Vegas I: Facebook Status Updates

Two things you need to know to appreciate this blog. They're not terribly complicated, and I'd imagine that you could figure these things out within the context of this entry, but...

1. I went to Las Vegas to see the Killers this weekend. "How does a man who's currently taking an extended sabbatical from actual adulthood afford such a trip?", inquiring minds might want to know. I saved some pennies and have chosen my friends wisely. TM2000 was my primary sugar daddy, with considerable alcohol-based support from Buddy #1 and emotional support from Flowers. There were 12 of us in our group, including Thor, Natty Ice, Silver Hammer and Firehose. It was a very memorable, very exciting trip. The show was great and the city was fantastic. More on that in a moment.
2. I use Twitter. I also use Facebook, and I have a doo-hicky (tech jargon, I know) for Facebook that allows me to tweet (send Twitter updates) to change my Facebook status from my phone. It lets me document my activities/thoughts/feelings for later examination by Interwebz historians. Or by a more sober version of myself.

Coincidentally enough, these two factors come together, like peanut butter and chocolate, for one incredible taste sensation. Or at least for this blog.

The plan? List my status updates and try to provide context for each. Hopefully tell a story or two. You ready? I'm ready. Let's do this thing.

Fri 12:11am: Ed O is tentatively planning on (1) sleeping, (2) going to the gym, (3) packing and prepping for Las Vegas, and (4) meeting at TM2000's place. All in the next eight hours. Possible?

Most Thursday nights I do the "LQA crawl": prefunk, hit up Chopstix and then Ozzies. Usually TM2000/Flowers/Thor accompanies me and it's a nice alternative weekend night (often resulting in me taking Saturday nights off altogether).

Because I knew I was going to be flying out at around 11:00, and because I consider getting out of bed before 9:00 to be oppressive without ample rest, I decided to take it significantly easier: no drinking and an early night. TM2000 was out with me until about 11 and I was home at midnight.

Before bed, I ambitiously charted out the remaining tasks. Why I hadn't just gone to the gym on Thursday or packed before midnight is a mystery. I'm a man of many mysteries. And occasional indolence. But mainly mysteries.

Fri 6:02am: Ed O is awakened by his alarm clock, looks at the numbers, and decides to get a bit more sleep.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to bed until about 1:30.  I decided to pack before going to bed, but my subconscious decided not to let me sleep until significantly later. I set my alarm for 6:00 AM with every intention of rolling out of bed and going to the gym early before prepping for the trip.

In spite of the lack of energy to actually get out of bed and go to the gym, I had the energy to send a tweet to update my status before rolling over for another hour of sleep.

Fri 4:47 pm: Ed O thinks that mustaches are underrepresented in Las Vegas and is doing his best to remedy that.

In late 2008/early 2009, I had a mustache. My mustache and I had a love/hate relationship going... I loved that I was willing to sport and nurture it, but I hated that I was subject to near-daily ridicule for sporting and nurturing it. After I shaved it off, I felt like a massive social albatross had been liften from my shoulder. Or at least my upper lip.

With that being said? I am willing to dabble with a bit of facial hair now and again.

I had eschewed the razor for a couple of weeks and decided to rock a mustache for the plane ride to Vegas. As mustaches tend to do when I grow them, it lasted longer than I'd anticipated and I decided to wear it during the concert. Just because I could.

We started drinking in the early afternoon, which probably was another factor in the keeping of the mustache, as well as my odd decision to do something odd with my hair. I spiked it up oddly in a sort of messy pompadour and expected to be mocked by my friends and change it to something more conventional. 

Naturally, the opinions proferred were all positive and I let it ride.

Fri 8:27 pm:Fri 8:27pm: Ed O has to rely on his liver to carry him through... go, liver! Rely on your buddy Red Bull!

The show started at 8:00. After a robust prefunk involving numerous rum and diets and touchdowns, I was already buzzing when we arrived at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel. We had bought tickets online in a mad online dash earlier (the venue only holds 1400 people, and the Killers are kind of a big deal AND it was the first-ever show at the brand-new arena) and so we'd purchased blocks of tickets at different levels so when we split up I was on the floor with Flowers, Thor and TM2000.

Flowers only wanted to get into the beer line once, so he loaded each of us up with a pair of beers. I am not the hugest beer fan in the world, but (a) it was free, and (b) I was already sufficiently sloshed that I knew it would taste just fine.

By 8:30, though? Wow. I was hoping that the energy drink coursing through my veins would pull me through.

Saturday 1:17am: Ed O is surprised to learn that ~90% of songs played in Las Vegas implore listenerd to throw and/or keep their hands up.

The concert was great. The Killers know how to play the rock and roll music and I got to see Thor pushed around by an angry five-feet tall chick after he bumped her and spilled some of her drink. For some reason (see: already drinking for about four hours) I found it tear-rolling-down-the-cheeks hilarious.

After the concert, I stopped by and said hi to a friend of mine that is the lead singer of the go go dancers at the Hard Rock and our group split up. Thor, TM2000 and I stepped into a dance club and dance-dance-danced the night away. Well, the rest of the night and a good chunk of the morning.

I think that I've previously written about my inability to meet girls on or around a dance floor. I know I have gone into excruating detail about my lack of dancing capabilities. I still am trying to piece together some sort of connection there, so I'm gonna focus on my comrades.

TM2000 is a good dancer. I think. I'm bad enough that I'm not exactly sure what I'm seeing when I watch people dance, but he's confident and appears to know what he's doing. Plus he occasionally seems to threaten me with a c-walk challenge... and I had to google that just now to even make sure I knew I was spelling it correctly.

As for Thor...

Saturday 1:54am: Ed O wants you to dance like no one's dancing... because he probably is and can use a chuckle.

Before we get to Thor, I wanted to comment on this. I've been told that my drunk txt messages are odd because I tend to be rather fastidious about my use of grammar and syntax. Or at least use of proper grammar and syntax.

After three hours, though, of dancing and laughing (see below) after several hours of drinking? Even I make mistakes. Like txting "dancing" instead of "watching".

Saturday 2:05am: Ed O wants you to dance like no one's watching... because he probably is and needs a chuckle.

Thor is a fantastic singer. He plays piano like a pro. He plays the guitar like an angel... I think I remember angels playing guitars. 

So he's a musical guy. Great.

On Friday night/Saturday morning, I saw a new side of Thor. A dancing side.

I don't know what brought it out. I've seen him impaired from various intoxicants at different points in our friendship, but I've never seen him dance. In flip-flops. For four hours straight.

Fortunately, I saw it in Vegas. He danced. He danced up on girls. He talked to girls. He engaged in (and declared himself the winner of) a dance-off. He also attempted to dance barefoot at some point, but had enough good sense to take my advice that he didn't want to be limping around due to broken-bottlely cut-footedness.

That he ended up limping around due to extended dancing does not reduce the soundness of my advice... you just can't expect to perform a dance move I call the "Rib-breaking Baby-maker" without some soreness the next day.

Saturday 9:41am: Ed O started Day II of Vegas with horrible dreams of his friends being beaten up quite severely. :(

After coming back to my Trump hotel room (I shared a two-bedroom suite-like situation with TM2000, Thor, and Silver Hammer), Silver Hammer brought us up to speed on his night, including the fact that Buddy #1 had blood on his shirt. We've seen this before and while he wasn't beating up racists this time, he was reportedly defending Firehose's honor as an Everett firefighter.

I wasn't sure that the story exactly held water, but it clearly influenced the nightmares that I was having in the three or four hours of sleep I got. Flowers txted me at about 9:30 and I decided to get up and explore the hotel. After about seven minutes by the pool I fled back to the air-conditioned safety of non-sunburning hotel interior, and I ended up meeting up with a big chunk of the group for a buffet brunch at the Wynn around 11:00.

Saturday 12:44pm: Ed O just ate the shit out of that $30 + tax and tip buffet.

I haven't always been a big fan of buffets. I think that they either are ripoffs or they contribute to obesity. It's a bit of a no-win situation for the buffet eaters.

Vegas, though, is different, and I enjoy the buffets I've eaten there. This one was no different.

Gnocchi. Pizza. Hum bao. Omelette. More gnocci. Breads. Desserts. I consumed six or seven plates worth of food, and it was the last meal I would eat in Vegas until a Whopper in the airport about 28 hours later. 

More interesting, though, at least to me, was the odd way our collective geekiness came out as we were wrapping up our meal. I sent this tweet and within five minutes four of the six other diners at our table had commented on Facebook, and it would have been all six if Buddy #1 was not making night soil and Flowers wasn't a technophobe.

Saturday 7:49pm: Ed O is NOT pleased by the start in Portland...

After brunch I went to the pool and seemingly avoided getting burned thanks to borrowed sunscreen (and, yes, I plan on secreting it back at some point to return it to my friends). The pool was just OK, but it was a dramatic change in weather from the Seattle blah weather.

After another prefunk starting around 3:00, Buddy #1, Firehose and I went to the Wynn to watch the Portland Trail Blazers first playoff game in five years. I am a huge Blazers fan and I was excited to see them return to action in a home matchup against the Rockets.

Things did not go well. I don't want to talk about it.

I ended up winning $10 on video poker, getting a couple of free drinks in the process, and that was the extent of my gambling ventures for the weekend.

Saturday 11:33pm: Ed O is having a "big hair" evening.

After the Blazers got blown out and I won the fortune, we headed back to the Trump to get changed and meet up with the rest of the crew on the Strip. 

I noted early, as part of the concert preparedness, I sort of spiked my hair up. Well, probably because I had been drinking for several hours, when I changed into post-NBA Playoffs attire my hair seemed flat. Boring. 

My solution? More product. My hair is pretty thick and it can be unruly, but Saturday night was ridiculous. I couldn't get it to be interesting as half-way between flat against my head and spiked up, so I spiked it up. All of it. It was pretty ridiculous.

I also zapped the 'stache.

Sunday 2:07am: Ed O finds few things more frustrating in life than trying to sing karaoke when he has a fried voice.

Buddy #1, Firehose and I took a cab to the Imperial Palace to sing karaoke. It is on the strip, and it's definitely a step down from the Trump and the hotels around it... people in the casino were dressed like (*gasp*) tourists, rather than people who were going out for table service at dance clubs. It wasn't better or worse (OK, yes, it was worse) but it definitely was different.

I'd sung karaoke once before in Vegas, in October of 2007 with TM2000 when we went to Ellis Island karaoke. Ellis Island is definitely focused on locals... it's off the strip and a bit dive-ish. I actually enjoyed the experience, but one of Firehose's buddies recommended the Imperial Palace and so B#1/Firehose/TM2000/Flowers/Thor/I ended up hanging around the karaoke area for a couple of hours before we temporarily split up for a while.

The thing is that my voice was fried. It was bad. I had sung along at the top of my lungs with most of the Killers' songs (except the one or two I didn't know, and a pair of brief distractions that rendered my mouth unavailable). I had laughed my left lung out at the dance club the night before. I was not used to smoke wafting into my face. I didn't sleep much the night before. I was terrifically dehydrated because the tap water was too hard and the bottled water too expensive for my cheap ass.

But I tried. I sang "Stayin' Alive" at about 30% volume so I wouldn't blow my remaining voice out. The other guys rocked their songs. Good times were had. Incredibly strong touchdowns soothed the pain of my inability to sing as well as I'd have liked.

Sunday 3:26am: Ed O just ran train on his hair. Dear Lord.

First of all, I'm not going to apologize for blaspheming. 

Secondly, I am not going to explain running train. If you don't know what running train is in a general sense, you are probably better off NOT knowing.

In this context, which I created after much alcohol and little sleep the night before, I meant "really fucked up in a weird way".

It was late. I was feeling good. My body was awake but much of my mind slept. And I don't mean in a "we only use 3% of our brains and therefore can't open shrink-wrapped DVD boxes with telekenisis" kind of way... I mean in a "do something first, think about it later" kind of way.

My hair was already spiky. It had settled down due to gravity, but it was still way weirder than I normally wore it. The product remained intact, though, and when I re-spiked it at about 3:30 AM it made me look ridiculous.

But it got me attention, I guess. And in Vegas isn't that part of the fun?

Sunday 3:51am: Ed O Someone just told me I looked like "Twilight". Then acquaintances tried to settle it down. They have no idea that my hair, aided by hair product from 7 Salon, has achieved consciousness

It's fun to talk to people and ask who they've been told they look like. Presumably most of us have been told we look like a sibling or a parent, but it's much more interesting when someone is told they look like someone famous, like Snoop Dogg. Or Flavor Flav. Or Jason "White Chocolate" Williams.

Most of the time when people ask me that question, I don't have a good answer. When someone tells me I look familiar, I chalk it up to having rather unremarkable features. I suppose I've been told that I look like Ron Livingston a bit... but as much as everyone loves Office Space, that's just not that exciting of a name to throw out there as my celebrity doppleganger.

Lately, though? This has changed a bit. There have been a pair of celebrities that I've been told I look like. They're both guys... that's the good news. The bad news is the distinct lack of testonsterone in either person. One step at a time, I suppose.

The first guy is Adam Lambert from American Idol. I don't watch the show and while I've heard him sing (and think he's very very good) I don't have enough data to really know if I think he looks like my younger brother. The odd thing is that of the eight or ten people who have told me that he reminds them of me, they're almost all people that I know pretty well... they say he talks like me and looks like me and smiles like me. I dunno. I'm pretty sure he doesn't like girls like me. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

The second comparison actually is pretty recent. Like last night. Immediately after I spiked my hair out ridiculously.

I've never read the Twilight books. I've never seen the Twilight movie. But I know that Edward Cullen is a major character, a vampire that does something that makes young women everywhere quiver and everyone else wonder if he's gay or not.

At the Wynn I watched B#1 play craps for a few minutes before looking for my next adventure. I got about 10 steps from the table when someone random told me I looked like "Twilight". I tweeted it because it was funny to me.

About ten steps further, I was called "Edward Cullen" by a few cute Mexicanas. I was introduced to a pair of prostitutes. The rest of the gang arrived, and I had one of the most interesting "get a new friend back to her hotel room in one piece" adventures... ever.

Hopefully that story will be told tomorrow. I plan on including at least one map. I know the kids like the maps. Right now, though? I should sleep. I've got about 9 hours in the last three nights combined... yay, Vegas!