Well 2008 has come and it’s now more than two weeks old and I have yet to summarize New Years Eve or New Years Day, the trip home, the drama between friends, updates on Uncast or anything else for that matter.
So on to the trip.
The Vegas strip on NYE can best be described with the following flash images: The obvious casinos, hotels, flashing lights and stores. Add to that Mexicans flicking cards with barely dressed (or fully nude) women on them at passersby, others trying to sell t-shirts and tacky personal party ornaments (flashy hats, beads, silly string, horns, etc), two gallon translucent measuring cups with “Budweiser” on the side sold for $8 on the street, lots of Asians who are confused as to where they are or where they want to go, lots of teens with parents looking like they don’t want to be involved, college kids on vacation looking for booze and chicks, business men in suits doing what the college kids are doing, babies in strollers, the slight hint of pot in the air (No wait…that’s vomit…smells like someone got started early), and cold. A lot of cold in fact.
So now that you have an accurate picture of the strip, let’s go into our trip. We got to the travellodge around 12:40pm or so. Las Vegas Blvd was already backed up and turning into the parking lot with all the pedestrian traffic was damn near impossible. We park in a lot behind the hotel, go up an elevator that’s made of aluminum at best and probably hasn’t seen an inspection since the Nixon administration, into a room where we have to slam the hotel door in order to close it, crack stains on the bathroom floor and I don’t even want to think about what’s on the comforters.
We get a couple text messages letting us know lunch will be at the America Restaurant in the NY/NY Hotel & Casino with Keith, Chemda, Brother Love and a few listeners. Turns out to be a great time as we meet with the DaHonays, The Grundle, Memecherry, Legion, Mikey, Eric and Brad. BTW, we didn’t see Brad again all weekend. Odd. The burger that Victoria and I shared was good. On the way out Victoria had to shoot a pic of their sign “You are now leaving America”. Huh?
So we head back to the hotel to get ready for the evening. We start to get ready but then realize something is missing. The bag with our personals and hygenic items isn’t here. I run down to the car and lo and behold, we left the bag at home in San Diego. No toothbrushes, hairbrushes, mousse, shampoo, body wash, nothing. We would make a trip out to Walgreen’s after sound check and pick up all that stuff.
Sound check is at 5pm so we head down there and after some apprehension I get myself in pretty easily by talking to security. I video tape a disaster of a sound check and we all leave a little bit more frozen and a lot confused as to what shit might sound like later that night. I get my orders to return on stage at 9:45 to tape the concert.
At this point Victoria, Aldo and I decide to take in some dinner and settle on Chin Chin’s. Our waitress from Belarus takes our orders and plays herself off as fun but then ends our dining experience by telling us not to do anything to bring shame on our families. OK. Not a chance in hell we’ll follow that advice. Still, the pineapple fried rice and peanut noodles are amazing so we’ll be back.
Describing the feeling of being backstage on New Years Eve at a concert in Vegas is a bit difficult. Well, to be honest, it felt natural. Yes, at first I was a little apprehensive about going into the green room because I figured BroLo and Chemda would be focusing and prepping themselves for the performance and the last thing they needed was me coming in to break their concentration. Couldn’t be further from the truth. They welcomed me with open arms (literally) and the band didn’t even notice I was there until just before the third set.
So I walk the band to the stage via cam, part the curtain at the back of the stage, walk on stage and immediately I’m struck with two impulses. First is to cower in the corner (which I do for the first song) taping the concert. The other is to grab a mic and join in on backup vocals. Now I don’t think I have a voice to lead a band but I can carry a tune and I have a decent range so backup isn’t out of the realm. Still, that’s not what I was brought on stage for, so I swallow that impulse and get to doing what I’ve been asked to do.
Paradise City pops in. The whistle, the drums, the girls singing backup, it was all there. They play Brother Love’s song “Push” and halfway through a verse, BroLo steps back and his legs get entangled in the monitor on the stage and he goes tumbling backwards. “I told you I’d fall!” and he laughs but doesn’t miss a word.
Second set they have the crowd in their hands and Brother Love plays four of his own songs in a row and the crowd eats it like candy. Chemda re-writes “Back In Black” by rocking that song harder than AC/DC. Is that even possible? Must be cause it happened. We say goodbye to 2007 with some Poison and “Talk Dirty To Me” as Chemda brings Keith on stage. Amazing. I stand there on stage trying to get footage of the fireworks but all I am thinking is “I’m on stage, at a major venue (to me), in front of thousands of people, in Las Vegas, on New Years Eve, ringing in the new year”. I hug Brother Love. I hug Chemda. I hug varios band mates. I even hug some dude who was standing on the front of the stage but who I’d never seen before and didn’t see after. This is when it clicks in my head that I haven’t kissed Victoria yet.
I look down and spot Victoria getting hugs from people and I jump off stage to give her the biggest kiss of my life. We hug, sway, hold each other and finally I stumble my fat ass back on stage to do some more hugging and go back to the green room. On the way, a couple of ladies point my way and scream out. I do an obligatory “OWWWW! Happy New Year!” a little devil sign and head into the green room. OMG I rock so hard.
So after the show we hang out at the Nine Fine Gentlemen Irish Pub at the NY/NY Hotel & Casino with the DaHonays, The Grundle and Memecherry while waiting for the stars to arrive. Apparently the DaHonays have left all their booze in The Grundle’s room and The Grundle and Memecherry are having issues getting into the room with his card. Once the party arrives, we head upstairs to a tiny little room. There’s about 16 of us and room to seat 12. The DaHonays stand against the one lone empty wall and that wall is JUST long enough to fit 3 people side by side so Victoria takes the last spot by the door leaving me standing IN the doorway so that I can be in the way when people need to come and go.
After about 15 minutes of this, Corey comes in to see BroLo and tells him the surprise is ready and he can bring two friends. Naturally, he grabs Keith and Chemda and they head out which frees up 3 seats so the DaHonays sit down. Someone else comes in and sits down and we hang out for a bit. Mr DaHonay gets up and arrives shortly after with drinks that he’d bought for them AND (Surprise!) two extras for Victoria and I. NOICE! Sooo grateful!
Then Chemda comes barreling into the room and goes, “C’mon guys! They gave us a penthouse suite!” We sit there for a moment completely confused. Then we beam, scream and get out of the room. We all follow Chemda to the Empire elevator and up to the 40th floor where she had a key to the smaller bedroom. We hang out there for a bit until Keith barrels through the door and goes “Well what are ya doin in there? C’mon in!”
We head into the main part of the suite and Chemda makes us move the chairs and stuff into a circle so we can all hang out together and talk. Drinks are made, The DaHonays are re-married and shortly afterwards Mr DaHonay and The Grundle head back to the other room to get their alcohol. When they get there, it turns out Legion was asleep in their room and so they wake him up and bring him back with them. He was so drunk that he’d fallen asleep in the Casino and Memecherry had helped him back up to The Grundle’s room before he got kicked out. Now he was heading up to some strange place and he was as confused as hell.
SO they come back, Mr DaHonay pours champagne, we all toast to the new year and we hang out until about 7ish in the morning. All I know is the sun came up, we ordered room service, it was terrible and then Chemda said “Hey guys. What do you think about we make today today and we make later today another day?”
So we get up and leave, head down to the casino towards Las Vegas Blvd and I smell pot. Hmm Odd. Victoria puts a dollar in a slot machine and wins $3.25 on the first spin. She cashes out and we keep walkin out to the pedestrian bridge. We get across the street and there’s a group of young Mexican gentlemen hanging out. The scent of pot gets stronger and I’m thinking “Oh! They’re smoking out! That’s awesome!” and we walk towards the hotel. A few minutes later I smell it again and I’m like, “There’s no one around me but Victoria. Where’s that sm…oh yeah. It’s me. Cool.”
So we stumble down the wet and sticky street, back to the room and crash out. We both wake up around 2pm and I’m in more pain than I’ve ever felt in my life. I want to scream out but my mouth and throat hurt. I want to see if I’m injured but the inside of my eyelids hurt too much to open my eyes. I want to move so that I can find something with which to kill myself but I can’t move. So about 2 hours later, Victoria gets some naproxin sodium and about 30 minutes from that I finally start to feel better. So we decide to head out for dinner. ..The MGM Grand Hotel’s buffet.
The buffet was expensive ($34 a person) but delicious. There was sushi, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, kids fare, BBQ, a meat station, pastry and breads station, dessert and other great things like salads of all kinds and soups. It was very tasty. Afterwards we start to walk through the casino and the hotel’s main drag of stores. We see the lions they keep there and I snapped a few pics.
We walked most of the way through the hotel when we realized we were going to just have to walk all the way back through the hotel again so we headed over to a cigar bar called “Rouge” where I watched Georgia destroy Hawaii and I had myself my first Isley scotch…a Lopphraig 15-year old scotch. Peppery, clean and nice. I could taste the wood and it was cool. It’s not Johnny Blue but it’s still awesome.
Afterwards, we head to the M&M store, the Grand Canyon Experience, then over to the NY/NY to hand the DaHonay’s their camcorder. On the way through the casino, Victoria turns her $3.25 in winnings into $9.75. Then she turns $5 of that into $11.75. So she turned $6 into $19. Very good work. We notice Keith at a poker machine with Chemda and BroLo hanging out next to them and we say hello before heading to Chin Chins where we’re supposed to meet the DaHonays.
When we get there, we meet up with The Grundle and talk for a bit. The DaHonays arrive, we hand off the camcorder and head back to our hotel room because we’re feeling a bit in the mood and it’s 2008 and we haven’t had our sex yet. So we get there, hang out, check email and the forums and soon we realize…we STILL haven’t fucked. So we get that out of the way and by the time we’re done we crash out again and wake up on the 2nd.
After waking up, we gather our shit, I put a majority of it in the car and we head out to the Paris Hotel for breakfast buffet. Let’s just say they have the best crepes there that I’ve ever had in my life. They were freshly made in front of me with fresh blueberries inside and I poured strawberry topping on top. AWESOME.
After breakfast we get a text from the DaHonays. The Mrs got sick so she’s not going to make it but we’ll have Legion joining us. So they head over to our room and we record an episode of Uncast together using my Zoom H2. It turns out well, we say good bye and load up the car with the last of our things then drive out around 12:30. 48 hours in Vegas was just about enough but those 48 hours are the best of my life!
Then there was the ride home. Over 7 hours, a six mile line at the California Agricultural Inspection and then rush hour traffic through San Bernardino, Ontario, etc. and finally home to a cat that missed us SOOO much. Really, was there a more rockstar way to start a year?
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I'm gonna put you to bed 