Fear and Chafing in Las Vegas

One of my all-time favorite books is Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” When my high school senior English teacher assigned it as a summer reading book I thought she was the coolest teacher ever. I still try to read the same dog-eared copy I bought at Mill’s Book Store way back then every summer. I also have a Gideon’s Bible autographed by the good Doctor Gonzo, but that’s a story for a future post.

One of the best chapters was the transcript of a tape recording of a lost evening which reveals the addled, disjointed, crazy tableau that can be Las Vegas. It begins with a disclaimer:

“EDITOR'S NOTE: At this point in the chronology, Dr. Duke appears to have broken down completely; the original manuscript is so splintered that we were forced to seek out the original tape recording and transcribe it verbatim. We made no attempt to edit this section, and Dr. Duke refused even to read it. There was only one way to reach him. The only address/contact we had, during this period, was a mobile phone unit somewhere on Highway 61—and all efforts to reach Duke at that number proved futile. In the interests of journalistic purity, we are publishing the following section just as it came off the tape—one of many that Duke submitted for purposes of verification—along with manuscript.”

In the spirit of this chapter, here are the unedited combined random observations of RUABelle and me culled from our scrawled notes on various cocktail napkins, matchbooks and losing CFL betting slips. (Hey, it’s the off-season…there wasn’t much to bet on and video poker was kicking my ass!)

We met two interesting scary blonde alcoholic chicks at the Monte Carlo Brew Pub the first night we were there to see the Prince Tribute Show. The first was a woman named Kristina whose schtick was “the endless vodka tonic.” As she prattled on to us about her three kids she had left at her mom’s house for the night while she and a friend cruised predatorily for male drink sponsors, she would wait until the bartender walked away to get us another beer and then refill her glass out of a flask she kept in her purse. After this had happened five or six times, we started to really feel like enablers. However, by that time, she and her friend had already hooked their talons into two guys who looked like they had huge expense accounts with whom they left soon after.

The second poor soul was a young woman whose hair and skin was so pale that she looked like an x-ray of herself. I did notice she had a tattoo on the back of her neck that read “Daddy’s Little Girl.” Tragic. She sat down next to me and ordered a glass of white zinfandel with four olives. When she saw RUABelle and I grimace at her order (being the straight-from-Napa wine snobs that we apparently are now), she ate the olives off the toothpick and said, “Dinner.” We asked her what she did for a living, and she replied “I just got to town so I do pretty much whatever I want or whatever anybody will pay me to do.”

Uh-huh. It took about an hour to realize that she was asking if we wanted to pay for a threesome and that we weren’t interested and the band wasn’t going to pay “Little Red Corvette” again. Once we were all on the same page again, we had a pleasant conversation and I even bought her another three olives for a buck. Mmmmm, dessert.

We noticed that the thermometer in our rental PT Cruiser (a piece of crap not worth it even at $16.00/day) read 100 degrees in the parking garage at MIDNIGHT! That just ain’t right. Yet even in those conditions, there was still a contingent of tourists who considered deodorant to be optional.

The heat made it very difficult to balance drinking enough water to avoid dehydration with the need to pee every 20 minutes. We opted to overhydrate because we knew from past experience that if you get behind on your fluids, you’ll feel crappy for days afterwards.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas unless it involves a tattoo or a viral infection.

The lobby of a casino is a really unfortunate location to choose to breastfeed.

Apparently money does matter in some relationships because we saw a lot more hot chicks with really ugly guys than vice versa. At least the ugly guys had nice clothes and a lot of bling.

According to the billboard we saw at the Las Vegas Hilton, now that Reba Macintyre has cut her hair, she is a spitting image of Willow from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” There must be a really good cosmetic surgeon somewhere in Goodlettsville.

I discovered that playing $1.00 video poker it is actually possible to lose fifty bucks during one commercial break of “SportsCenter.”

Chafing should be covered by Medicare in Nevada.

When did shirts become optional for hipster dudes walking down a sidewalk?

Drinking a plastic football filled with 180 octane daiquiris is rarely a good idea.

All those pictures everyone was taking of that bachelorette sitting on the face of a blow-up doll will probably come back to haunt her some day.

Could there be a more useless souvenir than the plastic yard margarita glasses that everybody was bringing on the plane as carry-on? What are you gonna do with those? Drink your 4-5 glasses of water per day at work out of a Hooters Casino glass?

The fact that it was 108 degrees and all the casinos left their front doors wide open air conditioning the sidewalks is a really good indication that you can’t make money gambling.

Vegas does not think the Titans will win more than five games this year.

When you’re thirsty and hot enough, a $6.00 Miller Lite sounds reasonable.

We saw a guy actually practicing his Zoolander “Blue Steel” look in a bar. He went home alone while the fat guys buying drinks for hot chicks appeared to actually hook up.

I’d rather lose my money to a smiling Tunica dealer named Melba than to a dour Vegas dealer named Phuc.

If hemlines get any higher and necklines get any lower, apparently the “couture de rigueur” in Vegas for women will just a belt.

“It’s a dry heat.” So’s my oven, but I wouldn’t want to live there…