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Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Smashed Burgers and el Big Guitars

Day 8 - Thursday July 24, 2014

Nice as the suite was, it was noisy in that part of Mandalay Bay - some of the same engineering geniuses that design the impossible-to-maintain grommet making equipment back home at Royal Canadian Veeblefetzer are the same overqualified twits that use their marginal industrial design savvy to create hotel room door auto-closers that manage to swing the doors at near the speed of sound, which results in a resounding explosion that echoes up and down the corridors, the likes of which have not been heard since the days of the great hydrogen-filled airships. And this every 38 seconds, for hours on end throughout the night. Oh, the humanity that operate the doors are partly to blame as well.
Are you here to see el Big Guitar?...
Fortunately, I had the ultimate antidote - squeezy ear plugs. They worked a treat and I slept like a baby until coffee time AM.

There’s a convenient little coffee bar right outside the elevators at Mandy B. No searching, no ice swans up Steve Wynn’s ass. Kenny would be in luxury coffee heaven before he even knew he wanted to be. I had to presume he knew about it, because I hadn’t actually laid eyes on him.

I went about my morning play, dropping a couple of hundred on short pay triple play Jacks with nothing to show for it at the end but a furrowed brow, Aces Kicker on Jacks for $32.50, three other quads which also got played back in, and deepening crease in my bankroll.




Kenny finally got in touch, and yes, he was game for breakfast, even though he’d had another bad night.

We met up and went for the buffet. I had all kinds of wonderful things. Fresh strawberries, omelette with peppers, mushrooms, jalapenos and a good portion of cheese to Zamboni the cholesterol out of my arteries. I had a happy little mini country fried steak, breakfast taters, sausage, and a good dipping from the vat o’ country throw-up gravy poured over the whole mess, strawberries and all. C.T.U.G. is like WD-40 - there ain’t nothing that it don’t work on!


Meanwhile, Kenny had a healthy breakfast of sugar, sugar, dextrose, fructose, glucose, and comatose. I’m talking a couple of donuts, heaps of fruit, some sort of pastry thing, coffee with four or five packets in.

I had to step in.

“Kenny, pal, you really need to round out your diet a little. All that sugar you eat… it can’t be good for you.!”

“Royal, you’re right,” said Kenny, and ambled off to the buffet. He returned forthwith bearing a plate with three rashers of bacon on it, of which he ate exactly one.

“That’s better, bro’” I said. “So, what to do next?”

What indeed?! Well, ablutions, it turned out. We went our own way to go shower and shave and whatnot, with the plan that we’d meet up in an hour or so.

And we did, and then went to the car, which was a very pleasurable experience because for once, we didn’t lose the fucking thing in yet another never-ending Vegas strip parkade.

No, like capable adults, we got off on the correct floor, and actually managed to walk straight to the rental.

I wished someone would award us a gold star and say, “What a GOOD. JOB. you did boys! Well DONNNNNNE!”

First up, we wanted to check out Guitar Center. We drove south, eyeballing various interesting looking businesses.

“Texas de Brazil. What’s that?” asked Kenny.

“Churra… churra scaria?” I said, reading aloud.

“Brazilian Steak House,” said Kenny. “There’s absolutely no hair on the steak. They remove it tableside with a wax strip.”

I found the Guitar Center and we went in. I had a good time looking at the stuff but Kenny was zoning out. I’d go somewhere, he’d follow. I’d look at something, he’d follow. I asked him if he wanted to check out the keyboards and he said, no, not really. What was going on with the guy?
A beautiful wall of guitars.
What's worse than an unaffordable $8000 Tele?
...An unaffordable $35,000 Strat.
Instead of the $35,000 Strat, I bought a couple of t-shirts and we headed over to Fry’s which I was sure Kenny would love. But it was the same deal, I was kind of enthused about seeing stuff but Kenny was just along for the ride. I picked up a bunch of on-sale crap, including some cheap replacement Apple knock-off cables. $10 each. The Apple ones were $23. I bought two.

We got back in the car and I suggested about the most fun thing two guys who have been cut loose in Vegas could possibly think to do.

“Let’s get some dirty, greasy, disgusting food and go and sit by the airport and eat lunch and watch planes!” I said.

But you know what? Kenny just wanted to go back to the hotel. As in now. Right fucking now.

“I can barely stay away, I’m seeing shadows, I feel weak, I’m short of breath. I just want to go back to bed.”

I exited the big-ass car mall and did a U-turn on LVB, and headed back up to Mandalay B. Whereupon I dropped poor Kenny off at the main porte cochon.

“Take care, okay? Text or call if you need anything.”

He was gone.

I decided to make the best of it, and drove south again, looking for a likely burger joint to try. I pulled into a place called Smashburger and ordered some greasy, disgusting, dirty, greasy food.

The cheeseburger was hot and dripping with grease which ran all over my fingers. Dirty, greasy grease. It was fucking great. The fries were fresh but super super salty, so I didn’t eat many of those. I had some kind of dirty, greasy diet root beer or something to wash down the dirty, greasy lunch. Big success!


I headed back to the Bay and valet parked this time.

I did some play and I noticed that I was continually getting 'kicker' hands on Jacks. It was frustrating even though had I been playing Double Double, I wouldn't have gotten those hands because I would be playing a different game, different timing, different parallel universe, etc. etc.

Still.




I took a long break in the suite and watched some more of Ramsay yelling at people. Hung around. Watched the planes. Pondered my terrible luck.

After a few hours, I was at that point where I was down another couple of hundred on the day, and sick of losing, and it was time to go at it again.

I prepared another one of my high-end $2.50 cigars, nestling it like its brother, with all the care it deserved, in my shirt pocket.

The elevator spit me out and as I walked by the little lobby store and into the casino I heard a live voice singing… Luck Be a Lady! It sounded just like Frank Sinatra but it wasn’t.

It was Fake Sinatra.

A Sinatra tribute guy sings live to drums and keyboard in the lounge (the same one that does double duty as the True Luxury - not fake ice swan - Coffee Dispensary).
Fake Sinatra at Mandalay Bay - Loved it!
With Fake Sinatra crooning, whiskey coming, and a terrible stogie going, I felt great and thought ‘I’ll just take it easy, play low volatility. Preserve my bankroll.’

Unfortunately, my brain re-arranged the letters in preserve my bankroll to ‘perverse my bankroll’ and I found myself playing high volatility Double Double Bonus.

Okay, at least it was quarters. Single line only.

The first twenty went.

The second twenty… heavens to Betsy and Murgatroyd… I was dealt this for $200.


Finally, some luck! The Sinatra music had done it! Thank you, old closed-eyes!!!

I cashed out $180 and got a ping from Kenny, asking if I’d eaten dinner yet. I sent a Tex back saying I hadn’t. I decided to head back over to the machines near where Fake Sinatra was singing so it would be easy for him to find me.

I played there for a while and kept checking for Texes. Meanwhile, I played a twenty in the triple play and went on one of those great runs where you just keep winning all the time. I rang it up to about $50 and then down and out, but had a great time with my cocktails, cigar, and Fakey. I was dealt three Aces two or three times and dealt three of a kind about eight times but never got a quad.

One thing I saw was a couple of women playing some machines, drinking and smoking, with their bundle in a stroller, pretty much ignored, behind them. I was pretty disgusted by this behavior until I got a glimpse of the ugliest baby I’d ever seen.

The baby had to weigh about two pounds, had a wet nose, poor kid, pointy ears like you’ve never seen, and fur all over its naked body.Thank goodness, it was just a Chihuahua.

By now about an hour and a half had passed since I had heard from Kenny so I thought the hell with it, I might as well go and eat.

I hit this little Mexican food place in the mall called Hussong’s Cantina, and it was great.

They had a band playing and they even had one of those big guitars. I call this rare instrument by it's proper name, el Big Guitar. It is not easy to play el Big Guitar, let alone find one for purchase in the Big Guitar Center for $35,000.


They brought chips and two kinds of salsa and didn’t try to upsell me on no eight fucking dollar bean dip, thank you very much.

In honor of el Big Guitar I ordered what turned out to be el Big Burrito. This thing was about the size of a football and kind of rudely shaped, which pleased me no end. It was good and very filling. For the last third I scooped out the prizes inside and ate that part, leaving behind about a half pound of tortilla.

Sadly, I’d only caught the last half of the last song of el Big Guitar Band. But I will definitely return to Hussong’s again, at more timely hours, to enjoy some el Big Guitar Music and a burrito the size of Gary Busey’s head.

The bill was about $24 including tip, and worth it.
Hussong's Cantina Royal Flusher Restaurant Rating - three and a half to a Royal.
Feeling satisfied (but slightly worried about Absent Kenny) I thought, I’ll just meander through the casino, feel good, stay calm, go to my room, take in the sights, not take any chances. Play it smart. Play it safe. Enjoy sitting on a win for a change.

Then I thought, maybe a gambling nightcap. One twenty and that’s it.

“Just one twenty,” I muttered aloud, then making a slashing motion across my throat, “and that’s it. One twenty. And that’s it.”

I went back to my favorite triple play machines and slipped a lucky twenty in, and pulled up Double Double. These are the ones that are pretty much in sight of a bank of ATMs. Not far from the high limit room. I played about ten hands or so and holy crap, four Aces for $200. No kicker, but hey, I’ll take it.

And I cashed it out. I went up to the suite with tickets in my wallet for $380. I’d started with a $500 bankroll, so I was out $120. And one Kenny.

What a difference though! Instead of being down $500 I was down only $120 based on just two hands. If I’d gotten the kicker on the Aces, I’d have had a winning day.

But I’ll take what I can get. And tomorrow was another day.

Royal Flusher: Day: $-120 Trip: $-2910




Monday, September 29, 2014

Jolly Jumper Jack Daniels

In search of the ‘misplaced’ rental car, we backtracked back to the elevator and, on a hunch, I punched a floor button one higher than where we were.

Now. To our credit, the numbers on the poles at in the Mandalay Bay parkade do not match the floor buttons on the elevator. The markings on the pillars are the same on each floor - B1, C1, D1, etc. We parked at B2 and I thought that meant we were on the second floor. But there is a pole B2 on every floor.

And now, the car was magically back where it should be. We did the bag drag back down the walkway, through the shops and restaurants, through the casino, to the elevators.

Kenny wanted to take a rest and then maybe hit the pool. I headed to the casino, in search of various machines, which I found, played, and lost on.

A word about Wifi in Mandalay Bay… its included with the resort fee, somehow or other, and also free somehow or other (slower speeds only) but it has got to be the stupidist, most annoying Wifi I’ve ever used. Every time I turned around, I had to fill in the log in screen. Over and over and over again. Many times it just wouldn’t work. Over the course of a three night stay, I must have logged in 50 times on my phone. Absolutely maddening.
Doggy Style Tip
I wanted to grab some lunch and walked out into the mall that connects MB with Luxor and found a bar pizza joint that sells slices. Slice of Vegas. Great, I thought.
Wrong.

Could I have a table? Only if ordering a pizza. (Never mind that most of them are empty.) You have to sit at the bar. Okay, fine, I’ll sit at the bar. For slices they had a myriad of toppings available. You could also build your own. I asked the bartender how long it took and he said five minutes. I said really? How? He said that’s how we do it.

I didn’t see how you could make a fresh slice in five minutes. And the answer is, you can’t.

What was delivered was the worst piece of garbage pizza I’ve ever seen. They take a basic pizza slice from the pizzas on display at the take-out window, dump the extra toppings on top, and heat it.



It was so tough I literally could not cut it with a knife and fork. Unfortunately, I was so hungry I had to choke some of it down.

I talked to the manager of the place and asked him how long the pizzas sat. He said some bullshit number like 20 minutes. I say no way, it had to be a couple of hours or more. The thing they served me was long, long dead.

It was one of those experiences where you just leave completely pissed off and unsatisfied.

Slice of Vegas - earns my first ever 1/2 to a Royal Restaurant Rating.

I decided to prove to myself that pizza by the slice didn’t have to be that bad. Next destination? The food court at the Mandalay Bay convention center, a convenient three mile indoor stroll from the casino.

I got in line at Bonanno’s, ordered a pepperoni slice from the display. It was miles better than Slice of Vegas.

Now, I know that there are options for really good pizza on the strip, but this was a hit and run when hunger struck. Bonanno’s slice was really fairly good - it was as good as food court pizza is going to get and hit the spot.

Which slice would you rather eat? This?

Or this from the food court?
Thus encouraged, I took some time to regroup, and prepared one of my high-end $2.50 cigars, nestling it in my shirt pocket.

A quick trip to the bar netted me some wooden matches - perfect. I settled down at a machine, ordered a drink, and got the firestick going. For some reason it took me about ten matches to get the damn thing lit.

I played this and that and settled in on triple play 9/5 jacks quarters. The cocktail service was excellent and I tipped double, apologizing for the disgusting cheap stenchbomb was smoking. The tips kept the drinks coming, and I may have over-done it just a tad.
I played through $100, and changed machines. I sat down, hard, and the chair was kind of broken.

As the cocktail waitress brought me a refill, I was bouncing up and down like a kid in a Jolly Jumper.

“Double Jack on the rocks… having fun?” asked the waitress.

“Honey, I haven’t had a ride like this since Pahrump.”

During my second hundy, I got a bright idea. With (shitty) Wifi in the casino, why not try Facetime back to Flusherville? Well, it worked! Mrs. Flusher got to come along for quite a bit of the ride. I pointed the phone at the screen and she could watch and hear me play. And actually, that’s when I got the first quad, about an hour into my session.


After I got off the FaceTime I noticed they played an old Beatles tune in the casino. And then another. Wow, they were doing a whole mini-set of the Beatles. I didn’t think too much about it but sang along in my quiet whiskey-fueled bellow, and kept pounding the buttons. Life was good.

I started to get more quads. Three, Four… worked my way back up to $135 out of $200 in.

View from my Jolly Jumper seat








Kenny found me two hours later and I had $80 in the machine. So in all, I did two hours play on $120. This, I thought, was fairly acceptable on triple play. Guessing 600 hands an hour, times two hours, times three hands at a time, is, well, a LOT. Okay, 3600 hands. 3600 x $1.25 is $4500. I managed about 97.3% payback, which was a lot more reasonable than eighty-some percent. And I had fun. And my mouth tasted like an ashtray. And I was burping cardboard pizza, with overtones of decent mall pizza.

I call this success.

I wrapped it up and headed for the Men’s and as I walked I realized that they weren’t playing Beatles over the sound system in the casino - it was a live band, and these guys sounded GREAT! They totally nailed the Beatles sound.

The band is called The Fab, and they play the lounge fairly regularly, and I am going to make a point of seeing them play again.

Highly recommended, unless you hate Beatles music (like Kenny).

Kenny had been sleeping quite a bit, but was up to try dinner. He hadn’t had lunch. We walked around a bit so that Kenny could look at all the machines and table games that he would not play in this particular casino.

For dinner, we strolled down to the Border Grill. As soon as we were seated, chips and salsa were brought to the table.

“Would you like some jalapeno black bean dip?” the server asked.

It sounded great! And then…. a little warning bell rang in my head.

“Is it extra?” I asked.

Well of course it was.

I’m really getting tired of the sleazy ‘it sounds like we are just offering you stuff as a courtesy’ upsell technique.

That bean dip was EIGHT BUCKS on the menu. Shame on you Border Grill upsell sleazes!

I had some sort of saucy thing with stuff and Kenny had some sort of shimpy thing with sauce. The meal was universally excellent, and we enjoyed it thoroughly.

I reveled in the fact that I had dodged the sleazy upsell.
Kenny's shrimpy thing with sauce.
My inexplicable saucy thing with stuff.
After dinner, we walked back to the casino, over to Starbucks. Kenny, who seems to be immune to caffeine, got a triple espresso with 8 sugars. We continued to wander, chatting, having a few laughs, and found ourselves in the lobby. We grabbed ice waters from the tank of same they have in the lobby, and crashed out in some armchairs to yak, and watch the people go by. Not what you’d call a high-powered night, but it suited me fine.

And I ‘only’ lost $300, and the rental car twice, on the day.

Royal Flusher: Day: $-300, Trip: $-2790





Swing the Lady in a Hammock

Day 7 - Wed July 23, 2014

I got up and pondered while I headed downstairs to have coffee and some morning play.

I was at the half-way point of the trip, and I was in a hole. Encore would be a bust unless I hit something in this next session. I had three days to hang out at Mandalay Bay with Kenny, and we had the car to take us all over the place.

Since I wasn’t worried about maintaining a relationship at Mandalay Bay, I didn’t mind if I burned them on the comp I’d got to come in on.

What was troubling me was that looking Four Queens play for the last three days. The $25K coin in I planned to play made my blood run cold and my nose run even colder.

So, I had a $60 coffee in Encore and before long Kenny found me. I had an idea and pitched it. We’d head downtown to the Cal for breakfast.

“You’ll like it, Kenny, there’s a counter where you can probably meet and talk to some Hawaiian stranger.”

We got the car from the parkade and had a leisurely drive up the strip to the Cal. I parked on the street for a couple of bucks, literally 10 feet from a side door on the south side of the Cal. How does it not get any easier than that?

I really wanted to show off to Kenny by using my Emerald card to skip the line-up but with the counter, it’s not an issue. We just walked in through the exit and grabbed a couple of empty stools.

And that’s when I lost Kenny.

He got talking to a Hawaiian guy next to him and I might as well have been at breakfast by myself. They yammered on about all kinds of things, that included crude sketches made on napkins to confirm or deny the locations of certain things along the Big Island coast.

The waitress came by and looked over my head into space in a 10,000 yard expressionless stare.

"What. Will. It. Be?" she mumbled.

At that point, my minutes of ethics training came into play and I found myself to be merciful with this poor creature.

I was ready to let her have it with an order of a 'D-day plus 2 with a large slow speed chase. Tint the windows and swing the lady in a hammock.'

Instead, I found myself muttering, "Two eggs over hard, hashbrowns, sausage, wheat toast, coffee."

The high point of breakfast, which arrived quickly, piping hot, was when Hawaiian guy asked us how far our thumbs bent back. Not very far, for both of us.

He showed us his double jointed thumbs like he had only just discovered them that morning while taking a piss. But I knew this wasn’t so, he was just playing it out like he probably had a million times before. Besides, his pant legs were dry.

When you have the gift of double jointed thumbs, you don’t just squander it, you mention it every chance you get.

I offered to take pictures of the thumb to put in my blog, and so, here it is.


I finessed our exit by initiating a round of handshakes and throwing down a tip and saying, “Well, nice meeting you. Kenny here has to get to his mambo class. UGH!”

We walked around downtown after breakfast and stopped by the Mike’s bar at the Four Queens. It was deserted. I left a Royal Flusher business card in the cash drawer, which had been left empty on the counter. I guess this is standard procedure to prove there isn’t anything worth stealing still at the bar when it is closed and the booze is put away.

As we strolled through downtown, I gave Kenny an impromptu history lesson, pointing out which part of Binion's the Mint had been, the El Portal theatre, the corner where the land auction took place, and the covered over doorway on the side of the Golden Gate where a woman had stood in a picture taken in the early 1900s. Stuff like that.

Kenny liked the Nugget and proclaimed that if he ever came back, he’d stay there. I was eager to check out the rumored new bank of quarter deuces progressive games. They were indeed where they were supposed to be. In some future trip, we’ll probably play these heavily. Nice to have another quarter play at the Nugget.


It was nice to spend time together talking about old times, and just driving around different parts of Las Vegas. We swung by the neon boneyard, and through a number of neighborhoods, just to see what they were all about. We spotted a Sam Ash music store to come back to later.

Heading back to Encore from the east, I hopped on Desert Inn Parkway west. It actually is a parkway, and I don’t know why they don’t call it that. It flies right under the strip, no exits, no stopping, and spits you out two miles into industrial Vegas land. I had to make a right, head north, make another right to double back to the strip, then south and left into Encore. Not exactly efficient but who cares - I was saving precious gambling money.

I self-parked and we headed upstairs to get packed. There was a knock on my door - the maid - so I got to put her $20 tip right in her hand. Always makes me feel good and gets my karmic greed going. I could only imagine the riches that such generosity would cause.

Or, does such imagining negate the karma?...

I had the TV on and finally figured out why Mandalay Bay was so expensive for Kenny and why it was so busy - the Vice President was speaking there, and it was live on TV. NAACP convention. Or was he there to speak at the Pet Industry convention which had also convened at Mandalay Bay? Biden continued to bark into the podium mic and still I wondered what he was trying to say.

In the end, I had to figure that the Pet lobby didn’t have the juice that the NAACP has and that Biden was there for human rights, not cat fights.

We met up, right on time, and headed to the parkade, up the elevator, into the sea of cars and… stopped. I had wanted to go to where we’d parked before, but that was… before. Yes, we’d lost the rental car.

We started to do that walk where you start to move aimlessly, while keeping the other person attached through an invisible tether, the length of which was how far you could shout at one another “I’M SURE THE FUCKING CAR WAS BY THIS POLE!!!!!!!!!”. We probably looked like a couple of little toy choo-choo trains that had run off the tracks, going here and there dragging our luggage behind us.

I finally took charge of things and insisted we go back to the elevators.

“Stay here,” I grumbled. “I will find the car and I will bring it and you will get into it. Guard the luggage.”

I went to where I initially thought it was, but then thought it couldn’t be, but actually, it was. In fact, it was so close I just backed around the corner to the waiting Kenny and his Amazing Luggage Collection.

Okay, on our way to Mandalay Bay. I did wonder if it would be an unmitigated parking disaster around there with the CCCP convention or whatever it was.

And, I was a bit jittery... this would be the first time I'd set foot into Mandalay Bay since the incredibly embarrassing, horrifying, emasculating events chronicled in this blog post and explained in this blog post.

But actually, it was just fine. I headed for the self park and docked the rental, and believe me, I took careful note of the pole number we parked at.

The casino wasn't too terribly crowded in spite of the huge number of NAACP delegates in attendance. In fact, I have to say, they were the best-behaved conventioneers I've ever seen. I planned on behaving much, much more poorly than they.

We went and checked in, and then went up and took a look at our rooms. I’d scored a nice suite overlooking the airport and Kenny had a room a few floors up. We were set.

Kenny enjoying the view at Mandalay Bay

Comfort abounds!



Drive-thru tub window




Nice view from M.B.
We met back in the lobby, and then hauled ass back to rental car to get the bags and stuff schlepped up to our room in completion of our day's chores.

And, for the second time in the same morning, two grown men, two grown mature - okay, maybe that’s stretching it - but certainly two men of mature age and stature - had indeed lost their rental car in a parkade.

I walked right to where it was. I mean had been. Everything was clearly marked. We were in the right spot, but everything was different somehow.

“Maybe it’s the wrong floor or something,” said Kenny.

“Shit, maybe. I was sure I had it right but… there’s no car.”

What was my Vegas-addled brain doing to me???!