June 15, 2003

Bidness in Vegas

On short notice I found out that I had to go out to Vegas for a few days for work. Most of you that know me can attest to the fact that I'm well-known for my ability to have obscene amounts of fun on what should be boring work-related business trips (see: Bidness in Madison and Bidness in Cali). Tara having recently gotten laid-off (noooo!), was bored outta her mind in NYC and decided (after I cleared it with my boss, aka - Mr. Bestest Boss in the Whole World) to tag along.

Sunday, June 15th

me, tara — Early Sunday morning Tara and I caught our Vegas-bound flight outta JFK.

Yay, JetBlue!

tara — Here's Tara looking all contemplative and intellectual an' shit...

...she was just frontin' so no one else would know she watched like 5 straight hours of "Rocket Power" on the way there.

More crazy-ass scenery shots from the plane. This is just past the Grand Canyon (I couldn't get my camera out in time to get the actual canyon).

Lake Mead (I think), just a few minutes before landing.

louis kanganis — Here's my boss, Louis.

From the airport, Louis, Tara and I split a cab to The Venetian, our hotel. Right when we step into the lobby, Tara stops, looks around, throws her bags down and loudly exclaims...

"Look at this place. Ugh, WHAT A DUMP!" I almost pissed my pants.

tara — But that was all posturing, as soon as she saw the room she just put her ass up in the air.

The hotel is themed after Venice (The Venetian, get it?) and has canals with gondoliers paddling people through the goddamned mall inside.

tara — And check out the faux-sky in the background. .

Crazy, right?

Here's Tara and me at the Taqueria. Why bother with Italy when you can kill two birds with one stone and eat "athentic" Mexican food right next to the canals of Venice? Vegas, baby. Vegas. They've got it all figured out.

tara — Oh, and here's another thing about Vegas - when you take out $100 at the ATM...

...it dispenses a single hundred dollar bill. After stocking up on cash, Tara and I hit the strip to enjoy...

...some HOT SLOTS! Hehehe. Then after that it was...

tara — ..."HUMMER TIME!"

tara — We walked down the strip, had a few drinks (can you tell?) On, and you can actually walk around everywhere in Vegas with an open container...WHA? and then we went back to the hotel...but not before Tara fulfilled her life-long dream of seeing the Eiffel Tower. (First Venice, now Paris that I don't have to go to anymore? Man, going to Vegas is like putting money right back into your pocket! Who knew?)

Monday, June 16th

me, tara — I spent most of Monday in meetings for work. Tara spend most of Monday getting incredibly sunburnt at the hotel pool. Ouchie. After meeting up, we set out on the strip to explore some more.

Here's me with Michael Jordan! He was just standing around fully-dressed in his uniform! Can you believe that?

tara — Tara, um...poses with Aphrodite

This is a pretty tame entry so lemme throw in a quick "upskirt" shot for all you pervs out there. Aw, yeah.

tara — Besides seeing the Eiffel Tower, the only other thing Tara wanted to do in Vegas was go to the Rainforest Cafe (don't ask me, I'm still trying to figure out why as well). So check it out, we sit down at our table and then I notice there's this lady at the table behind Tara who's wearing a shirt that looks like it has a gold lamé bib built into it. When I pointed her out to Tara (who's from Texas), Tara shrugged and explained to me "Oh, that's just her eatin' shirt."

Later on, when the lady was finished with her meal (all four plates of it) she took off the bib, folded it up (see the fold-marks in it?) pulled out a matching, gold lamé, bib carrying-case, and put her folded-up gold lamé bib into her matching gold lamé bib carrying case, and put it back into her purse. I was shocked into silence. I had been kidding about it being a bib, I just thought it was part of her shirt. Who carries a bib (nevermind a gold lamé bib) around with them? Who? Fucking Vegas. Jesus.

me, tara — After our delicious, Rain-Foresty dinner digested a bit (which took longer than usual in the 110°F heat) we went over to New York, NY (it's a hotel)...

me, tara — and rode the roller coaster! (The sign said no cameras, but my camera's really small so I thought I'd be able to sneak it on. The coaster started off and figuring I was safe, I snapped this pic - but one of the guys that worked there was on to me and was running along side the coaster, and totally snagged me and nabbed my camera).

tara — After the coaster, we walked around some more but it was so goddamned hot that we decided we'd go see "Dumb and Dumberer" (which had just come out). We bought tickets and killed the 90 minutes before the movie started in some giant arcade. Here's Tara mutilating the denizens of Los Angeles.

Can I tell you that "Dumb and Dumberer" is the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life. THE WORST. We left the theater after just 30 minutes...it was utterly unwatchable. Blech

Tuesday, June 17th

louis kanganis, me — Right after Louis and I posed with this gondolier in the background, Louis took me on a gondola ride. He sang me a song and then after we got back on land took me up to his room and made sweet, sweet love to me while...oh, wait! What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas! Shhhhh!

The construction site (I'm not sure what they're building) as seen from the walkway up into the gigantic mall inside of Caesar's Palace.

Vegas sucks. Everything there is designed to disorient you so that you get stuck in places and spend more money. Seriously, our plan to "pop in and check out" the Caesar's mall complex-thingy turned into a 3 1/2 hour "quest for the exit." At least I got to be Lego-Tutankhamen, that sorta made up for it.

tara — And then in the same toy store, Tara found Preggo Barbie™. (Check out her fingers in the background...naughty, naughty!)

tara — Preggo Barbies apparently give birth to scary babies.

tara — We found our way out of the mall just in time to head back to the hotel, pack up, and get to the airport just in time to catch the red-eye back to Vegas. Here's Tara wishing death upon the blabbermouth in the seat in front of us who didn't stop talking for the first 3 hours of his flight (he only stopped because after awhile I started making the "shhhhh!" noise everytime he'd start to speak. Hehehe).