Las Vegas Day Drinking

Your humble correspondent took a day off yesterday and decided to see how the other half lives, waiting for the sun to set before imbibing.  And wow, was it a colossal waste of a perfectly good day.

Turns out a half the “rock stars” of yesterday and tomorrow are on the wagon, so they’re only drinking energy drinks and water, which on the one hand means more free bottle service vodka for me, but on the other hand makes me wonder what life must have been like before images were so carefully curated.  Gig here, personal appearance there, can’t be seen drinking, can’t smudge the eyeliner, blah, blah, fuckity blah. 

Here’s the dirtiest little secret in Vegas: the VIP rooms are really fucking boring. 

To be fair, I’ve not sampled them all, and to be fair I have no idea what constitutes “fun” for porn stars, quasi rock stars or the people who hope to profit off them, so perhaps they are actually having a grand old sober time.  All I can say is that the Asian bachelorette party in matching white boas seemed to the naked eye to be having a much better time on the general dance floor than anyone was having in the back room or even in the bottle service areas off or above the dance floor.  It was kinda like, and I promise this will be the only time I make reference to this movie, but it really was like that scene in Titanic where you start in the stuffy upper deck where the corsets are too fucking tight and end up in the steerage section where the pints are being chugged, jigs are being danced and then Kate Winslet does that stupid balancing on her toes thing, Vegas is an awful lot like that (come to think of it including the stupid balancing act).

All of which is to say that the DayDrinker got more than my fair share of free booze last night and somehow still managed to leave feeling cheated.  Hmmm…  I wonder if this is how the tourists feel?

I feel like I ought to end on a high note, so I will say this, the Crazy Horse 3 is a strip club, but that notwithstanding, they have a pretty great front room for bands to play and last night the Paper Dolls tore it up.  For a minute there this homesick Los Angeleno felt like I was on the Strip of the Sunset persuasion.  And when the dichotomy of the half naked chicks rubbing on cheesy guys on one side of the wall and this crazy awesome lead singer chick rocking out on the other side got too much for me, I just said “Jack and Coke” please and good old Captain Jack got me through the night, that and the fact that Frank Gehry’s favorite building on the Vegas Strip is the Excalibur.  That slays me.  There’s a man who understands Vegas better than Vegas understands itself.