Oh yeah, gotta re-start this thing.....

SO, was last talkin' about the trip to The States.

The final night in Vegas at the former Sahara hotel and casino (NOW called "The SLS" or some shit like that)......

Well, after three straight nights of dancin' on top of the bar, drinkin' and gamblin' and such in old Downtown Las Vegas.....I realised that I ain't as young as I used to be!  

Friday around noon, crawled from Downtown (where I had been ensconced for the previous three nights) to the SLS.  Friendly, polite enuff folk at the front desk.  Buncha Millennial Hipsters roaming the hallways, with a smattering of fifty-somethings TRYING to look like neo-hippies....just a weird vibe.

Didn't like it at all....

I jes' don't dig places like this!  If I wanted THIS, I'd be in SouthEast Portland, Oregon or Brooklyn or some shit.....I like my OOOLD-skool, smoky, dingy, granny-playin'-the-slots-with-her-ciggie-in-one-hand-and-her-oxygen-tank-in-the-other types of places!  The Stardust!  The Western!  The El Cortez!!

Thass MY Vegas.....this place sure as hell wasn't....

....but, shit - it was a Friday Night in Las Vegas and I got this place on Hotwire for less than fiddy bucks, sooooo.......

Git my room key and was rudely awakened outta my hungover daze by THEE most bizarre elevators that had the inside walls plastered with photo shoots that look like they were ripped straight outta "Millennial Hipster Weekly" magazine........

......I mean, drinkin' Gin 'n Tonics, smokin' filterless ciggies, rolling dice at the tables at THEE LAST final remaining bastion of old-time Rat-Pack Vegas, The El Cortez....simply enjoyin' life......and then, the next morning, I get assaulted with THIS???
  

Well, after destroying my liver, lungs, and sanity the past three nights, the IDEA of a cigarette, a beer or even SEEING a slot machine just made me physically ill, so I figgered that hiding in my room under the blankets playing on The Interwebs would not be such a bad idea.......

....'cept the Wi-Fi didn't work!The Wi-Fi was nearly non-existent! When it DID work, it CRAWLED. Called the Front Desk about this and waited (literally) 90 minutes for somebody to answer the phone!!  Finally, somebody answered, and they said that they'd send somebody up to my room. 45 minutes later, a very pleasant and polite Beatnik-y looking guy with a beret and goatee (I kid you not) does a quik analysis and tells me the system is overloaded as the hotel is at 100% capacity!! Tells me he's going to file a work order for this tonight!

Damm.......what a hoppin' place THIS must be!  Wonderin' HOW the goddamm casino itself makes any ca$h if everybody's up in their rooms streamin' shit online???

Gave up, decided to crawl into bed to sooth the punishment from the sins of the past three nights, and watch "The Interview" on my Netbook.

Now, when I am deathly hungover straight the fuck outta my skull, EVERYTHING is funny!  Schindler's List would be funny! Shit, one time some years ago, after a particularly harsh night at the Avi Hotel and Casino (located at the point where Nevada meets both, California and Arizona), the next day I went to their cinema inside the casino and watched Harold and Kumar Go To Guantanamo Bay (one of THEE DUMBEST, most idiotic and unfunny films EVER made) and I was so hungover, I pissed myself from laffing so hard [ http://skooter-on-101.blogspot.com/2008/05/day-nine.html ]!!

Sadly, The Interview didn't have that ability!

It was soooo HORRIBLE, I wanted the Goddamm PIRATES THAT I TORRENTED THE MOVIE FROM to PAY ME for my pain and suffering from watching that steaming heap of shit!

Next day, jumped in the car, went to BW-3, ate some shitty, under-cooked wings and caught the flight back to PDX.....

Final thoughts about the trip back to The States in a week or so.....

-E-

VEGA$!!!!!

Gawddamm, I GOTS ta git back to writing.....

In any respect, looking at a 5+ year backlog of University graduates in my genre (INCLUDING several who are holders of graduate school degrees) who have been unemployed ever since getting out of college due to the economic DEpression, and after having sent (NOT exaggerating here) several hunnred resumes and applications over the past few years to various places advertising position openings for which I was either equally qualified or over-qualified for, and getting a grand total of FOUR FUCKING INTERVIEWS outta that stack of hunnreds of resumes and applications shipped out, I had pretty much come to the realization that I'm pretty much stuck in Viet Nam!

I mean, yeah, hell, SURE the economy is creating hunnreds of thousands of new jobs every month as of January, 2015!!

But, do I REALLY wanna try to support a family of four on eight buxx an hour, since that is what the VAST MAJORITY of these new jobs ARE?

Errrmm.......no!

So, with THAT factual reality in mind, I took the hammer to the piggy bank and decided to bring my wife to The States since A) - She's never been there before and B) - She'll most likely never have a chance to go again!

Well, four weeks into the seven week trip,  we've discovered a few things -

• Tam does NOT like being trapped in a car on a road trip for more than three hours MAX!!!!
• Tam cannot eat American food - it is too sugary AND, yet, too salty for her tastes!!  So, it was Asian food on almost every stop on the Western road trip segment of this adventure!
• A disproportionate number of country-western songs that have been manufactured in the past five years seem to talk about a crazy woman or crazy women.......irregardless of whether a man or a woman is singing the song!!  (Got stuck listening to a lotta Country-Western on the radio on the road trip segment, as this is on Tam's new top three list of the best things about The United States, with thrift stores and the friendliness of the people)
• Aridity does weird things to my hair....

Soooo, regarding the car-ride part, I took Tam back to Portland and dropped off the rental car and flew to Vegas myself forra few days!  THEE ORIGINAL loop was supposed to go PDX-Rapid City-Denver-Albuquerque-Flagstaff-Route 66-Las Vegas-Reno-PDX, but after the Portland-to-Rapid-City segment, Tam pretty much declared that she'd had enough!!!!  So, after Denver, we headed back to Portland and I bought a flight to Vegas!

Now, I loves me sum drinkin', smokin' and gamblin' (and, today, it is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to find places where you are allowed to do ALL THREE AT THE SAME TIME), so I head to Vegas forra few days whenever I come back to The States! Pissing away a few dollars by strategically MILKING THEE LIVING HELL outta the penny machines ensures that I get several free beers and several free nights in the hotel room!

Well, on this trip, we had ended the road trip segment at THEE worst possible time, as Vegas is doing, like, MULTIPLE conventions next week (which is when I am slated to fly there) and that I could only git ONE free room night at my normal hotel and got a cheapie-cheapie rate on two other nights!

SOOOO, THAT left me with one night (Friday night - ALWAYS an expensive bitch in Vegas!!!!!!) to obtain lodging for!

Well, I had cleared up a LOTTA paperwork in The United States that I hadta deal wiff on this trip, so it doesn't look like I'll be back to The States for AT LEAST two, meebee three or four years!  So, I figgered - fuck it!!  Let's splurge!!

So, I rolled dice on Hotwire and was given the old Sahara Hotel and casino at the top of The Strip!  But it wasn't The Sahara anymore!

You see, Vegas totally and radically re-invents itself and its marketing every five years!  In the mid-nineties, it was "Disneyland-In-The-Desert", proclaiming that Vegas IS INDEED VERY FAMILY-FRIENDLY!

THAT went over like a fart in church.....'specially when the casino Corporate conglomerates discovered that.....errrmm......uhhhh......kids really don't gamble that much!

So, then they changed to the risque - "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" (apparently they haven't seen the film "Very Bad Things").....and NOW????

Today??

They are laying OFFA the gamblin' and now pushing Vegas AS AN EXOTIC NIGHTCLUB LOCALE rivaling South Beach for MILLENNIALS!!!

Yep.....thass correct!  (Palm gets slapped to forehead)!

Soooooo.....back to The Sahara!

Well, thee first time I had ever gone to Vegas was when my parents were invited to my cousin's wedding, and I, well, kinda invited myself along for the ride!  Flew from Denver to Vegas and I booked a room in the Sahara!  This was 1998 and I had known NOTHING AT ALL about Vegas!

I had seen apparently thee final gasp of The Sahara's exotic, Moroccan 1950s Rat Pack splendor, as, shortly thereafter, it would re-invent itself into thee shittiest, gaudiest NASCAR-themed dump complete wiff one dollar hot dogs and one dollar Budweisers and would wrap a chain around her grand exterior with a FUCKING ROLLER-COASTER!!

THAT pretty much was so appalling to me, that I hadn't stayed there since!

Well, The Sahara breathed its final breath in 2010!  The structure remained vacant forra few years and had JUST opened up a few months ago as THEE latest and hottest place for Millennials to see and be seen nightclubbing in Vegas!  Some bullshit now called "SLS" or some shit like that!

Did ANYBODY TELL these Einsteins at Vegas Marketing that the 21-30 year-olds are a hunnred grand in student loan debt and have been living in their parents basements for thee past five years??

I'll get ya a report on it when I arrive at the former Sahara on Friday!

THIS should be interesting.....

-E-

For further reading on this topic, I cannot recommend enough an awesome book by Marc Cooper called The Last Honest Place In America