Talkin' Shit About A Pretty Sunset

Having just arrived home from Las Vegas last night, I don't know what I can say about that town that hasn't been said a thousand times before but I'll give it my best shot.

The first problem was that I read "How To Lose Friends And Alienate People" on the plane ride TO Vegas and read "Bringing Down The House" on the plane ride back home.

The upshot of the latter book is that blackjack CAN be beat ... that is, if you know how to count cards. Otherwise the odds are always with the dealer (duh). If not, the casino would not be in business. Blackjack is the only true "beatable" game there is in Vegas, apparently, and counting cards isn't what it seems. "Counting cards" is a misnomer because you don't actually count how many cards come out of the deck at all. You count twos through sixes as +1 and tens through aces as -1. If the count adds up positively, of course, that means that the deck is heavy with high cards and it's time to throw down serious money. If the deck is full of low cards, you'll have a negative count and so you should stay at the table minimum with every bet. Anyway ...

Las Vegas was everything I expected: trashy, bright, drunken, ugly, beautiful, pretentious, overpriced, strict, lawless, sleazy and clean. I can't think of anything else to write so I'll just include a list of things:

- Grandparents staying in "Jamaica Suite"

- Up $78, then down $400

- Bottle of Glenlivet (750ML)

- 2 Inches from getting a lapdance

- $100 tips from my brother-in-law to strippers

- Five thousand room hotel

- One-hundred-thirty-six-million-dollar stage

- Steak 'n' eggs at 5:00 AM

- German taxi driver

- Fake tits

- "Hippest" bar in town: Hard Rock Cafe

- Most hetrosexual men in one place with that much hair product

- Free drinks all night

This is the first book I've read in full in a while. If you don't know, it's mainly about Conde Nast and Vanity Fair (a magazine the author describes as "People magazine for those whose lips don't move while they read"). Anyway, part of the book sheds some light on the attitudes of people high up in celebrity culture in the US:

"I overheard the folowing exchange between two women scanning the morning papers in Vanity Fair's publicity department:

First Woman: Some plane went down over the Atlantic. Two hundred fifty-six people killed.
Second Woman: Anyone on it?
First Woman: Nah."

I don't know much about W.C. Fields but the above quote of his is right on. I know a lot has been said about how teetotaler presidents shouldn't be trusted and I think our current situation clearly supports that truism. I guess I can see someone who's a teetotaler because he or she had horrbile problems with the bottle but what other excuse is there for abstaining? Don't like the taste? Man, were you never a teenager? No excuse.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that some people really should not drink, and the rate at which abusers drink and hurt themselves and others can be scary. An alcoholic should lay off. But for someone who doesn't have some obsessive predisposition to abuse alcohol a little hooch now and then is not just enjoyable but fundamental to an even-keeled mind, body and soul.

I think my next post will be a list of all the wet versus dry world leaders and we all should be able to draw some proper conclusions. This I know: Hitler and Mussolini were teetotaler prudes to be sure, and there is no great American novelist who abstained.

Reposted:

My top 5 overrated places in Adams/Morgan:

#5 Pasta Mia

Who the fuck lines up for pasta?! Pasta! I only eat pasta when I'm feeling completely culinarily bored or I'm trying to save money. Who actually orders this meal in a restaurant? Pasta Mia sucks and so do all of you.

#4 Millie & Al's aka "One Million Owls"

This is the worst pizza imaginable. It's worse than the pizza I ate with my friend Ryan Wessling in 7th grade when we went to see WWF in a sky suite at the Cap Center in PG County in 1986. We even tried to put catsup on it but it was still horrible. Also, I always try to avoid places that have jello shooters.

#3 The Reef

Ok, the food is decent but this is the only place where I actually had bugs in my drink. Ok, they were really gnats but there were like 4 or 5 of them drowned in my whiskey glass. Trashy.

#2 Astor aka "Ass-store"

I'm just turned off by this place cuz of the story RL told me about our friend Ian and his girlfriend "wordlessly chewing" on half-finished chicken legs at Astor. Plus, the burgers suck.

#1 2901 18th St, NW Apt 506

Dood, that brown couch can kiss my ass, man. Ain't that cozy. Jus' ain't. Oh and Atari? WTF? What year is it? Get a damned Sony PlayStation, bitch!

If you really knew how much profit your landlord is making off of you for paying his mortgage you'd gasp. GASP, you would. Right out loud.

Every year this type of cold, rainy weather gets me down. But I have no idea why I've been feeling so great lately. What's wrong with me?

Modern Drunkard Magazine recently put out "The 86 Rules of Boozing". I liked four of them:

- Never talk to someone in the restroom unless you're doing the same thing—urinating, waiting in line or washing your hands.

- If you owe someone twenty dollars or less, you may pay them back in beer.

- If you think you might be slurring a little, then you are slurring a lot. If you think you are slurring a lot, then you are not speaking English.

- If you are trading rounds with a friend and he asks if you're ready for another, always say yes. Once you fall out of sync you will end up buying more drinks than him.

The neighbor whose dog caused $584.14 worth of bite damage to my little dog's back just came by my apartment with a check for $584.14.

People are good after all.

I have heard this rant a hundred times, although with a hundred different names of places around the earth in place of "Maryland" or whatever whipping boy country/city/state you want to bash at the moment. Clipped from craigslist.org:

"It never fails that the idiot driver who cuts me off, doesn't use turn signals, drifts into my lane, or is going 10 miles below the speed limit, is a Maryland driver. MD drivers are the worst on the planet. And I've been around the world. Even the crazy ass Miami drivers, who weave through the streets have nothing on a MD driver. Even in Thailand, where taxis don't have doors, and bikes cover the busy streets, drivers are still better than MD drivers. A good friend of mine put it best, 'People from Maryland don't exactly drive. They just get in the car and shit just happens. It's like they're blind or wasted and their hands are attached to the ceiling.'"

Do people think they're saying something new when they go off on the "crazy-drivers-rant"? This rant is more annoying and cliche than saying "that's how the cookie crumbles" or going off on the "English-language-is-so-crazy" rant.

What the f. is with the guy next to you at the old man bar spouting off about some shit you have no interest in hearing about? The Scott Peterson case? Oh, you better believe he's got something he's gonna tell you about it. JFK? Why didn't the government know about the Cubans killing him? He' s gonna let you know his opinion about it.

God, shut the fuck up already. It's not just the blathering on and on, it's the LEVEL AT WHICH YOU ARE TALKING. I can't even hear the conversation I'm having with the person next to me, who I came with and who I actually care about talking to over your drunken slobbering. Are all old man bars like this?

I never want to be that guy. Hopefully my friends would tell me if I ever got that bad ...

I'm glad the whole Led Zepplin shark fucking incident is now cleared up for me. (From snopes.com):

The core incident took place at the The Edgewater in Seattle, a hotel on Puget Sound from which guests could fish right out the windows of their rooms. According to Richard Cole, Led Zeppelin's road manager, he and drummer John Bonham (aka "Bonzo") were busily engaged in the pastime of catching sharks through an Edgewater window when they were interrupted by some persistent groupies, but what occurred next didn't quite live up to the notorious modern version of the legend:

"It wasn't Bonzo, it was me. It wasn't shark parts anyway: It was the nose that got put in. We caught a lot of big sharks, at least two dozen, stuck coat hangers through the gills and left 'em in the closet . . . But the true shark story was that it wasn't even a shark. It was a red snapper and the chick happened to be a fucking redheaded broad with a ginger pussy. And that is the truth. Bonzo was in the room, but I did it. Mark Stein [of Vanilla Fudge] filmed the whole thing. And she loved it. It was like, "You'd like a bit of fucking, eh? Let's see how your red snapper likes this red snapper!" That was it. It was the nose of the fish, and that girl must have come 20 times. But it was nothing malicious or harmful, no way! No one was ever hurt."

So yes, a female groupie was sexually engaged with a fish, but the fish was not a shark (and was presumably dead from having been stuck on a coat hanger), it wasn't "stuffed" inside her, the only member of Led Zeppelin present at the time (John Bonham) was merely an onlooker rather than an active participant, and the woman left the hotel unharmed. (Richard Cole may not have been the most accurate chronicler of Led Zeppelin's history, but since his accounts tend to run to excess it's safe to assume the reality was no wilder than he presented it. In any case, accounts given by others connected with the incident don't substantially contradict Cole's version.)

I'm now starting the 3rd month of a new job. Slowly, the details about the guy who was fired from this position are coming to light. I hear little tid-bits daily, and it's astounding---and I guess re-assuring---how awful he was at his (my) job. He downright tried very hard for months to get fired from his position, including trying to trigger the firewall all the time by going to job sites like monster.com, and getting drunk during lunch. I now spend about 2 hours a day making up for what he neglected to update or do. Why the f--- did he hate his (my) job so much? I heard he's taking a cruise around Ireland right now so he can tour all the breweries. I'd love to talk to him for just 5 minutes. That's all.

Liberal guilt is ridiculous. It tears people up thinking about it. People fret about buying this or that decadant product but how does purchasing $22 duck pate hurt the poor? People are poor for numerous reasons, and I'm convinced that most are not poor because they played by the rules and the system just fucked them over. Often, people are poor because of their horrible life choices, drugs, mental illness, etc, on and on and on. Enough said about the downtrodden of the world. It's an iron law of human economics that unless you directly steal from someone, if you make money, you're not taking anything away from the less fortunate. You better believe the poor would buy decadant shit if they could. Probably even this: http://www.whiskyprices.com/mac48info.htm