Las Vegas Recap

I've acctually found this post rather hard to write. Everytime I sit down to blog, it just won't happen... Mostly I'm not sure what to say.

Dad and I didn't really do much. I hadn't seen him in a year and a half, and before that, for three years. It used to be that I'd see him every school holiday that there was, two weeks here, a whole summer there... If I took out a map of Florida I could pick half a dozen places I've lived... And Las Vegas, at least three... But in the last few years things have become harder. I've got responsibilities and bills to pay, so I can't just lark off for two months like I used to, which Dad can't seem to understand. Like all parents, I think he thinks I'm still small enough to swing around in his arms, or ride the carosel.

What we did do was go out with my friends, who also happened to be in town. That was the first night, and before we met up with them, Dad and I had a few rituals to comeplete. There are some things that we always do, when we get together, some even on specific days. Out in Vegas it's very important that the first thing we do is go to the Orleans and eat at their Buffet. Then we went to the International Marketplace to buy crazy Asian cookies and candies.

Saturday I'm not sure what we did; I was pretty tired after the plane flight and sleeping on the air matress (it takes a few days to get used to that thing). We did go to the Fantastic Swap Meet (another traditional stop) where I looked at the Jackalopes and found a nice Jade Rat. I think that might have been the night that we were supposed to see Tom Jones (primo free seats in the Lighting Booth, curtosy of a friend of Dad's who works there), but we got the time mixed up and missed the show. Which was fine with me, I got to see the MGM Lions, and Dad and I decided to be Serious Gamblers that night... We even had fun coming up with a Gambling Code of Luck, and going to and from Casinos all night as our Luck Code determined. I think I put about a dollar in the machines total, and whenever I got back down to that dollar I'd take it back out (which confused Dad. evidently the point of gambling is to just give your money to the Casino, instead of taking it home with you). Dad snuck a five into the machine I was playing at the Excalabur, and when we finally went home around four in the morning Atlanta time, I had seven dollars total.

Evidently my Lucky Gambling Code worked.

Next... I'm not sure. I think Joey came over Sunday (he's my Dad's Ex-Girlfriend's kid that she had with her Ex-Husband, after they were divorced. for simplicity sometimes I just refer to him as my little brother.) He wanted to watch Cars, which I found nightmarishly bad... I didn't even make it all the way through the drive-though-the-town-scene. Out of pity my Dad switched the video to Night at the Museum. Which was pretty freaking awesome, and probably illegal. I have no idea where he got his copy.

Sometime durring the week Dad acctually had a bunch of work to do in the mornings, and so he did it, and I worked on my Laptop when it would stay on, and I wrote about twenty more pages of "For the Glory of Rome". Introduced a new character, and finished a gladiator fight, and some other plot-forwarding things happened... But, when Dad wasn't working he kept getting these middle-of-the-night Drunk Dialing calls. From a cliant of his.

She'd call, blitzed, and leave a six minute message about Dad cutting her checks for thousands of dollars to give to some animal shelter in Kansas that was building her a log cabin. Then, she'd "hang up" and forget to press the end button, and there'd be several minutes of muttering and loud background music from Country Music Television, before she'd drunkenly slur a few curse words and fumble to turn off the phone.

We had to go visit her, to have her sign something. Dad's getting her house refinanced, I think, and what a house it was. I mean, it wasn't a mansion, but it was a grand old house, something like in an old black and white movie. There was a sweeping staircase, and a lowered living room with a pool table, and not many windows so it was dark and cool in there. The kind of dark and cool that you pray and hope for come hot summer months. The kind of cool and dark that festers alcoholism like Arkham festers mind rending horrors. She had this huge dog, with long hair, that hadn't been brushed in forever (her name was Bambi. Dad told me Bambi bit him once, but I've never been bitten and that record didn't change while I was in the house). The woman who lived there was loud, and cheerful, and focusedly graceful, walking with a gleeful determination not to grab the walls for help. She wanted to hug me a lot, and kept telling me how beautiful I was. What Dad needed her to sign was some kind of paper having to do with her truck that, suprise surprise, she's not allowed to drive by ruling of the courts. She tells Dad the truck isn't there. Dad asks where it is. She gleefully watches television and tells us a friend drove her to a bar the other night, and drove her home, and then she let him borrow the car.

Dad asks what friend is this? We need the car here to get the number off it, for the form. She says she doesn't know. Nor does she know when the car is coming back. Or where it is. When Dad asks her for some other form, she gestures to this massive chest of drawers where she keeps all her important documents. She has Dad go through them because CMT is wayyyyy to interesting right now.

I'm sure this sounds pointless here, but it'll come to in a second.

See, seeing this woman bothered me. Deeply. And not just in a strange-person-hugging-me way. She's got enough money from her divorce that she never has to work again, and she never really had to work in the first place. She's got the house from the divorce (oh, and while I was there she told me the biggest piece of advice *ever*(in her mind), that it's just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor one) and a pool, and Bambi, and her Alimony. I looked at her, and I realized this was exactly what she wanted.

All of her life, summed up quickly; money enough to buy all the alcohol she wanted, and CMT. Maybe not sum up, but...

And I think thats how most people would take it, given the chance. No great thoughts, no great conversations, no trip to Paris (I'm trying to quote Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters here, about the choice between a trip to Paris and a washer-dryer set, and how most people will take the second choice because you have something to show for it), no great novels read or written, no world cruises, no great foods tastes....

They'd take the money for the alcohol and go watch TV until they die.

And it was a terrible moment thinking this. How alone am I in wanting a great life, one filled with meaning, and reason, and grace, and books, and dogs, and museums, and classical music, and punk rock... I want to read the Unabridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo! I want to dig up Dinosaurs! I want to see Greece and Rome and go to Oxford! I want to live in Japan for a year! I want to learn Esperanto! I want to make the best sellers list!

And theres this woman sitting in her house in Las Vegas babbling to us about thousand dollar checks, and can we get her some cigarettes, and... She kept saying our names, and saying "Hey", and dialing people on the phone... It was like a train wreck crashing into a fireworks truck, basically.

We escaped, barely, but had to go back later in the week to have her house surveyed or valued or something, and she threw chinese food in her nice pool and kicked her dog (so we could see how funny it was when Bambi was wet from falling in the pool) and locked Dad in the backyard and gave me her truck....

*shakes head*

I'm sure this somehow ties in with Cliff's Let's not congratulate the High School Graduates rant. Modern people don't even aspire to mediocrity, most of them just slink into the most obscure, uninlightened way to die...

Dad and I went to the movies and saw the Number 23 and Smoking Aces, which were both pretty good. Smoking Aces looses it's manic blow everything up attitude about ten minutes from the end, but despite Dad's dislike of the ending I think that it ends on an almost happy note. Sometimes, there isn't a happy way out, and you have to stand alone and do what you think is right, and the main character does that. Hooray him. Number 23, is just about almost brilliant, until the big reveal. Whoever did all the number theory stuff is on the ball, but once you get to the end and find out whats happening you kinda loose interest... It's all vaguely supernatural and scary and then... Oh hey, suprise, it's not really.

The only other thing I can think to talk about Las Vegas was this piece of Cake I had at the Aladdin Casino. To go on the Buffet there is $24 a person, and all the food is really good. However, there's this one piece of cake there thats worth the entire $24, just for one slice. It was three very thin layers of black-as-the-devil's-nightgown chocolate cake, and between them was this sweetly dark choclate sauce that somehow wasn't stiff enough to even vaguely be called frosting, but was way too liquid to be sitting between all the cake layers as thick as it was without running out the sides. And the whole outside of the cake was covered in a thin light chocolate mousse, over which a glassy black chocolate ganache had been poured, but wasn't running off.

I have no idea how the chef did it, because even as I understood all the ways chocolate had been combined into one thing of glory, it all seemed so impossible. The ganache wasn't dripping off the cake, nor was it making the mousse float up or come apart. The chocolate between the layers was as syrupy as the ganache was, but somehow was there in quantity to hold up the cake... It must have taken me twenty minutes to eat the slice, it was so good, and I took a picture of it with my cell phone.

I don't know, basically. I'm going to go read "Journey to the West" and eat dinner. And avoid alcohol for a little while longer.