait staff massing at the exit with large, blunt objects towards the end there.  But still, classy…

We had some kind of tasting menu, which was pretty good.  One of the dishes was called “Beef Three Ways” which the males at the table found seriously fucking hilarious.  The jokes from that one lasted the whole trip.  There was also a dessert called “Salted Caramel Nut Tart” which pushed us over the edge again.  Even some of the ladies had to admit that the Three Way of Beef complemented the Salted Caramel Nut Tart.

Still can’t write that with a straight face…

We left after a long while, having spent much more money than we had intended.  So much in fact, that the consensus decision was to grab some dinner at Sonic Drive In and head back to the hotel for gambling and other frivolity.  This was the night that I met the Biggest Dumbass, Taint Licking, Crotch Sniffing, Donkey Humping, Shitbird in the Western United States.  For two hours, this douchenugget proceeded to bet No Pass ($700 bucks a roll), against himself mind you, and just suck the fucking life out of everyone’s night.  If we moved tables, and things got hot; here’s fuckass moping along to the table to spread his bad mojo. 

You may recall that in an earlier post, I had made a promise to punch such an asshat in the ovaries.  However, SOMEONE read that before we left and made me promise not to, at risk of losing something THAT I REALLY LIKE TO DO.  A LOT.  So needless to say I was reluctant to act on my earlier threat.  But after two hours of this dickless superfart following us around, I was ready to buy myself a case of Vaseline and a Hustler subscription and just get this shit over with.  Luckily, God heard my little mental plan, and since he does not condone people jacking their own beanstalks, intervened in the form of a crotchety old fucker with a walker who was just as sick of the No Pass guy as I was.  Captain Depends turned to the guy and basically threatened to insert the business end of his walker into No Pass guy’s anal cavity sans lubrication.  And he said it fucking loudly too.

No Pass guy was stuck between the proverbial rock and a guy who couldn’t get a hard on.  You could see the scenarios playing through his little weasel mind:

Option A – Tell Cocoon to go fuck himself and look like a dick to a table full of people who really want to beat the shit out of you and are just LOOKING FOR A FUCKING REASON;

Option B – Tell the Golden Guy to eat shit, then punch him square in his geriatric face, hoping like hell that your pussy ass can whip a 107 year old man; or

Option C – Get the fuck out of Dodge, realizing that no one, not the Casino workers, not the gamblers, and not even the homeless guy out on the street would lift a finger to help you if Abe Vigoda here made good on his promise to stick the very large foreign object he was carrying up your ass.

Needless to say, he ran like a bitch.  Old Fart 1, Dickhead 0.

We were allowed to get up at a decent hour the next morning because of our wine bar mea culpa the night before.  Good thing too, ‘cause I had the Old Guy’s number from the night before and he wasn’t going to be tolerating any fucking shenanigans from some skirt.  At least that’s what I think he said, we got a little drunk helping him finish all the drinks people bought him after he went Rambo on that weasel at the crap table.  In retrospect, the Old Guy may have been a little senile, because the phone number he gave me was KLONDIKE 3-2478.

I was drinking with goddamn Sam Spade, which explains why he kept asking where he parked his jalopy, the crazy old fart…

Shenanigans carefully avoided, the rest of the day was spent…wait for it…that’s right, shopping.  Knowing I couldn’t pull another Silverton on them, we parked ourselves at a small bar at the Miracle Mile Shopping Mall while money was spent at an obscene pace.  You have not lived until you have caught a buzz in a shopping mall, my friends.  Soon, we were collected by the ladies and hauled off to the Fashion Show Mall, which didn’t have a bar per se, but did have restaurants that made the proper decision to serve alcohol.  Unfortunately for my bank account, said restaurant was right across from the only Apple Store in Las Vegas.  I will spare you the exact details, but I bought an IPad from a nice looking young lady who may or may not have had the actual power of speech.  Hell, she may not have even had a mouth.  Not that she needed it…

I say may not because I believe I never looked her in the eye.  My eyes were caught at a decidedly lower trajectory and BY GOD THEY WERE MAGNIFICENT!!  I felt like such a fucking perv, I was obligated to buy the damn thing.  Of course I was sophisticated and suave fucking perv, so I still had that shit ON LOCK, BABY!!

Until my credit card was declined.

Apparently, my credit card company (who shall remain nameless but starts with a V and ends with an A) chose this particular moment to START GIVING A SHIT.  All of a sudden they were concerned with the charges being made in another state and had frozen my account until their security people could talk to me.  They couldn’t have developed a fucking conscience yesterday when I spent two hundred dollars on shirts that some fat guy sold me?  No embarrass me in front of the hot girl who gets an employee discount at the Apple Store, why don’t you?

Dicks.

After three transferred phone calls and the look of faded, disappointed love in the eyes of my Apple Girl, they confirmed that it was in fact me that was spending my hard earned money.  Because, like everything else, credit card customer service has been outsourced to a certain country that worships cows, I also had to spend an extra half an hour explaining the confusing concepts of vacations AND Las Vegas.  I think she understood what a vacation was (“Oh, you mean a holiday?”), but Las Vegas completely baffled her delicate Hindu sensibilities (“I’m going to eat at Lawry’s tonight where they cook a whole fucking cow and wheel it to your table in a big silver cart of sin!!” – fucking serves her right for embarrassing me). 

So just to recap, I was losing my buzz, owned an IPad I didn’t really need or want, and was antagonizing Hindu women over the phone.  Something had gone very wrong with this day…

Only one thing can make a Man feel better after a day like that.  40 ounces of medium rare cow.  Light a candle, Lawry’s.  Daddy’s coming home…

Fear and Loathing at Bass Pro Shop

So, Vegas turned out to be…a mixed bag of sorts.  For the most part, things went well and as planned.  But there was just enough bizarre shit going on to leave the experience with the taint of crappiness and awesomeness not experienced.  That’s needlessly confusing, so it’s better if I explain…

I flew on one of those new Airbus 330’s.  There was noticeably more legroom, which of course translates to more room between rows.  Not having to smell the shampoo (or lack thereof) of the mouth breather in front of me was a refreshing change, as was the absence of the requisite seat back jamming in to my knees as they reclined to a full 180 degrees.  They also have individual monitors in the seats for everyone, which at first blush seemed really cool.  It seemed less so when it became readily apparent that this had become an excuse for NOT SHOWING A FUCKING MOVIE on the flight.  I was really pissed at that because the airline magazine said they were showing the latest Harry Potter flick that I hadn’t seen.   They didn’t even have the balls to announce it; we had to ask.  Apparently, the Airbus 330 equals no free movie for Big Daddy, but I was free to use my credit card to PAY to watch the movies on that little fucking monitor that I was now growing to despise.

Guess the 25 dollars they charged me for the privilege of bringing luggage wasn’t enough. 

Fuckers.

Arrival in Las Vegas was uneventful.  The cold was welcome and luggage/shuttle/rent a car all went very smoothly.  We tried a new hotel this time around because they offered to comp the rooms for our party.  While I would love to say that they did so for the pleasure of our warm company, they really wanted a crack at the obscene amount of gambling we do.  It seems they did the math, and free rooms, food, and booze for us is worth the money they win from us.  If you ask me, someone forgot to carry a three or something, because in my opinion, it wasn’t even close.  Don’t get me wrong, we are not high rollers by any stretch of the imagination; and this wasn’t the Bellagio we’re talking about here.  But it was a nice property, and it seemed to me that they came out on the losing end of the deal.  At least I did my best to make sure they came out on the minus side of the ledger.  But I’m just a guy who drinks too much, not an accountant…

On a side note, by this time I was fucking OBSESSED with seeing that damn Harry Potter movie, something I hadn’t given three seconds thought to, prior to getting on the damn plane.  Don’t want to show me the movie, FUCK YOU!  I’ll watch the damn thing on my own.  That’ll show you that I am not a man to be trifled with!

It sucked by the way.  And the hotel charged me $12.99.  Apparently the only thing that wasn’t free were the movies.  Now I don’t feel bad about those six bottles of shampoo…

After checking in, we decided to grab a bite to eat before heading to the table for the Inaugural Rolling of the Dice.  Not feeling the least bit guilty about ordering a Mushroom Swiss Burger at 1:00am, we tucked in to our food like super models after a colon cleanse.  The female contingent of our party was actually embarrassed at our gastronomic display, and elected to change tables, hectored by a chorus of male voices (ours) yelling, “Good, beat it!!  Your loss, honeycakes!!  Don’t come around later begging for shopping money, toots!!”

An hour in Nevada and we had already managed to get ourselves in trouble with the lady folk.   And we weren’t even drunk yet. We would come to regret those words over the next few days.  There’s something about a group of men bonding over charred flesh and alcohol that ends to bring out such bravado.   It also apparently brings out the 1920’s gangster in us, because somebody actually used the term, “toots”.  The fact that we didn’t sleep alone over the next four days was is a testament to the charity of the women in our lives.  We are very lucky.

But I’ll fucking deny it if you tell anyone I said that…

After going to bed at 4am, the first taste of sweet female revenge arrived when we were roused at the ungodly hour of 7am.  Being a man awakened by a beautiful woman, I awoke sporting an impressive…hangover.  Protests ignored, we were hustled off to breakfast and the start of the LONGEST SHOPPING TRIP EVER.  I do not think I am exaggerating when I say there may have been a Western States Shopping Record set.  I fully expect to receive a letter of commendation from the Governor of Nevada for our group’s contribution to the coffers of the state.  The ladies were actually being high-fived by grateful store clerks as we exited shopping malls, and at the Outlets in Primm, they were actually carried through the food court by ten large, swarthy men wearing loincloths.  I think I actually gained ten pounds of muscle just carrying Ann Taylor shopping bags.  How many silk tops does a person need?

Payback is indeed a bitch.

But as dinner approached, shopping fatigue caused the Retail Brigade to commit their first tactical error.  I suggested we stop at nearby Silverton Casino for “some wine and appetizers before dinner”.  The ladies, apparently full of excise tax induced hubris, readily agreed, even congratulating me for the “wonderful suggestion” I had proposed.  If you have never been to the Silverton Casino, there is nothing in the last few sentences to cause any suspicion or raise any red flags, right?  If you HAVE been to the Silverton Casino, you will know that it is also home to this:

Redneck Disneyland.  For the next several hours, fuming women plotted our slow and painful deaths as grown ass men cavorted in a two story, 165,000 sq. foot Man Cave, replete with speedboats, grills, fishing gear, dried animals of every sort, crossbows, knives, ammunition, guns, and other implements of destruction.  I bought a squirrel hat.  Why?  BECAUSE THEY FUCKING HAD ONE MY SIZE.  This place had everything.  Fishing rod? Yes.  Bowie Knife? You betcha. Toilet seat shaped like a bass’s mouth? 10 of ‘em. Tactical Stealth Night Vision Capable 20 Shot Capacity Stapler? ON SALE. More tools of death than a Postal Worker’s Convention? Maybe not.  BUT IT WAS DAMN CLOSE.  We shot crossbows, compound bows, and long bows.  They kind of looked at me funny when I asked if they had any sticks of dynamite so I could tie it to the arrow shaft, like they used to do in the “Dukes of Hazzard”.  There being no explosives, we just contented ourselves calling the range masters Uncle Jesse and Cooter, and yelling “Yeeeeehawww” at the top of our lungs every time we let an arrow loose.

Next we went over to the gun range to shoot shit for a while.  In retrospect, this was an exceedingly bad idea.  Almost immediately one of us was kicked off the range for waving his gun around and doing his best Wyatt Earp impression from “Tombstone”.   It was pretty good, but I’ve always been a Doc Holliday-I’m-your-huckleberry-kind-of-guy myself.  So we started capping off rounds wildly, aiming in the general direction of some paper silhouette targets that had been set up for us.  As I was yelling, “Johnny Ringo, You’re no daisy!!!” I heard a loud shout to my right.  I looked in that direction in time to see one of us falling to the ground, flailing wildly as he fell. 

Putting the Smith and Wesson 4506 on safe and laying it on the bench, I dashed over to Rick who was still flailing on the ground, his face contorted as if in pain.  I reached his side just as the range master did, pointing and yelling at our other friend to call 911.  As we began to assess Rick for injuries, I looked at his face and saw him smiling.  I suddenly recognized that he was laughing hysterically as he pulled his right hand from behind his back to show me a 9mm brass shell casing that he had fished out from down his shirt.  John, who had been sent to call 911, looked at the 9mm Glock 17 still in his hand and back at the shell casing Rick was holding.  We all realized what had happened – the white hot shell casing from John’s Glock had been ejected and flown four feet to land down the back of Rick’s shirt, causing him to scream in pain while flailing to fish the damn thing out.  He lost balance like the uncoordinated spaz that he is, and fell ass over teakettle to the range floor, dropping the Smith and Wesson 686 revolver he had been shooting in the process.

More than somewhat relieved that everyone was safe, we all began to laugh uncontrollably at the absurdity of the incident.  Everyone except the range master, who didn’t quite share the same sense of humor we all did.  He got REALLY pissy, and began to shout as if someone had violated his prized Belgian Malinois on the kitchen table during Christmas dinner.  As his beet red face sputtered on and on about how we had scared the life out of him and should never be allowed to handle firearms ever again, I began to realize that he was in full panic mode and was becoming irrational.  Ushering my laughing friends out seemed to be the most rational course of action, and I did so, while inquiring about a refund for the unused time we still had left. 

That didn’t go over very well.

But to be fair, we had really scared him.  Plus, I think a little poo came out of him, because he was walking funny as he chased us out. 

By the way, I also bought a HUGE infrared grill that was on sale at a pretty deep discount.  It was such a good deal in fact, that it cost me more to ship the son of a bitch home, than it did to buy it.  But the new technology allows the grill to reach a million degrees and cooks a steak in 4 seconds or something like that, so I had to have it for the Cave.  The sales guy played up the fact that the grill “burns cleaner” and that the meat tastes better because of “the sear achieved by the high heat.”  Fuck all that noise, because the selling point for me was that you could cook almost immediately upon turning it on; eliminating wait time.  I’m going to call the company up and propose a new slogan:

Infrared Grills – When you want a fucking steak RIGHT NOW!!

Catchy, right?  I should go in to advertising…

What Happens in Vegas, May Result in Massive Bleeding

I'm heading to Vegas in two days.  I've spent the last two days trolling the internet for escort services meticulously researching churches and homeless shelters where I can volunteer my services, in between degenerate gambling and shamelessly gorging myself on crab legs and prime rib.  But before I get there, I have to make sure all of my work is done ahead of time so I am not constantly bothered by people who can't think for themselves can rest assured that I have done the best job possible before going on vacation.

My desire to avoid contact with the working world means that I have literally spent the last week anticipating EVERY possible problem or issue we may come across in the next six days, and devised INGENIOUS contingency plans to handle them.  Run out of paper? Covered. Building burns down? Handled. Flood?  Hurricane?  Check and fucking mate.  Return of the Messiah?  Give him the corner office and a parking pass.  Godzilla and Mothra banging in the courtyard? See page 546, Section C, Sub Paragraph 7.  I have planned for every possible issue and there should be no reason AT ALL for me to receive a phone call from them for the next 6 days.

Right?

I give them an hour before someone calls me looking for a paper clip.  Book it.

Common sense is becoming a rare commodity these days.  You can't drive two blocks without running in to some douchebag talking on a cell phone while eating a sandwich while shaving while BLOCKING THE FUCKING ROAD trying to make an illegal left turn in to a 7-11.  When they finally do get an opening, they stall out in oncoming traffic because no one ever taught the brain damaged twat how to drive a stick shift.  NEXT TIME STEAL AN AUTOMATIC, you toothless waste of space...

And it really shouldn't take us 10 minutes to order a sandwich from goddamn Subway.  Or to explain to the kid at Burger King that I do not, in fact, require pickles on my hamburger, and that I was under the impression that I could have it MY OWN FUCKING WAY, and not have to explain my dietary preferences to a pre-pubescent, acne covered, basement dweller working to earn video game money thank you very fucking much.

Like I said, no common sense.

Which is why I am looking forward to Vegas, the only city in the world where you are legally PROHIBITED from exercising any common sense.  Oh, except Washington D.C., you can't have any common sense there either.  By the time I make my trek to Sin City, I am so worn out from having to deal with the mental pygmies of the world, that it is truly gratifying to give in and become one for a week.  So with that, I composed a letter to Las Vegas in anticipation of my arrival:

Dear Las Vegas,

By now you know that I will be arriving in a few days, so I just wanted to clear a few things up before we got down to business.  First, please lay in a proper stock of Fat Tire Amber Ale, Jack Daniels, and King Crab Legs.  A good guide as to what a "proper stock" is, would be order what you would normally order for a week, then double it, while tacking on 10% for pilferage.  Better safe than sorry, I always say...

Second, please notify Lawry's The Prime Rib, that I will be dining there on Sunday evening.  I would like to be served by Mrs. Otis (The servers are all called Mrs., like pilgrims, I guess) who is the best damn server they have .  I will be ordering the Diamond Jim Brady Cut, so please make sure we are seated next to the big silver serving cart, so Mrs. Otis doesn't injure her back carrying that freaking huge slab of meat to the table.  Yes, I am aware of the innuendo involved in that last sentence, but I am really concentrating on the Prime rib, right now...

Oh, all right.  That's what she said...

Third, please advise all who will be playing on the same Craps table as me that betting No Pass while I am shooting will most definitely earn you a punch in the ovaries.  There will be no exceptions.

Fourth, if you could arrange a nice Police involved shooting while I am there like you did a few years ago, that would be cool.  Last time, your fabulous Las Vegas Metro cops chased some evil-doing shit hook down the Strip until he ran in to a pole twenty feet away from me and tried to escape on foot.  The Metro cops were kind enough to shoot his ass six times for his trouble.  The whole time, I kept hearing the COPS theme song...

Bad Boys, Bad Boys
What you gonna do?
What you gonna do when they come for you?

Bleed out in the fucking street, apparently.  Nice work, officers.

Lastly, I apologize in advance for any violations of law or social propriety that may or may not occur during my stay in your lovely city.  While I normally pride myself on my decorum and self control, I am also cognizant of your rather catchy slogan, "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas".  I agree wholeheartedly. 

Sincerely,

BDC

Now that's out of the way.

Ladies and Gentlemen, We have a new shooter coming out...