Epic Vegas Entry Part 2

Part 2: The Crankies

Highlights: (cont.)

2. Sweet Tea (Magan) I guess its an East Coast thing, but they had sweet tea at Mcdonalds. Inside a Circus Circus. I tried it and thought it was pretty good and it sure made Magan happy.

2. Good shower pressure. (Marty) My grandma’s home has great shower pressure.

3. Venitian Casino (Magan) The ceiling was covered in clouds and a fake sky- looked extremely convincing at first glance- plus there’s a nice glow to give off the illusion of it being dusk. Great shops and restaurants too. Too bad the guard was a douche that didn’t give good directions. He doesn’t deserve his own lowlight, so I bitch about him here.

3. Barry and smoke detector. (Marty) This should be filed under lowlight for Barry, but this was too funny in retrospect. I hear some beeping around 2-3 in the morning. There’s a glow outside the bedroom. I don’t know what the hell is going on and I’m a little freaked out- especially since the bedroom I was sleeping in seem haunted. I go out the door and find the bathroom light on, a ladder in the hall and the smoke detector is dangling from the ceiling, wires still attached. I poke my head around the wall and see Barry sitting on the couch- slumped forward in defeat. He told me the smoke detector had been beeping over his head for the last two hours and he couldn’t sleep. He even called Dad and woke him up to ask for help. Dad grumpily said to ignore it till tomorrow. Dad didn’t understand how bad it was. 

I hesitated at first, thinking about all the times I’ve been zapped when screwing with these things, but then I simply detached it from the wires and that was that. Then Barry took the alarm from my hand (which still beeped) and marched off with it, spouting off several "cocksucker" "motherfucker"s in a Yosemite Sam cartoon gone R- he was letting the f-bombs fly. Very un-Barry by the way. He went out the door and disappeared for 10 minutes. When he came back he announced he had shut the alarm up in some janitor’s closet by the pool.

4. Free Food (Magan) Barry and my parents treated us to some hearty meals- always appreciated. We ate good too- Joe’s Crab Shack, IHOP (twice), Original Pancake House (huge portions!), Quarks, Quedoba, and some cupcake place.

4. Vincent’s Wedding (Marty) Reunited with foul-mouthed aunties and friendly faces. Big Hawaii hugs. Vincent looked great and overcome with emotion. We’re at the Paris Casino in a charming chapel. The whole thing lasted ten minutes , but we did a lot of catching up before and after. Aunties want to know all the details about Magan. One gives me shit for my belly. The same one gives me a gift bag with chocolates- go figure. Take pictures and Magan survives some questioning. Happy time. Especially cool to see Mrs. Mizomi after all these years.

5. Little Things- (Magan) Dog sign, "You Poop We Scoop!" lots of kisses and cuddle time, Marty’s pants, GPS dies and comes back to life, finished book, Siren’s bike, Spock Bear, leftovers! Billboard- "You Missed Us!" "See You Next Trip!" AIR CONDITIONING. Barry pretending to hang himself. "Terribles" the casino. We have to go back and make obnoxious/obvious quips at the employees expense.

5. Little Things (Marty) Talking urinal, Free trapeze act at Circus Circus, free parking, late birthday presents, chocolate macadamia nuts. Barry telling Magan the story of the time I dropped the F-bomb in front of mom. Billboard- for Cleft child. Only funny because I’m in Nevada- woo hoo- I see the strip on the horizon, we made it to VEGAS! VEGAS BABY!!! WOO HOO!!
(drives by billboard of cleft child)

(pause)

Maybe we should go home. That really killed it for me.

LOWLIGHTS:

1. The Crankies (Magan) We’re coming out of the Hilton Casino and we step into one of those automatic revolving doors- all three of us fit into one section. Barry is in the front and he tries to push the door that’s already moving, which causes the door to stutter because it switches into manual when you try to push it. Then it starts moving on its own again- this happened a couple times in the span of maybe five seconds. This old couple in front of us are trying to get IN to the casino while this is happening and the rotating door failures have clearly irritated them. The old woman whips around, singles out Magan for some reason and yells,

"Why don’t you grow up!"

Magan was immediately taken aback and on the defense because it wasn’t her fault,

"But I didn’t even do anything!"

"SHUT UP!" the woman snaps and at this time we stepped out onto the street. We were all pretty stunned and all I could manage was,

"Have a great vacation!"

It wasn’t a good comeback, but the SHUTUP was so angry it really made us shutup. This bothered Magan to no end and I was just amazed at the sheer intensity…they were clearly pissed off way before we showed up in their lives. Now I think the memory is hilarious- I can still hear that old bag yelling through the glass.

1. Horse Race Loser (Marty) You know that skee-ball like game where you’re rolling the ball into the holes and then your horse moves forward to the finish line? Well, I was determined to win that pink giraffe for Magan…and lost five dollars trying, usually to a fucking 6 year old. Magan didn’t give a shit one way or the other and let me know it.

"Do you have any idea what this is about?"

"Testosterone?"

Still felt like a loser. She said something cheesy like, "You’re my prize" and made me feel better.

2. Otis Rednecks On Ride (Magan) A couple of large idiots resembling Otis (indie horror flick of recent) were making stupid comments during the Star Trek Experience, quoting National Lampoon’s Vacation and finally turned their attention to Magan’s Vampira shirt,

"So are you like a vampire too?"

Barry (who was on the ride with her) said, "Well, she does suck blood, but that’s as far as she goes." 

2. Gas prices (Marty) Like an idiot I suggested we pull over to this one station where they didn’t even advertise the gas prices…and guess how much I paid. Ready? Think of the number? OK.

5.50 per gallon. If you come across a gas station in the middle of the desert with no price tag- don’t be a sucker like me.

3. Canceled Pirates Show (Magan) We finally park and push our way through the dense crowd to get a somewhat decent, but obscured view of the pirate ship outside the Treasure Island Casino. Announcement..the show has been canceled. One lady was like,

"I’ve lived here for years and I still haven’t seen it!"

Magan said,<br

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"We should just get in the rowboat and put on our own show…the girls can take their tops off and the guys can have sword fights."

"Sounds good to me!" said one dude beside us.

3. Gate Code (Marty) We get to the gated community where my grandma’s house is (about 15 minutes outside the strip) and Barry told me over the phone that the gate code given to him by our parents doesn’t work, so he had to wait for someone to exit. Magan and I arrive. I try the code myself- doesn’t work. I call Dad and Dad calls his brother Uncle Marty to get the correct code. I’d try the code, but the gate has to reset after four incorrect codes and it takes 5 minutes every time. I get to typing the code. We finally get in. Like an asshole I don’t write the code down, thinking it won’t be an issue later.

Later we need the code again- we came back from dinner and we just want to get in the house and relax, but dickhead Marty forgot the code, BUT remembers several numbers that play a key part. He tries different combos. He calls father up to get the code again. Father doesn’t remember, but guesses a similar number to Marty’s guess. Father disappointed in Marty for being stupid. Marty tries every combination of numbers…the very last one is the code and Magan is free to drive forward. Marty runs behind the car like an idget.

Minor Lows- I bought Barry a blue ribbon paddle ball game for a hefty dollar ninety five and the fucker snapped. On the plus side we filmed a Tommy parody while Barry paddled the ball and stared into space. 

"Barry can you hear me?" I sang.

Shark Tank closed. The Golden Nugget was surrounded by firemen, policemen and dudes in radiation suits…made us think twice before entering the casino. Rumors going around that a dead shark was floating around in the tank.

We already struck out twice when we were misdirected to the wrong casinos- where was this awesome water slide attraction? The one that shoots you through an aquarium and there’s sharks all around you? Finally get to the nugget and the pool area is shut down. Could see the tank and tube though- looked awesome. Would’ve been great if there was a shark inside the tank- bulbous from eating a tourist. guess we’ll go next time.

Hot and Cold. It was an oven outside and walking from one casino to a neighbor casino was quite tiresome, especially since once you got into the next casino, a wave of air conditioning would seriously confuse my body. The drastic change in temperatures really did a number on me after awhile. I was rendered useless through most of the day, but Barry and Magan pushed me on.

anyway, that’s all for now!

oh, and as a bonus.

On the way back to Los Angeles we stopped at a gas station. I walked beside Magan and started talking to her,

"Hey, I know we haven’t met before, but I would just like to say that I think you’re an attractive woman and I know I’m already putting my arms around you, but I was wondering if I could just kiss you- even though we’re complete strangers-"

"- if you’re going to do something could you hurry up? I have to go pump gas."

we kissed. then we laughed.

"If only it were that simple."

I like to think that’s how we met, but the truth still got a pretty good reaction from my dad. I like to stick to this version for now.