June 18, 2003 I'm terrible at recounting trips. In fact, I hate it. I never know what to tell and what to leave out and yet, I'm pretty sure that no one wants something like this: And then after we checked into the MGM Grand, we walked down the Strip and we saw the Bellagio, and Paris, and the Aladdin, and Holden wanted to go in and get the free coffee mug that the Aladdin was offering, but we were on our way to get half price tickets at Tix 2Night and we didn't want the good tickets to be sold out so we didn't go in. We got to Tix 2Night and we debated between seeing a show at the Improv at Harrah's or An Evening at La Cage at the Riveria, but then we decided to see La Cage the next night so we got two tickets for the Improv; it cost us 30 bucks for both of us. Then we went over to the Flamingo seafood buffet and I ate crab legs, shrimp, prime rib, and cheesecake. After the buffet, we toured the bird sanctuary..... You get the picture, right? [Although, incidentally, if you do go to Vegas, and you want to see some shows, definitely check out Tix 2Night. It's this little stand in the mall between the M&Ms store and the Coke store where they sell tickets to shows for that particular evening at half price. Granted, the really good shows, i.e. Penn & Teller or The Amazing Jonathan, aren't offered, but the myriad of the Cirque du Soleil extravaganzas (if you like that sort of thing) are, as well as La Cage and the Improv and other cheesy Vegas shows that are worth seeing.] Anyway, speaking of pictures, I thought I'd share some pictures from the trip and leave it at that. I'm sure the files are huge; I apologize for my ineptitude with Photoshop. We stayed at the MGM Grand. I highly recommend it. Nice art deco rooms and a very cool, Hollywood heyday feel. The stuffed lion doesn't come with the room, though; we bought him. Speaking of lions.... Our hotel had a lion habitat in it. You know, what with MGM's mascot being a lion and all. Man, the big casino/hotels on the Strip are like cities unto themselves. I came to Vegas thinking the casinos would be like Atlantic City. Not so much. AC places like the Taj have a couple of restaurants, a theater or two, some gift shops, hotel rooms and the casino itself. Vegas casinos are much more extravagant. The MGM had a food court, a buffet, a million different restaurants, several bars and night clubs, a spa, a system of pools surrounded by a tubing river, a television studio, wedding chapel, theaters, an arena where they were hosting a rodeo, a video arcade, enough shops to probably amount to a complete mall, and, as I said, a lion habitat (hence the lion in the picture above). In the four days we were there, we didn't see or do half in of the stuff our hotel, let alone the entire city. We did go to the lion habitat and I got some time at the spa: I had a facial, a manicure, and a massage; Holden footed the bill so he could get some time at the blackjack tables. It was my first spa experience and I'm hooked. Especially now that I've figured out that you leave the tips in envelopes at the end of your session, not resort to pulling them out of the pocket of your spa robe with wet nails. (Yes, I was that gauche. Hey, whaddya want from me? I haven't exactly lived the spa life, okay?). We also went to a test screening for CBS. If you are in Vegas, this is a fun thing to do. Well, at least it was fun for me. The program we viewed was called something like Naval Crime Scene Unit or Navy Crime Scene or Naval Crime Bureau -- oh, who the hell cares? Basically it was JAG meets CSI; it could have been called JSI or CAG or JIG or whatever. It was like the CBS executives were sitting around trying to come up with something to plug in between Everybody Loves Raymond and CSI: Nova Scotia and one of them said, "Gee, the senior citizens who are our major demographic seemed to have really enjoyed the naval aura of JAG and I know the ladies like Kate's mom really love them some CSI and since we really can't justify making CSI: Rural Arkansas, why don't we combine JAG and CSI? It'll be forensic science with a nautical twist." And the CBS bigwigs said, "Put Mark Harmon and that chick from Teen Witch in it and you've got something." Now, Holden hates crime shows. He's strictly a sitcom kind of guy. For him, screening JAG + CSI = TL 4EVA was akin to the reconditioning scene in Clockwork Orange only the CBS people didn't clamp his eyes open. He does like Mark Harmon, or well, the Mark Harmon in Summer School. He was rather disappointed in this version of Mark. We were seated at computer terminals, each equipped with a small dial that controlled a digital display that ran from 0-100. As we watched the show, we were supposed to turn the dial up and down to indicate how much we liked each moment of the show -- obviously 100 meaning we liked it very much and 0 meaning we despised this particular example of television with every fiber of our beings. During the course of the show, my dial ranged from around 40 all the way up to 90 (although never when "Teen Witch" was on the screen, because she just sucked.) Holden turned his dial to zero by the end of the opening credits and left it there. So depending on what show you get assigned, doing a screening at MGM might be fun. Mostly, we ate. Man, Vegas is my kind of town. Miles of buffets. Prime Rib for $8.99. And gambling, right there at the breakfast table. Above is my breakfast from the first morning. We crossed the street from the MGM to the much seedier Hotel San Remo, for $7.99 steak and eggs. Holden opted for the ham steak as big as your head. Not surprisingly, most of our vacation pictures involve food in some way: Me at the Flamingo's seafood buffet. An old school Vegas classic dinner special. That night was an old school kind of night. We saw "An Evening at La Cage", played craps at the Stardust, and then I had the prime rib and Holden had the steak and lobster. I was highly amused by Holden's comment, "Gee, this lobster isn't the best quality." A series of ice cream pictures from the Paris casino: Of course, if it didn't involve food, it involved neon in some way: Old school Vegas is the shit. Seedy, wacky, Wayne Newton, drag queens, and all the atmosphere you could want. Circus Circus borders on the scary, though. This is my favorite of the neon photos. I almost feel like real photographer when I look at this picture. Go me. Although, I like this one, too. We saw this bridge and groom outside of Circus Circus. I think they were going to the wedding chapel across the street. But while old school Vegas has the seedy charm, new Vegas was pretty awesome too. New York, New York was amazing. The roller coaster was a bit harrowing, but the casino itself was incredible. From the Brooklyn Bridge and the ferry boats outside, to the Village-themed food court, it's definitely a sight worth taking in. If we didn't love the MGM so much, we'd stay there next time. Speaking of the MGM, this lion is the largest brass sculpture in the Western Hemisphere. Whaddya know, even Vegas can be educational. The Bellagio was gorgeous. We didn't even get to the Venetian, but I assume it's just as beautiful. I'm a bit autistic in my picture taking; I must have taken at least ten photographs of the blown glass ceiling. We walk into the gardens at the Bellagio and bam, it's like we're home in Philly. Lovely, lovely gardens. I don't think we'd stay at the Bellagio or the Ventian, though, when we go again (Because we are going again. Oh, yes, we are. Maybe even to get married. Unless it's so I can marry Penn); they were too rich for my blood. Beautiful, but a little too grown up. And really, I'm a bit too immature for grown up: Ah, Kate as a cranky-two-year-old-child because her feet hurt. You didn't think I could be so whiny and childish, did you? But, in my defense, the heat there made my feet swell to three times their normal size. I imagine it was like being pregnant without the joy of actually having a child. And on our first day there, I made Holden walk to the Rio to make sure we bought the Penn & Teller tickets. I mean, I was a total freak, panicking that they were going to be sold out and I'd miss them and that would have been tragic because you know the only reason I agreed to go to Vegas with a former compulsive gambler was so I could see my beloved magicians. Anyway, we fell victim to some sort of desert mirage because the fucking Rio looked like it was a reasonable walk from the Flamingo, where we had just stuffed ourselves with crab legs and peel-and-eat shrimp. Little did we know that it was really A MILLION MILES AWAY. It looked so close. So we trudged along on the side of the hot, crowded road, thinking, "Just a little further" and every time we thought we were almost there, it turned out to be a lot further away. We finally got there, and I defused Holden by letting him play blackjack, and I got my tickets, but in the process, my shoes cut my feet to ribbons. Because you know I was not wearing sensible shoes, right? Nope, I had on cute little black slides from 9 West. Fashion before comfort, kids. And then that night, when we were walking back to Harrah's for the Improv show, I had on even more frivolous red sandals that were fucking my feet up even more than the black ones. So this is me, at the Aladdin, telling Holden to go on without me. I'm surprised he didn't. Ah, but the damage to my feet was worth it. I got to see my boys. I'd do it all again and cut my feet up much worse if it meant I got to see Penn & Teller, because yes, I am *that* dedicated in my stalking. Of course, I wore my very cute new dress. A girl has to look her best when stalking. Seriously, though, in that dress, in that town, with those sunglasses, I felt like a movie star. Very Marilyn Monroe. Well, actually, maybe not so much Marilyn as Bettie Page, but while I love Marilyn, I am all about being Bettie, so it all works out in the end. We'd walk through the casinos and Holden was in danger of getting whiplash because he kept turning to glare at the men who were staring at me. I just hope they were staring at me because they thought I was cute, rather than a freak. In the Riveria, a very retro, rockabilly cat was handing out fliers for his rock-n-roll revival show and he called after me, "Hey, Bettie Page, you are one cool chick!" That, my friends, was validation. You work so hard on a look, and you're never quite sure you're pulling it off, and then someone who knows compliments you and it's all good. I even got whistled at in Penn and Teller's theater at the Rio. P&T do this very cool thing where before the show, you can go onstage and check out the boxes they are going to use for an escape trick during the show and when we went up, someone let out a long wolf whistle. Holden nearly fell off the stage. That's one of the boxes. And that's me being cheesy and pretending to spin one of the wheels. (Incidentally, those are the Red Shoes of Doom, but they went with the dress, so a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.) We took several stupid pictures with the boxes, pretending to be surprised or puzzled or studying them. See the dude holding the lid? Of course you do. Duh. Anyway, he was one of those magic geeks (er, unlike girl magic geeks who lust after very tall magicians) who tries to figure out all the tricks. Well, he and his girlfriend were going over every inch of the boxes, feeling inside, running their hands over the wood, trying to pull the wheels off, attempting to figure out the secret of the boxes. And, finally, just when Holden was posing with this particular box, Magic Geek over there figured out the secret and managed to trip the secret spring and the whole frame of the box rose up, revealing how Teller would escape from it. Of course, Holden was actually touching the box at the time, so it looked like he was the one who tripped the spring and security ran up onstage and Holden was yelling, "I didn't do it! It was him! I didn't touch anything!" I was dying. It didn't really matter in the end, though, since Penn & Teller actually reveal how the trick is done. I figured they were smart enough to know that if they didn't want Magic Geeks figuring out the trick beforehand, they shouldn't give them access to the boxes. Sigh. I'd show you the picture; it was really funny, but Holden forbid me from posting his picture. Party pooper. But I can still post the best picture from the entire trip: Yes, we are all aware that this was WHY Kate went to Vegas. To have her picture taken with Penn Jilette. Holden even got a little, ahem, shirty about this. We were standing in the Riveria and the camera wasn't working and I started hyperventilating about how the camera had better work the next night when we went to the Rio and he snarled, "Yeah, yeah, I know. So you can take your picture with Penn. Jesus Christ, is that the only reason you came here?" Luckily, I'm a smart girl and didn't answer that question truthfully. Somehow I think "Well, it's not the ONLY reason. Just the main one" might have sparked a gambling binge or at least his leaving me in Nevada. So the show was great. As always. Even if Holden complained that he'd seen most of the tricks before. Well, that's what happens when your girlfriend stalks magicians and makes you see them four times. I'm sure my old college roommate would be able to commiserate on that score; I made her see them three times. I made my ex see them at least twice. I have a feeling I'm going to have to find another companion for the next show. But, yeah, the show was fabulous. And afterward, we went out and I got in line to talk to Penn. And let me tell ya, kids, I was nervous. I was afraid that meeting Penn this time wouldn't measure up to the last two times I had him sign my program. What if it didn't seem like Penn thought I was cute anymore? Even with me wearing that dress? What would that say about me and everything I have based my life on since New Year's Eve 1998? The dream would be over, girls and boys, over, and at the very least, I'd have to really gear up my stalking of Billy Boyd. Or French Stewart. I'm pretty sure French would be easier to stalk. But, seriously, I was risking a lot waiting in line to take that picture. If he didn't respond to me like he thought I was cute, I would lose a really great story to tell at parties, because essentially this interaction would invalidate all interaction that occurred before. Thankfully, I had nothing to worry about. While I was waiting in line, Penn was signing a fish bowl for a woman that had helped Teller with this lovely trick involving goldfish, and he kept looking over at me! Even more thankfully, I didn't pass out because he was looking over at me. And he was very charming when it was my turn. Of course, I'm a total 12-year-old dork and couldn't say more to him than, "Would you take a picture with me?" But he said "Absolutely" and put his arm around me and, after it was all over, I really felt like I would never wash my shoulder again. It was very Marcia Brady and Davie Jones. I was showing these pictures to Sabrina and Sammy and Tracey the other night and Tracey, who is very into auras and new age things, saw The Best Picture and exclaimed, "Wow, he looks very comfortable with you! You look like you know each other!" Of course, to a normal person, this would mean nothing, but to a fangirl, it's like license to stalk. Okay, maybe not that extreme. But still.... Actually, Tracey might be onto something because I have The Best Picture up as wallpaper on my computer at work. And you'd be surprised how many people have no clue who Penn & Teller are. At least once a week, someone comes in, stares at my computer for minute or so, and then says, "Oh, is that your boyfriend? You two go so well together!" (My standard answer is, of course, "I wish!") Although, my favorite has to be the woman who came in, recognized the picture, grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me excitedly and yelled, "OHMYGOD! Kate, are you dating Penn Jilette?!!!" Man, I NEED to go back to Vegas with my girls.

7 Deadly Sins and Other, Less Fatal Diversions No sidebar today. After all, with all that food, gambling, spa-visiting, and close proximity to Penn Jilette, I think my recap of the trip covers all the major sins, don't you?