The Charriot of Choice.
"Viva… Las Vegas…"
The words rang out in a Hi-Fi digital CD reproduction of a Low-Fi analog prehistoric recording from a time when the line "Elvis has left the building" wasn’t funny yet. The King sang through two channels of sound, moving to four speakers, each with their own amplifier that helped boost, boost, boost the volume, loud enough for the tourists on the street around us to know that yes, we were tourists, too. Although we were tourists with our own car. Tourists in the tackiest, cheesiest, most hedonistic city on the entire planet. And the second most in the galaxy, though I hear there’s a resort on Talcum Absorbi 9 that has Vegas beat. More sequins.
Faust and I had recently optioned a book (see the bio section). Much of this book takes place in Vegas, and a significant portion takes place on the drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. So, in an attempt to better understand the story and characters we were working with, I decided to recreate the road trip. But while the fictional protagonists went in a beat up Chevy Suburban, and traveled solely to overcome their deadly foe, I modernized the trip to a 300ZX T-Top and to simultaneously celebrate (a.k.a. mourn) my 30th birthday.
The Charriot of Choice.
Joining me in this roadtrip of sin was my longtime friend Marty. (Faust and Justine flew out to Vegas and met us a few days later.) Marty caught a morning flight from Washington, D.C., so the trip officially began at LAX.
Marty is Evil. (Mike, you know I'm evil, right? You know this, and you accept this, yes?)
I mean this in the most positive, exciting, fun-filled way that I can. Hell, it’s why we’re friends. [Marty's note: That, and the monthly check from Mike's mother.] One of the first things he asked me at the airport was if I had ever seen a superball travel at 80 MPH. He assured me that my answer would be an affirmative one by the end of the trip, and to make sure I took the top off my car.
Marty's self-portrait. Taken by placing his camera on my dashboard and snapping his own picture.
The trip began uneventfully. I drove. And drove. And drove. Through gorgeous desert scenery that stayed in crisp focus even at 90+ MPH. The music was cranking, the wind was blowing in through the T-Top, and we were "chasing the lines" all the way down the highway.
By the way, superballs are those little rubber doohickies you can buy at any grocery store vending machine for a dime. They are a mad scientist’s failed experiment in perpetual motion (also known as Reaganomics), and are small enough and just-harmless-enough to be allowed through airport security checkpoints. And when thrown out the top of a car travelling at 90 MPH, they do their damndest to keep up. They’re right with you for a couple of bounces, too, before they die a fiery death by the side of the road and end up eventually being passed through the digestive system of some incredibly stupid desert dwelling lifeform. But you’d have to be pretty low on the food chain to live in the desert anyway. Go figure.
Marty Shows Off his SuperBalls. Shame he can't have children any more, but boy did they bounce!
The road to Vegas is long and paved with bad intentions. Lots of trucks, lots of desert, lots of nothing. Then more nothing. Then exits with names like Zzyzx. And you thought "Mental Snot" was a bad name. We’re off to see the Zzyzx, the wonderful Zzyzx of Zx. Hmm, maybe it’s an homage to my car, the 300ZX? They both end in the same last two letters… hmmmmmm. Hmmmmm….. (hey, let me dream.)
On the way to Vegas is a small town named Baker, one of the stops in the book. Not mentioned in the book, however, is that Baker is home to the world’s largest thermometer. A massive, Eiffel Tower sized thing that looks like an elephant’s worst nightmare or a drag queen’s best friend. The sign is part of a sweet roll business… called Bun Boy. Yes, that’s right. BUN BOY has a gargantuan anal thermometer decked out in neon. I am not making this up. Even if I did refuse to take a picture (read, forgot to take a picture). Go see for yourself, but bring lots of lubrication. It does not look particularly cozy.
Shortly after Baker, we hit the Nevada border, marked by such wonderful subtle hints like… oh, three casinos. Here is where I learned that yes, it is possible to let a slot machine suck $10 down the drain in less than two minutes.
I hate slot machines. I learned this later on my Vegas exploration. They make no sense. We (read, suckers) give money to a machine, and it then tells us if we’ve won or lost. Uh, yeah. Tell you what, next time you feel a need to gamble, I’ll be your one-armed bandit. Come to papa. Give me ten dollars, move my arm down a few degrees, and I’ll make some highly amusing beeping sounds for a few seconds. When I finish, I’ll tell you who gets to keep the money. Oh yeah, and if you win the jackpot, I’ll personally hand you $820,013,252.13. And don’t be afraid to keep playing even after you’ve given me more money than that, because you never know! The very next pull might be the winning one!
[Marty's note: The key to understanding slot machines is to recognize that they are evil. And one thing evil does well is recognize other evil. Case in point; Mike could sit there and feed Andrew Jackons into the slots all day, and not get them to beep back at him. Where as I, being evil, could casually lean over from the bar where I enjoyed my tequila and OJ (it's not just for breakfast), insert 1 GW into a randomly selected device, and receive 10 back. Try as I might, I could never actually loose those 10 tokens. The machines, recognizing evil, paid homage by spitting out tokens to me, 2 for 1. Any tokens handed to Mike would immediately be forfeited, as if the machines were offended that I had shared their bounty.]
(Mike’s rebuttal: I did win 5-times my initial bet in a nickel machine once, which responded with, yes, five nickels. And just to say I did it, I went right up to the cashier and changed those five nickels into one quarter, and walked away ahead. Though I then lost the quarter later on that night when, after refusing to spend it in another slot machine, it jumped out of my pocket and into the anus of the giant, annoying neon clown outside the Circus Circus. The clown smiled and said thank you.)
From the border town to the Final Destination takes about an hour by car, which means I made it in 30 minutes. Like the rest of Vegas, they exaggerate odds and distances, trying to make you make you feel like a stud for beating the record. "Look, hon! I made it in half the time it takes those morons from Ohio!" (For the record, I DID make it in half the time it takes those morons from Ohio.)
Wow…sidenote city. As I write this in the Richmond airport (don’t ask), I see a priest buying some breakfast food. He is wearing a dress. Sure, they might call it a priestly robe or something, but damn the emperor and his new clothes! It’s a fucking dress! Man, those Catholics sure have issues.
Where was I… priests? No… Oh yes, sin. Vegas. The city of. Did I mention that the infamous Vegas strip looks tiny from the road? Disappointingly small. A few cheesy monuments in a staggeringly huge desert wasteland. Don’t let this view fool you. Just try walking the strip, even in good weather, and be prepared for a world of hurt. It is LONG. The longest stretch of tourist-laden Velveeta I’ve ever experienced. It’s like Evil-Disney. Well, Disney IS evil (not like Marty, who is Evil) [Marty's note: Evil is, as evil does.] , but Disney hides its evilness behind a veneer of bikini-clad little mermaids. Vegas lets its evil hang out in the open, braless, for all to ogle.
Las Vegas is an exercise in extreme input overload. The sexual equivalent of being gang raped by eighteen horses at the same time. The lights, the sounds, the smoke and mirrors, the regular explosion of the volcano, the grandiosity of the Sphinx. It’s overwhelming. Even the slot machines all clang and chime in the same key! No clash of noises, just well planned and melodically blended laughs as they suck the cash out of your coin cup. As Justine said, it’s a Philip Glass symphony gone astray, designed for one purpose: to take your money.
Vegas is so desperate for your cash that they will spend thousands of dollars to leave you with only pennies. Every casino, the high and the low end alike, had these insidious machines at their entrances and exits (read, orifices): nickel slots. Yes, the one machine I was able to beat. But think about it, these casinos buy expensive machines that take your money five-cents at a time! Even in my broke college-student days, I didn’t bend over to pick up a nickel if I saw it at on the floor. Especially if it was the floor of the bathroom, barely peeking out from behind the back of the overflowing, clogged toilet. I swear that wasn’t me! But Vegas just puts on the rubber gloves and goes to town, raping you of every piece of silver metal you can hide in your bowels.
A side trip to the Hoover Dam, and my first helecopter ride.
Hours of being in the car next to each other result in a fight-to-the-near-death on Hoover Dam.
We did Vegas in style though. We hit it hard. The first night, Marty and I met up with a friend-of-a-friend name Neill and went to see a 70’s cover band play at the Rio, All was well until Marty (have I mentioned that he is evil?) tipped the waitress a little extra to make my drinks… well, stronger than normal. So while he and I kept pace in quantity, I was a bit more, er, blurry by the end of the evening.
I would like to say, for the record, that when the nasty prostitute offered to take me into "the back room" for $100, I was still sober enough to "just say no." And while I don’t remember what she looked like, Marty’s post-hangover description was not a pleasant one. [Marty's note: Well, Mike was not exactly in a position to say no. He was semi-reclined in his chair, with a drink placed in his right hand, and somewhat drooling. When the girl, I mean lady, I mean succubus, er ah Typhoid Mary aka walking skank, offered to take Mike to the back room to "freshen the birthday boy's drink" Mike just kind of gurgled and moaned, which we translated for Ms. VD 1998 as no thank you. At which point she flapped her dental plate, which we correctly interpreted as a message to the bouncer to mean "Get these cheap SOB's out of my section. I've got an addiction or two to feed." We then retired back to the casino, where we could lose our money in a more respectable and dignified fashion.]
No trip to Vegas is complete (or so I was told) without a trip to the Elvis-a-rama museum. [Marty's note: The ghost of Elvis decided that there was no action in Memphis, so it packed it's spiritual bags and headed straight back to sin city, where it could inexplicably possess the bodies of the unwary and see Wayne Newton shows.] Inside is a year-by-year collection of all his records. I swear it’s there, clear as day. A dividing line between 1970 and 1971. On the right, 1970, you have cool Elvis. A hip, young guy who moved his hips while he sang. Unfortunately for Elvis, I was born that year, and my birth apparently threw the cosmos into enough of a turbulent uproar that it turned the coolest cat on the planet into the stuff of spoof legend, fat ass and white sequins included. For there, on the 1971 side of the tracks, was the goofiest mother you’ve ever seen. Mister Magoo would bust a seam laughing if confronted with that Vegas freak of an Elvis impersonation on a bad acid trip. I also saw the most frightening picture I have EVER seen in my entire life there. A red backdrop, with Elvis standing in front. Large aviator sunglasses, some blue jumpsuit thing, poofed up hair… and a shotgun. Again, this tragedy was directly related to my existence on this planet. My mother swears it’s all my fault.
Marty did buy me (force me into receiving that is) an Elvis Fridge Magnet. I have nothing more to say on the subject. [Marty's note: Have I mentioned that I'm evil?]
That's Elvis, riding shotgun on the license plate holder.
The view from our window. Look closely at the Stardust sign.
I’d like to close with a profound statement: I’ve renounced my atheism. I’ve seen God, and his name is Wayne Newton. Faust and Justine managed to snag up some snazzy seats at the hottest show in. Wayne rocked, and more importantly, he did sing "Danke Shane" – however the hell it’s spelled.
Now, most of the show was just Wayne and the band. Some jokes, some music, some shenanigans. Lots and lots of shenanigans. A tremendous amount of shenanigans. If, by definition, "shenanigans" means very old frail people that sit in the audience and wrinkle. But on stage, it was a fairly serene production. Until the end of the show (you knew this was coming, right?) when Wayne asked all the vets in the ticket-buying-pool of shenanigans to stand and be honored. By applause, you moron! Not the hooker from the strip club! Sheesh!
So how does he follow up honoring all the WWII (and WWI) vets? By singing them a ballad. A love song of sorts. And kicking up the effects. The heavy bass rumble, then the smoke machine that kicked out so much fog it made Wayne look like a disembodied head supported by the evil mist. And then the lasers kicked in, hitting the floor which exploded in a wimpy puff of fast-dying pyrotechnics (and in some badly timed instances, these preceded the laser strikes). By now, the old fogies were diving under the tables and begging for mercy, having some "Saving Private Ryan" flashbacks and bursting their colostomy bags as they hit the floor. But the foul stench was then washed away by the veil of spring rain that fell down on the stage as a rainbow-light effect then flew out over the audience’s head. This was, logically, followed by a spaceship prop flying down and scooping Wayne up, taking him far, far away. To the greenroom. And the booze.
This spectacle… this morose, perverse Vegas site… was only beaten by one other mind-numbing image. The Blob was in Vegas. To be fair, there were a LOT of blobs in Vegas. Obese Midwesterners with entire cattle for midnight snacks. But this one particular blob was the blobbiest of them all! There she sat, a straining stool under each of her rectal cheeks -which bared an odd resemblance to Axis supporting the Earth on his godlike shoulders- and playing not one, not two, but three slot machines at the same time!
Left hand, one coin in left slot. Right hand, one coin in middle slot. Pull the handles. Right hand, one coin in right slot while left hand simultaneously grabs three additional coins out of the coin cup. Right hand then pulls far right handle and returns to take proffered coins from left hand, which keeps one to start the cycle all over again. The eerie rhythm was hypnotizing, soothing in its grotesque smoothness and fluidity. The mere fact that a human being could eat an entire cow one minute and be remotely fluid and graceful the next was frightening in itself. But the fact that said human blobbing also had enough money left over after buying a cow per day to play three slot machines at the same time made me rethink my career choice. Apparently there is high demand on the internet for the obese Midwestern porn sites.
(Another side note: we’re safe for now, Microsoft has not totally taken over the world wide web. In fact, my copy of MSWord is telling me that "internet" is not a word and must be replaced. Apparently they forgot to add that word to their dictionary.)
Well, that’s it. I’m Vegased out just thinking about the journey. Time to add the pictures and say buh-bye. I’ll be back when my bank account recovers.
© 2000, Michael Yanovich. www.mentalsnot.com
