Last weekend Bill and I, with our friends Todd and Wyoming, took a whirlwind trip to Vegas. We stayed at the Luxor, which was a surprisingly nice experience - surely a hell of a lot better than the Stinkycana - I mean, Tropicana, where we stayed last time. I also really liked that they had a corridor linking them to the Mandalay Bay, which is a beautiful casino that we could not afford to stay in.
Mandalay Bay holds good memories for us because of the brush with celebrity we had there; we were playing blackjack when one of our group looked over to the table next to ours, and whispered, "Hey, isn't that Helen Hunt over there?" Sure enough, it was, along with her then-husband Hank Azaria, and someone who we thought to be Will Farrell from SNL. The kicker was the guy we didn't notice until a bit later, who was sitting back to back with Bill, in a black coat and black baseball hat - Kevin Spacey. Their table was making a lot of noise - fine with us, but Bill used it as an opportunity to interact with fame in his own unique way... by tapping Spacey on the shoulder, and, when he turned, asking him very politely and seriously if they wouldn't mind keeping it down at the table, since he was trying to concentrate on his cards. Spacey said, "Who are you talking to?", not aggressively, but as if just mildly perplexed that a regular guy would dare to ask HIM something like that, especially when he wasn't one of the loud ones. Bill repeated his request, then when faced with a blank look, laughed and said he was just kidding, and turned back around. No gushing, "I love your movies you're my favorite actor ever can I have an autograph" type of fan spiel - just typical Billish dry humor. Gotta dig that. =) Turned out they were there to film that regrettable movie, "Pay It Forward"; but no one had even heard of the movie then, so we got a bit of a scoop there. Should have sold the story to some gossip magazine for their "Celebrity Sightings" section.
But I digress. The highlight of our latest trip was getting another opportunity to see The Blue Man Group - who, conveniently, were also at the Luxor. Bill and I are ridiculously fond of The Blue Man Group (you may recognize them from the Intel commercials they did a while back). I'm not sure what exactly it is about the show that gets us. It's really funny, and the effects are very well done... like the neon desert scene, with leaping stick figures that suddenly pop out from the screen and begin to walk across the stage. Visually, the show is stunningly colorful and wonderfully messy. Then there's the music they make with their battery of invented instruments, made from things like PVC pipes and 55 gallon drums. It's unique, energetic and stirring - the vibrating bass tones thump you square in the chest as if the music is pushing itself into you, and the frenetic rhythms pounded out by their troop of dancing Day-Glo skeleton drummers mainline right into the part of your brain stem hard- wired to dig tribal beats. The show is relentlessly interactive, from the music, to the various written message displays, to the unwitting audience guest-stars (one of whom was our own Toddler - his mouth pried open by the blue trio and a little tubular camera placed so as to display the up-close glory of his tonsils on the large TV screen above the stage), to the tidal wave of crepe paper the audience pulls down from the back of the seating area in endless swaths until everyone is engulfed in a sea of undulating white waves (my favorite part of the show).
Beyond all this, though, there's just something compelling about the contrasts found in the Blue Men themselves... Their glossy blue alien skin and proletariat matte black pajamas; their odd blend of impassivity and intense curiousity; the strange innocence of their wide-eyed fascination with the audience, each other, and the results of their own strange actions. Wordless and ingenuous, with a fondness for sweet junk foods (you'd have to be there), they're like genius children raised by housepets - the bug-eyed expressionless faces of geckos, the energetic attentiveness of dogs, and the capricious curiousity of cats. They're completely delightful.
Anyway, I could spew adjectives all day trying to describe what is essentially undescribable; instead I just strongly suggest that you go and see them if you ever have a chance.
Other than Blue Man, the rest of the weekend was fun enough - we went down to the Strip and saw the Fremont St. light show. We taxied over to the Hilton to see the Star Trek section; we didn't do the ride 'cause it was expensive, but we had fruity galactic cocktails in Quark's Bar - an experience nearly ruined for Bill in his disappointment that the Klingon chick was MIA (don't ask). Wy, the non-geek in the group, was generously tolerant of the geekfest. =) Drank lots of cocktails, did some good ol' gambling. The others played roulette with a few hands of blackjack; I mostly stuck to the cards instead. Rather unsocial of me, but I was just really into playing blackjack for some reason. The dealers were capricious, but in the end I came out only down about $15 for the weekend - which, considering I was $170 down earlier in the evening and another $45 down the night before, was pretty damned lucky. So I have yet another reason to like the Mandalay Bay. All in all, it was a nice break from reality. Vegas is good
This insightful gem dropped from the lips of my beloved this morning - I felt I must share it:
"If the solution to pollution wasn't dilution, then farts would never go away."
So it turns out I did end up taking a couple of half-day's worth of sick time for this stupid cold. Truth be told, I probably could have slammed a bunch of DayQuil and powered my way through the entire 8 hours both days. However, I was self-conscious about the sick-person cacophony of nose-blowing and coughs that I was inflicting on my fellow cubehogs, not to mention the germs I was most certainly sharing. Add 80 hours of accumulated sick time and a boss out for the week, and my resulting conclusion was, "Fuck it, I'm outta here." The half-days were a compromise, born of a vestigal sense of duty handed down from my pathologically responsible parents; while this inheritance doesn't function quite well enough to keep me from being a serial procrastinator in the course of my daily life, it does generally suffice to keep me from playing outright hooky, which is what a full day off would have felt like to me. Plus, the challenge of getting a full day's work done in a half-day made me work very much more efficiently than I have been lately; in fact, I probably got more done in the two half-days than I did in any given full day in December. I've always worked best under pressure.
So anyway, thank Heyzeus for the short week. I still don't feel quite settled in from the holidays. Bill did a pretty good summary of the holiday haps in his latest entry, so I don't really think I need to add much. I'm grateful that we had no real travel mishaps - we caught all our planes on time, made good time on the road, no lost luggage or wrong turns or airport security cavity searches or anything. Family relations were 90% copacetic, which I think is the maximum that anyone can hope for on the holidays. I'm still kind of pissed off/frustrated/stymied by a certain relative's ongoing lack of ability to get his shit together, especially when I know he's capable of so much more... but fundamentally I realize that there's just not much I can do to influence his choices. Mostly I'm just sad that his hijinks cause so much worry and pain for others in the family. Ah, well.
Christmas was still very good - I loved seeing snow, and sledding on Christmas night with our fellow "kids", and playing with Mom's wax-therapy thing, and watching Dad fuss with his new MP3 player, and generally relaxing with the family unit on the divan. I wish we saw them all more often. Phoenix was fun too - there are lots of little kids running around now, and it's cool to see them growing up and becoming little people. Hopefully someday soon Wee and I will add our own to the mix.
At any rate, here's to 2002 - the sheer symmetry of the number should count for something, don't you think? Let's consult my new Palm Pilot dictionary.... symmetry: n., beauty of form arising from balanced proportions. Yep, that works. 2002: Year of Symmetry. Cheers to that.
Misc. thoughts from this morning:
- Yup, it's definitely a cold, not just leftover sore throat from that clove cigarette I had on New Year's Eve. Better than being sick over the holidays, I guess, but it still sucks. And just when I thought I'd developed germ-resistant superpowers. Crap.
- I so do not want to get out of this bed; call in sick? No, too much to do - there's no point to slacking if I'll just end up feeling guilty all day. Besides, it's already Wednesday - I can suck it up for a three-day work week.
- But I'm going to leave 15 minutes later; boss is off this week, and no one else will care if I’m late.
- The decision-making process I just went through to determine whether it's OK to be 15 minutes late is kind of pathetic. Ooh, look at me being a rebel!
- Uh-oh, Bill just rolled away when his alarm started going off instead of hitting snooze; this does not bode well.
- OK, in keeping with New Year's resolution to eat better/lose weight, will not butter my toast. Will use sparing, barely-there film of raspberry jam instead.
- That's a lot of jammy toast, though. I really prefer buttered toast. I wish I had the buttery spray. Must buy some. Oh well, it's best to ease into these things anyway. I'll just butter one slice. Thinly. Did I just put too much on? Should I remove one sliver and try to scrape the rest over to the bare side? Am I really obsessive- compulsive about buttering every millimeter of toasty surface evenly, as Bill claims? OK, maybe so. I just like maximizing my flavor enjoyment. There's nothing wrong with that.
- (Driving to work) Use your gas pedal, slow Red Mercedes person. License plate: "BZY BLND". First translation that comes to mind: "Boozy Blonde"? Surely not. What's this person trying to convey here? Maybe "Breezy Blonde"? "Buzzy Blonde"? "Boozy Blind"? Now there's the version you don't want that cop behind you to come up with. OK, Boozy, you're too slow, I’m passing you now. Hey, it's a bald guy. That's weird. "Boozy Baldened"?
- Wow, light traffic. Means many people still off work. Bastards. I hate them all.
- My car is a disaster area. And it smells funny. Two road trips to Phoenix + no cleaning = pigsty. New Year's resolution #1: get the Silver Bullet detailed.
- Oh good, Paul's pulling in behind me; I won't be the latest person to arrive. Not that it matters. Really.
Anyway. Such was my first hour and a half of being Back To The Grind. Maybe I'll share tales of our holiday travels later, maybe I won't. In the mean time, try not to let the suspense become a medical issue or anything...