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Hey Baby let’s go to Vegas
Posted by holly on Jul 1, 2011 in Blog
We called it The Hangover part 3 - The Birthday. And we made him wear a
wolf t-shirt to show the world he was no longer a "one man Wolf Pack".
The twist was that instead of the four of us trying to get home from
Vegas, most of the drama was in the getting there. But there was a "huh,
why am I waking up in the middle of the night...and what are you doing to
me?" moment.
You see, up until 5am on the morning of his birthday, Fraser, the man of
honour had no idea he was going to Las Vegas. In less than an hour, to be
exact. Epic birthday present of epicness. It wasn't even my surprise, or
my Husband, but I was super excited just to be part of it. The planning
had been months in the making, and I have gotta give my best friend some
serious credit for managing to somehow book the trip, arrange it with Eric
and I, set up a ride to/from the airport and pack his suitcase, all
without her husband ever suspecting a thing. The only (weak) red flag
that had gone up in his mind was that he thought some of his clothes may
have been missing, but he just assumed they were in the laundry and let it
slide. The night before Eric and I had gone over for our usual friday
night Rockband extravaganza, and planned on crashing on their hideabed
under the guise that we were going to be too drunk to drive. Nothing
remotely unusual there. Except that at midnight we all started getting
suddenly really, really sleepy, but luckily our horrible overacting and
really dramatic yawns and stretches worked, and we were able to get some
shut-eye before our middle of the night wake up call.
Long story short, he had a happy, still asleep grin on his face when we
loaded him on the plane, and by noon we were in shorts and beginning that
great Vegas passtime, drinking, in a booth at Hooters. When in Vegas, go
as classy as possible, right?
Us girls had been to Vegas before, but both guys were Vegas virgins, so
we wasted no time showing them how to navigate the maze of Mexicans
handing out hooker cards (collect all 10,345 for a free t-shirt! No, not
really, but that would make all the guys collecting them slightly less
perverted). Funny story - we were all trying to collect a pile of these
to give as a free gift to a friend back in Vancouver (I swear... oh, never
mind...), so I reached for one as we walked past, and the guy wouldn't
give one to me because I was a woman! Sorry, lesbians, apparently Vegas
won't let you call 1-800-LIVEGIRLS.
Vegas is such a surreal place. Everything is oversized, flashy and
gimmicky, like Disneyland with exposed breasts. A place where everybody
walks around with their yard-ling frozen margarita permenently attached to
their lip and either a lizzardy brown tan that definately is not supposed
to appear in nature or clothes way, way too tight for the amount of flesh
squished into them. And if you tick both boxes... now that's just wrong,
people, wrong! I'm a shorts and tank tops kinda girl, and don't get me
wrong, I like my tanks pretty low cut and my shorts well above my knees,
but Vegas always makes me feel overdressed. Dramatically overdressed.
Unless I'm standing next to a fully decked out bride (Vegas bride count
this trip - 7) sweltering in the heat and trying to look fabulous (and/or
trashy), then I feel underdressed and confused as to how my invite got
lost in the mail. Is it just me, or is Vegas the most impersonal place to
get married? It makes a wedding a production line event there.
But I digress. Back to The Birthday. The one thing Fraser had told his
wife he wanted to do if he was ever in Las Vegas was to see Carrot Top, so
we made sure we had third row seats on birthday night. Let me just say,
Carrot Top was freaking hillarious. The posters tout him as "Vegas' #1
act" for _ many years running, and I can see why. It's approachable
humour, not too dirty, not too clean, not too overpriced and just straight
up funny. But he is one weird looking dude up close! I am so glad we did
that. He had this one joke about how the theme song to Las Vegas should
be The Proclaimers' "I would walk 500 miles", because all you do all day
is walk. You walk the Strip, where the hotels are so big it feels like
half a mile just to get from the Paris to Bally's next door, you walk
through the massive casinos, and then you walk down one of those endless
hallways from your nightmares with nothing but a thousand doors to finally
find your hotel room, which is always in the other direction that you
originally turned. By the end of that first day we were all coated in
that wonderful Vegas combination of sunscreen, sweat and casino smoke, had
an "oh my god I've been up since 5 and drinking since noon" glazed look in
our eyes, and our feet were actually blistered from all that walking in
the wrong shoes. Eric turned to me as we got back to our room and
sleepily commented that he didn't care what we did the next day, but could
we take a cab there?
Day two began with the other Vegas passtime (aside from drinking,
gambling, and gorging on buffets - which we didn't do, BTW. The buffets,
anyway. Not yet) as we headed to the half price ticket booth to secure
discounted day-of tickets to Le Reve. From there it was to the Venetian
for a gondola ride. I love that! And then we walked. And gambled. And
walked. And gambled. My casino luck in the past had been a consistant
thirty seconds to watch my $20 dissappear, after which I gave up and
watched everyone else have fun. Not this trip, baby! While the guys
watched the Canucks' playoff game at the diner in the Treasure Island, I
won $200 on the penny slots, and by the time we went home was up over
$400! We all did pretty good, actually, winning over $1000 between the 4
of us. Booyeah! So we celebreated with a ridiculously overpriced steak
dinner at Ruth's Chris Steak House (I will never understand that
restaurant name. Is a Chris Steak something that belongs to Ruth? Or is
it Ruth Chris' Steak House and someone put the apostrophe in the wrong
place? And what the hell is a Chris Steak? Looked like beef to me?
Needless to say, I had the chicken, just to be safe).
Everyone kept telling us Le Reve was the best show in Vegas. For that
price it had damn well better be! Well, we almost didn't get to see it.
We get to the Wynn, find the theatre and I reach in my purse to pull out
the tickets... only to find the zipper stuck. Not just a little stuck, but
terminally, can't even stick a finger in there to wiggle out the tickets
stuck. So we drop to our knees, pulling and yanking and trying to tear my
purse appart with our bare hands, which was then followed up with us
trying to hack into my purse with keys. This is when security showed up
and told us we couldn't sit on the floor in the Wynn. Apparently hacking
at a purse that may or may not have been ours was totally okay, but
sitting on the floor was just wrong. After a lot of elbow grease we
successfully ripped the zipper apart, shredded my purse, got the tickets
and enjoyed the show. Had to hold my purse closed for the rest of the
trip, but enjoyed the show. It was a kind of aerial acrobatics/high
dive/synchronized swimming/ballroom dancing show (try to picture that, I
dare you), but it was actually pretty cool. I'm not a fan of any of the
Cirque Du Soleil shows, they're just not my cup of tea, but this was
pretty cool.
Ironically, while all this was going down, the Billboard Music Awards
were going down at our hotel, the MGM Grand. Who knows, had we stayed
closer to the hotel we might have rubbed elbows with Rihanna or been able
to tell Britney that she's shorter, but just as slutty in person. But
alas...no.
Day three, the finale, dawned with us finally hitting a Vegas buffet.
Shit that was a lot of food. Good, but a lot of food. And you feel
obligated to eat it all to justify the $30/head price tag. In an
overstuffed syrup induced stupor we then hopped a taxi to do something I
never thought I would ever do - fire machine guns. Not toy guns, not
paintball guns, but big ass, turn the wrong way your doing life for
manslaughter machine guns. The ads for the Gun Store were everywhere, so
we figured, what the hell. The boy went for the giant scare the shit out
of me packages, firing things that looked like they could take down
passing aircraft, but the girls stuck with the "Ladies package" firing a
nice, feel like a TV detective handgun and a pink AK-47. Not only was it
pink, but it had a sticker of Hello Kitty holding a machine gun on the
butt. No joke. I have pictures. Have to admit I was shaking during the
actual firing, but it was fun. The feeling of power it gives you is a
rush, and that adrenaline is actually kind of unnerving. We should have
considered the fact that we then had to fly home with gunshot residue on
our hands, but luckily we made it past the dogs all right.
In the taxi back to the hotel, we all had drinks to replenish our lost
fluids from the two-hour wait at the Gun Store, and our taxi driver, while
stopped at a light, actually used the clippy part of his seatbelt to open
a beer bottle for Fraser. Amazing. He got a good tip.
Then it was suddenly time to go home and back to work and reality the
next day. We were all packed and ready, and upon arrival at the airport
my friend tells the online boardingpass printer thing that we're
transporting dangerous goods. Seriously. One wrong button press and you
get this voucher telling you to report to the check in counter for
additional screening. Visions of cavity searches and that aforementioned
gunpowder residue test start flashing before my eyes, but luckily this
must happen all the time, because the gate agent believed us that it was
just a little mistake and printed out our boarding passes without problem.
Will keep that in mind if I'm ever on the lam from the po-po.
And as quickly as The Birthday had begun, it was over. Back in Vancouver
we collapsed into our beds, only to wake up the next morning and wonder if
it was all a dream. But no. The free camo tee from the Gun Store and the
extra $400 proved it was real. And so worth it. What a great birthday to
Fraz. And, just for the record, if anyone ever wants to surprise me on my
birthday with a vacation, the date is August 28th