Las Vegas

Oh baby!!

Obviously this isn't quite Fresno related, but hey, that means it's better.

So we went to the Fresno Grizzlies game Thursday night. I had free tickets to Thirsty Thursdays, Hell yea!! Turns out the road team was none other than the Las Vegas blah blah blahs. We got a couple beers in us and suddenly my buddies were yelling; "Let's get on the f-in team bus and go to Vegas!"

And we did!!!!...

Okay, not really. But we went home and drove to Vegas on a whim, arriving around 4 a.m. GREAT way to start a weekend.

First off, I've been to Vegas before, but I've never been impressed with it. I'm not a gambler and that doesn't help, but the scene is what really sort of perplexed me. Hardly anyone we saw was young, or even well dressed. At least 75% of the clientele at our hotel was older overweight blue-collar workers. Forget Las Vegas, call it Middle Ageas.

More importantly, I live for spontaneity (obviously) and excitement that's at least a little off the beaten path. I mean, if it ain't off the path at all, how can it really be exciting right? And certainly Vegas is seen as an exciting place. But dude, it was such an obviously controlled environment. You walk around in maze-like buildings. You drink out in the open. You play various games which are obviously designed so the house wins. And it's all there to take your money. Every bit of it. It just seems boring.

Anyway, the guys I went with were the most outgoing dudes I've ever met. They dominated the conversation everywhere they went, and they won most of their bets out of sheer confidence. Guys like that don't usually hang out with writers and vice-versa, so even as a non-gambler it was fascinating to just watch how they interacted with people.

One of them got down 500 dollars in a roulette game about 30 minutes after we arrived. He didn't even break a sweat. I once lost 5 dollars betting on a football game and got so mad that I cussed out the winner for his brief entry into the fool's paradise, and later apologized. So how this guy could do that I'll never understand.

By the end of the weekend both claimed they had actually made money, and lots of it. I think one said he made 500 overall and the other came out up 300. I don't guess they were lying, though I didn't keep track or anything.

Everything else I could say about the trip is probably not safe for the internet, but yea Vegas ain't for me, at least not until I hit my mid-life crisis.

Oh, oh yea. And whenever we told people at the tables we were from Fresno their eyes got wide and they said something about how lame it was. And I agreed wholeheartedly.