Money that goes to Vegas, stays in Vegas.

Yeah, so, Vegas. It's a place I went¹. And I heard that all y'all wanted to hear about it. So here goes - everything you've ever heard about Vegas is true. Overwhelming sights and sounds - check. Oxygen and delightful scents and free drinks pumped into casinos, where there are no clocks/windows/any way of telling how long you've been there, to keep you gambling as long as possible - check. People walking the streets with foot tall tubes of booze - check. Guy at the slot machine next to you getting "comped"² because he lost so much money that the casino is willing to give him a free hotel room so he'll stay and lose more - check. Giant pyramid with a light shooting off the top that can be seen from outer space - check. People standing on street corners flicking business cards of prostitutes - check.

The one thing that you hear about Vegas that isn't true - people carrying buckets of coins around. All the slot machines have been changed to run on paper money and when you cash out, they print a ticket that you have to redeem at a cashier's desk. No coins comes falling down when you win - it's just credits on the screen - and when the slot machine prints out your little ticket, it makes this lame noise that is supposed to sound like coins falling jdown into the little now-vestigial metal tray at the bottom of the machine. Lame city!! Maybe next time I go to Vegas, I'll bring my own bucket and put my little paper ticket into my bucket, just to screw with everyone's head.

Stuff seen in Vegas:

• Magician comedian who was filling in for Mac King at Harrah's and whose name escapes me at the moment. Had a pretty funny schtick where he made it look like he'd screwed up the trick and then it would turn out to be a fairly neat trick after all.³
  
• Dead bodies.
• Mamma Mia - the musical based on ABBA songs. I swear, you'd think ABBA wrote their songs for that plot - it's soooo well constructed.
• The Blue Man Group. This blew my fucking mind. Like nothing I've EVER seen before. OMG, you need to see this. NEED TO!
  

Blue Man & Me.
The fact that I wore a blue dress this day is merely coincidental.

Most nauseating thing seen in Vegas:

• Picture this: You are playing your little $1 chips at the roulette table, mumbling under your breath that the $15 minimum really is too rich for your blood. A man walks up and lays 10 $100 bills on the table and asks for one chip. The dealer carefully counts the money out and hands over a $1000 chip. He lays the chip on black and walks away, doesn't even watch the little ball spinning around the roulette wheel. The little ball lands on red. Bye-bye $1000! Then he does the same thing again - another 10 $100 bills, another $1000 chip on black and another loss. Then, just for good measure, he plays $100 on splitting the zeros and loses again. It seriously made me feel sick. If someone is willing to part with $2100 in like 45 seconds, why not just give it to charity??
  

Things learned in Vegas:

• Tony Danza, Barry Manilow, Toni Braxton, all the people you thought were dead are, in fact, performing in Vegas. I think this means (a) they are not dead after all, or (b) Vegas is the afterlife for third rate celebs.
• When playing roulette, you may be tempted to play Canucks jersey numbers... 22 - Daniel Sedin, 33 - Henrik Sedin, 16 - Linden, 9 - Pyatt, 7 - Morrison, etc. Don't. Just don't.
• Waitresses will only come by to bring you free drinks when either (a) your down to your last dollar on the slot machine or (b) you say, "I'm cashing out if I don't win on the next spin!" So that you'll have to stay around waiting that free drink and will put more money in the machine. They have it down to a freakin' science, I swear.
• Vegas waitresses are not as hot as I have been led to believe. I'm willing to bet, though, that they make more money than I do.
• If you walk around Vegas dressed as a bat, even on Halloween, you will get a lot of looks.
  
• Everything in the Venetian is made of gold... including the toilets⁴.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The red carpets you see celebrities photographed on showing them going into Vegas nightclubs.... they don't actually go anywhere! It's just a bit of red carpet and a backdrop set up in the hallway for photo ops. As is my habit when I see ropes blocking things off or signs telling you not to go somewhere, I hopped over the ropes to get this paparazzi shot:

And speaking of photos, I took these pics for Sarah & Dave:

Saw our favourite arcade game, which is found in every bar, pub, tavern and daycare⁵ in Calgary, in one of the hotels in Vegas and just had to take a pic for you!

Then I noticed this poor man's Big Buck Hunter, called "Deer Hunting USA" right next to it. Apparently it also has "Animated Violence: Mild."

So that, in a nutshell, was my trip to Vegas.

¹Tip o'the hat to David T. McLean, Esq.
²comped = getting free stuff (like a free buffet, a free hotel room) when you lose lots of cash at a casino.
³Wow. My description makes it sound really lame, but it wasn't - it was quite good!
⁴Yes, I took a picture of the toilet. See, there is nothing I won't do for you, gentle blog reader. Nothing!
⁵OK, so we didn't actually go to any daycares in Calgary, but I'm willing to put money on them all having Big Buck Hunter.