Karl Klockars

Now that we’ve gotten the longest title in the world out of the way, let’s recap.  We have to this point discussed the Chicagoan’s Guide to Vegassery, covered sex and capitalism, and now we get to the part where I just troll my brain for other stuff we haven’t covered to this point.

The chances of me running out of steam now that we’re about 3000 words into this week of blithering are pretty good, and let’s keep in mind that “Fear and Loathing” only ended up being about 50,000 words or something like that, which means that I’m going to be almost a tenth of the way there to penning the unauthorized followup.  I’ve been eating a lot of grapefruit lately, and considering renting a Cadillac.  And may the deity of your choice save us all.

So!  What couldn’t we jampack into the previous hunks of blithering?  For starters, let’s begin here:

Age Matters. I’d like to take this opportunity to highly suggest that everyone in America go to Vegas before they reach the age where everything they do is embarassing or an attempt to regain their youth.  You should not be in the fannypack stage of life for your first visit.  You should at least be able to make it to midnight for a majority of your nights in town and hopefully be able to spend most of your day drinking (moderately) responsibly and be coherent to sundown.  Which leads us to…

Age Matters Part II: The Mattering On a similar note, you should probably know your way around alcohol before you hit the ground.  If you want to spend your vacation 24/7 hammered, you should probably try it in the comfort of your own basement before you spend a grand to get to someplace just to forget anything about being there.  Yes, debauchery is suggested and quite possibly enforced in a lot of places, but it’s very easy to go from “tourist” to “mark” to “victim.”  You honestly don’t even have to leave the airport to let that happen.  So if you’re still deep within the portion of your life where you are still worried about finals in your senior elective classes, wait a few months.  Practice your table games.  Which leads me to…

Teach Us, O Wise Ones You can download all the Blackjack Apps and play Craps Lite on every El ride and poke around with the online stuff at home (not at work, no, certainly never at work) but if the casinos really want more chances to get their moneygrubbing hands on our cash, they’ll take a few feet of valuable floorspace and have free 24/7 classes going on every hour on the hour.

Immabehonesthere – I only sat down at one blackjack table, and the lovely dealer in the shiny gold halter top had to basically hold my hand through the whole process so I didn’t completely ruin the game for the other two elderly folks at my table (which I eventually did anyways).  In her very broken Chinese, the lovely Xi Xi, originally from “Sayne Loueeeee” tried to explain that I should or should not hit or double down and I only half listened while randomly hitting the table hoping I’d just get 21 and I could stop doing the math.

I won ten bucks.

Similarly, I stood at a craps table for about 10 minutes while two extremely uninviting gentlemen dealers stared at me like I was the biggest goddamn fool on the planet every time I tried to touch my chips, lay a bet, roll the dice, etc.  I was just plain “R-worded” and basically ran away after they shoved some chips at me for the first time.  I cut and ran away from the Casino Royale and it shames me to say so.

Casino types:  For every few bucks you think you might be losing by having a table for people that are just learning (and you should really provide some “practice chips” too so we can pretend we’re winning, and then want to go win for reals), think of all the dollars you’ll make because those same people aren’t too intimidated to sit at a $10 table or roll a $25 bet at a craps table because they aren’t secure in what the hell they’re doing.  Which leads me to…

Your Damned Show Prices. I love Penn and Teller, and I’m sure a Wednesday isn’t a prime time desirable ticket (and let the record show that I’m not pointing at P&T directly, just the concept of expensive shows) but there were a hell of a lot of empty seats.  Vegas is having some tough times in terms of conventions lately – even though no one told the United Countertop Conglomerate Expo that – so what say you quit charging $80 or $90 a ticket?  Tell you what- charge half, and I’ll go see Holly Madison take her top off after stopping by Penn and Teller.  Or I’ll send the little lady to Thunder Down Under while I’m at Burlesque X or whatever it is.  Which reminds me…

Since We’ve Established the Main Sin is Sex: Would it kill you to have one strip club actually on the Strip? My interest level in them is slim to none but it’s damn near false advertising to have something called the Strip and then make you go off of it to find the Spearmint Rhino or whatever ridiculous named place you can find.

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That’s a good start at clearing out the rest of my brain from the detritus of our desert escape.  It’s been a full week from right now that we touched down back in Chicago and I still haven’t forgiven the midwest for not getting rid of the 10 inches of snow that fell while we were gone.  Thankfully I’ve nailed down the Hemingway Daquiri recipe I first stumbled upon at Rhumbar at the Mirage, which might be the best souvenir I could think of, aside from maybe a billion dollars or ownership of the Playboy club.

We went out there with the hopes that we’d get completely Vegas’ed out and never have to return, so it both surprises me and arouses my anticipation to say: Maybe next time.