Why am I a douchebag?

Well, aside from the obvious reasons, I missed a damn good concert because I can’t even read a fucking calendar.

About a month ago while playing poker at Mandalay, I noticed that Soul Asylum was coming. And I mentally noted the date. “Cool”, I thought, “they are playing the day before New Year’s Eve.”

And it was only $25???

This one was a no-brainer.

So, I put that date away secure in the knowledge that I would be there on the appointed day.

The box office almost ALWAYS has solo tickets up until showtime … but I figured I would go ahead and get one printed since it was a holiday. So, I called a day ahead of time … which would be Friday the 29th at about 8pm. I rang the HOB box office, and it went something like this:

Me: “Yeah, Soul Asylum isn’t sold out yet is it?”.

HOB: “It’s not even close to being sold out”

Me: “Really, that’s odd, shouldn’t it at least be getting close?”

HOB: “Well, the Black Eyed Peas are playing tonight, and everyone is going to that”

Me: “There is no accounting for taste, but why can’t they go to Soul Asylum tomorrow night?”

HOB: “Uh, because Soul Asylum is playing tonight.”

Me: “What the fuck are you talking about?”

HOB: “Yeah, they should be taking the stage any minute”

Me: “But it’s not the day before New Year’s Eve!”

HOB: “I know that”

Me: “Shit, if I left now, what are my chances of getting in there by “Misery” which is always the third song?”

HOB: “The Black Eyed Peas are playing to about 15,000 people, and the place is swamped … so not good”

Me: “Fuck me. Thanks (click)”

So, as it turns out, somewhere along the line, somebody gave December an extra day, for a total of 31 days. And New Years Eve was not December 30th, as my feeble mind had translated it.

They say that too much masturbation distorts time perception, and I guess they were right.

I cursed myself all night, and decided to go to Mandalay Saturday morning to see how the show had gone. I went to the box office, and talked with the ticket dude. I said “Did you see the show last night?”. He smiled and said “yeah”. I said, please make me feel better and tell me it sucked, or that one of the band members got explosive diarreah and the band rescheduled for tonight. He just smiled bigger this time and said “Sorry dude, it was fucking awesome!”, while making the horn symbol with his hands.

Fuck!

I needed to take my anger out on someone/something. So I walked over to the Mandalay Poker Room, and busted out two tourists while tripling up in less than half an hour. Instead of playing tightly, I was in a surly mood, and I called every single solitary bluff just out of misplaced anger, and because they learn poker from watching ESPN, that’s what tourists love to do more than anything …. bluff.

So, in a really convoluted way, you could say that I made a decent amount of money by not seeing Soul Asylum, since I would not have gone to the Mandalay to play on Saturday if I had seen the show the night before. And I would never have paid in ticket price, the amount I won in the poker room.

At least that’s how I justify it to myself. But deep down I know that I am still a douchebag.

Now that my issues are out of the way, I need to address what the fuck is wrong with you people. And by “you people”, I mean the concert attending public.

In one corner is a band, a real band that has been around for 20 years, a band that plays it’s own instruments, writes it’s own songs, and sings with it’s own voice. And said band is playing in a very small venue, and is charging only $25.

In the other corner is a white girl (but don’t spoil the surprise and tell her) from Hacienda Heights, California, the former voice of Charlie Brown’s sister in the popular “Peanuts” cartoon series, former Nickelodeon star … lipsynching and dancing while the other “band members” jump around the stage yelling “Yo! Yo! Yo!”, or whatever the fuck “hip hop” (which isn’t) artists do today. Fergie is about as “ghetto” as Bill Gates … but don’t tell that to the bellyshirt-wearing “I wanna be a hip-hop street ho” section of the audience. For them, she’s a straight up G. Oh, and they are paying $100. Not to mention that it’s an arena show, so most people are going to be watching the monitors anyway since the people on stage look like ants.

Which show is sold out, and which one is “not even close” in a 1,000 person venue?

Let me offer the lyrics to a popular song by the sold-out group:

“What you gon’ do with all that junk?
All that junk inside your trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump
My hump, my hump my lovely little lumps.

What you gon’ do wit all that breast?
All that breast inside that shirt?
I’ma make, make, make, make you work
Make you work, work, make you work.

My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
In the back and in the front (lumps)”

What the fucking fuck?????

If the number of people eschewing Soul Asylum for the Black Eyed Peas is not a sign of the decline of Western Civilization, then I don’t know what is.

And I thought *I* was a douchebag …

Wynn Casino Dealers are actively picketing in front of the Wynn as I type this (December 29, 2006 1:00pm) against the stealing of their wages by Mr. Wynn.

Now, a note posted on the Wynn Dealers Website, iimplies that Red Rock Station might be considering a similar scheme.

The post reads:

“At work this week, it was being discussed that the Red Rock Station Casino’s Table Games Manager approached the toke committee and asked them to give five full shares a day to the floormen. He then said that this would be put to a vote and if they didn’t cooperate willingly that they would be taking 40% of the dealer tokes by March. I have tried in vain for the past two days to register with EZ board so that I could post this info myself. If you could post this info to get it out there it would be greatly appreciated.

It is obvious that Stations wants very little press on this and would like to make it look like it is the dealers idea. If they volunteer five shares today, they might as well give them a blank check for the future. I think the public might look on this very differently than the Wynn, with their supposed “100 grand a year” income. These are local casinos and the dealers hardly make that much even if the 100 grand a year figure is bogus.Again, I have this on pretty good authority and I would like it to see the light of day.

Thank you very much,
A pissed off and scared dealer.”

We are already jonesing from the Wynn Buffet, as there is no way we will patronize the place while their current tip-stealing scheme is in place, and while not a frequent patron of Red Rock anymore … it will be even more infrequent if they take up this position as well.

It seem that Mr. Wynn is becoming a “pioneer” in more ways than one.

If this catches on, more and more properties will see the financial incentive in stealing wages from their employees, and there are going to be many unhappy, less motivated, and low-morale dealers sitting in front of you.

Hopefully all of you gamers our there will take this into consideration when planning your next gaming session.

Please vote with your dollars, and show that you want to decide who to tip, and how much.

You are still free to tip anyone else you think deserves a tip (including the floor) … but under no circumstances should tips be stolen from the people they are given to, IMHO.

Again, for those of you wishing to keep abreast of the situation, please boomark http://www.wynndealers.com/, and check in periodically to see what is going on.

So a big story here is that the nation’s largest Master[bation] Planned Community is upset because the FAA wants to start routing some commercial airline flights to the north, instead of along the usual southern departure route. The FAA’s plan is intended to reduce departure delays and increase flight capacity at McCarran.

And the city is spending about half a million dollars to fight it, on behalf of Summerlin residents, Lakes Residents, and a few other west side enclaves.

Why?

Because they are fucking bored. If you lived in Summerlin, you would be bored too. Measuring your neighbor’s grass with a ruler every day to make sure it is not in violation of “HOA Rules” can only fill up so much of your day, so you really do need another cause to fill the rest of the daylight hours.

So, why not rage against an airplane flying 5,000 feet overhead? You know, that thing that you need binoculars and an ultra-sensitive microphone to even perceive.

The only reason that Summerlin exists in the first place, is due to the existence of the nation’s 5th busiest airport that sits about 10 miles to it’s southeast. Without that airport, and the people it brings in, not only would the people of Summerlin have no jobs, but neither would their homes be of any appreciable value whatsoever.

Not that I think they are worth too terribly much now. Just think, for six hundred thousand dollars or more, you can buy a glorified townhouse that looks like every other cluster house in the neighborhood that sits on .07 acres of land, with beautiful views of your neighbor’s bathroom so you can watch them take a dump 8 feet from your bedroom window. Sweet.

And not only that, but you get to pay huge HOA fees to make sure your neighbor gets fined for getting a bad haircut, and you get to pay a special “Summerlin Surcharge” for the privilege of saying you live in Summerlin. Cool! Sounds like a dream come true.

But wait, the dream is about to become a nightmare.

You see, apparently unaware of the little annoyances that actually living in a populated area brings, Summerlin residents never figured out that part of living in a semi-large city … was the fact that things actually happen. Such as, I dunno, airplanes flying overhead. I mean, really, who knew?

I guess the “Master” who “Planned” the “Community” figured air travel to be a passing fad.

If anything, the residents of Summerlin should get down on their hands and knees and kiss the hairy scrotum of whoever is trying to get more people through the airport. Or did they think the 4 lane highway in and out of Las Vegas was more than enough for 40 million visitors and potential home buyers per year?

I live less than 2 miles from the threshold of a McCarran runway. Planes land and depart over my head all day long. These planes are at best, 1,000 feet overhead by the time they get to me. For crying out loud, the Hard Rock Hotel is right at the end of one runway, and the planes fly within a half-mile of the Mandalay Bay, and last time I checked, those rooms weren’t cheap. If I don’t actually watch or listen for the planes, I wouldn’t notice them. And I am actually close. I can’t even possibly imagine how unnoticeable these planes would by by the time they got to Summerlin.

Las Vegas is an island in a vast sea of dirt. McCarran is the vessel that brings people to the city, and it is by far the most important single entity to the success of this town, of which Summerlin is part.

And if the mere protest of this non-event wasn’t absurd enough, the latest argument that was trotted out last week just goes to show how utterly fucked in the head certain members of our town have become.

Instead of just a “nuisance”, supposedly this new flight plan is also a “security threat”. Yes, you heard me right … it’s a “security threat”. According to some residents, Summerlin really is JUST THAT IMPORTANT. Apparently, some guys in a cave with walkie-talkies are rabidly determined to take it out.

And what does this say of one of the fastest growing cities in the nation … Henderson. That place must be a complete and utter shithole as they have been in the shadows of McCarran’s two main runway’s for decades, yet has continued to grow and property values have continued to rise.

But they aren’t important enough to be a security threat. Why? I dunno. Ask a Summerlin resident. Your best chance of finding an uncaged Summerlin resident is at a pee-wee soccer field as they cheer on hopelessly uncoordinated Shitney and Bratford while yapping to other parents about how great their sprog is at [insert useless talent here].

Seriously, these “I’m scared of airplane folks” made more sense when they were simply policing the weeds in their neighbor’s yard.

After a rather lackluster Christmas Eve on Fremont Street Downtown (which will be the subject of another article), we decided to spend Christmas Day itself on the Strip.

At noon, the Bellagio fired up some pretty sweet shows … 3 in a row, 5 minutes apart!

Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

We usually only get one show each half hour, but they gave us a real treat today.

We captured most of the shows on video, and are currently compressing them.

Unfortunately Adobe is not making it easy. We tried to buy their “Elements” editing package online because it handles MP4 files so well, but for whatever reason Adobe thinks it’s 1985, and not 2006.

We can’t pay for it and get a registration key. No, that would imply that we live in the 21st century.

Instead, they want to … get this … POSTAL MAIL the software to us after we pay for it.

So this means that until we can actually find and pay for a good program online, the videos will have a big “Adobe” logo in the upper right corner.

The full sized 100MB+ video files we took look REALLY nice (Far better than DVD quality), but we have to find a happy medium between size and video quality. Not everyone has super-fast broadband.

We will obviously re-compress the videos without the label as soon as we get a good, registered, MP4 editor. We have tons of somewhat decent Vegas videos, so we are also going to put up a “videos” section on the site as soon as we get the software issue worked out. Maybe streaming, maybe not. I am not a huge fan of “streaming” video (I like to use the video player of my choice … VLC Player … and save the files to my hard drive if I like something instead of having to download it over and over), so we’ll see.

Until then, if you would like to watch the Bellagio Christmas Fountain Shows in slightly imperfect, yet still perfectly enjoyable video files, then by all means … be my guest. Enjoy.

Here are the Bellagio Fountain Shows we recorded today.

“Viva Las Vegas” (My Personal Favorite)

“It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas”

“Santa Baby”

“Christmas is Here”

“Christmas Musical”

But wait, there’s more. For a limited time only, if you download now while operators are standing by, we’ll throw in this Christmas Eve Fremont Street Experience Video we took last night absolutely free!!! We even edited out the panhandlers for you.

Update 12/31/2006: We finally got a registered copy of the video editing software, so some of the watermarks should be gone.

Wow, I thought the rumor about Prince was ridiculous … until Prince showed up at the Rio.

Now, the local buzz flying around says that “The King of Pop” will be setting up shop at an unnamed casino right here on the Las Vegas Strip.

This rumor has actually been floating around for a long time, but it’s been picking up steam as of late.

Word has it that he is in town at this very moment, as I type this, to hammer out the details.

Will it happen? Will it not happen?

I don’t know for 100% certain. But I have candidly spoken to some “reliable insiders” who should know, and they say that it’s a done deal.

And hell yes, I will see the show.

He’s still Michael-Fucking-Jackson (no pun intended).

I saw him live in the mid-80’s, and I could care less what he does in his spare time, he puts on a kickass show.  And that’s what I pay to see. A kickass show.

Come on, Mike.

Make the official announcement already.