Hooked on Phonics Got Me Drunk

Dana and I went to Vegas last week, which is why I missed blogging after I said I try and get something up every week. Oops…

But, as it always does, Vegas provided some fun and some stories.

We were supposed to meet two of my college friends there, but they had to back out at the last minute. We considered bailing out as well, since we didn’t really NEED to go to Vegas, but hey, we did need a vacation, and so off we went.

I’ll leave out most of the stuff we did, since it was pretty tame, though if you get a chance to try Talisker Distiller’s Edition, I highly recommend it, and “O” at the Bellagio was a pretty damn cool thing to see.

But none of these are the things we’re still talking about, a week after the trip. No, the thing we are still talking about is the bar at the sports book in the Monte Carlo. Not the bar so much, which is just a standard casino bar with its row of old nasty stools bolted to the floor so drunks can’t fall out of them and its cloudy-screened video poker machines with the 70’s ashtrays on the side and the buttons with all the text worn off from years of drunken finger-sliding. No, it’s not the bar.

I think it was Thursday night, which is really the best time to be in Vegas. The frat boys and Jersey Shore castoffs haven’t descended en masse yet to pollute the city with crappy Target fedoras and fist bump you into an incredulous stupor. You can still see business travelers in the bars trying to work out how to expense the call girls. The clubs aren’t thumping obnoxious hip hop at all hours. The Vs aren’t as deep. Generally the douche-to-normal ratio is much lower. I mean sure, this is still the town where the Wynn can get you to buy a $12 can of PBR by putting tasting notes on the menu and a Subway $5 footlong costs $11.25, but there’s only so much you can do.

So anyway, it was a late-ish night, maybe 1 or 2 AM and we’re sitting at the sports book bar because it’s the only non-club open in the Monte Carlo and we want to be near the room in case either of us starts to pass out, which is a definite possibility.

We’ve fed a few bucks into the video poker machines, mostly on principle, since we’re only playing a hand or so before cashing out and eventually sticking our vouchers in new machines until we get bored with them too. We go for the booze and the people, not the games. What can I say?

So we’re aimlessly pushing buttons and nursing double Jameson and Sprites and chatting with the bartender when a drunken Englishman, or possibly a drunken something pretending to be an Englishman stumbles up to the stool next to us and starts ordering drinks. The bartender obligingly pours the gentleman’s obviously superfluous drinks and rattles off the total. At this point, He of the Drunken Accent inquires:

“What casino chips do you take?”

He begins tossing them on the bar.

“I got Ceasar’s, Bellagio, MGM…”

“I don’t take casino chips,” replies the bartender.

“Luxor, Planet Hollywood,” replies He of the Drunken Accent. At this point the bartender’s shoulders sag and he looks at us with an expression that falls somewhere between “see what I have to deal with” and “is this guy for real?” We laugh and sip our whiskeys. There is movement off to my right.

A small woman waves a $100 bill in the air and says “Excuse me” loud enough to know that she doesn’t give a damn whether she’s excused or not. The bartender turns away from the drunk man, who has been joined by a woman who has started throwing money on the counter to cover the casino chips, and says, “I’m just finishing up an order. I’ll be right there.”

The woman falls silent, leaning on the bar as though she doesn’t really want to touch it and clutching her hundred dollars in a way meant to show you that yes, I have a hundred dollar bill and no, you can’t have it. The bartender scoops up the money and leaves He of the Drunken Accent to his beverages and scattered chips. He crosses to the new woman who opens with “Do you have Appleton Rum?”

“No,” replies the bartender.

“Then what’s your BEST spiced rum?”

The bartender turns to study his liquor shelf. “Captain Morgan.”

The woman sighs, clearly disappointed, but she takes her moment, probably tries to figure out what Jesus would do, and confidently pipes up, “Give me one of those and Coke.”

Now, I’m a whiskey guy myself, so I don’t know that much about rum. I do know however that as soon as you add the phrase “and Coke” to any beverage title, it doesn’t matter what the hell is in the rest of the glass. It doesn’t even have to be in the same family of alcohol. In a casino pour, you can’t taste it. But I digress. Back to the story.

The bartender nods and pours the drink. “Anything else?”

The woman considers for a moment. She straightens up, takes a breath. Clearly, she does not want to fuck this up. “Do you have any Vivo Cleko?” (No, that’s not how it’s spelled, but I want you to have read this phonetically.)

The bartender arches an eyebrow, clearly a bit confused. Undaunted, she tries again.

“Vivo Cleko. Champagne.”

“No.”

“Do you have champagne?”

“Yes.”

“But not Vivo Cleko?”

“No.”

“Then what do you have?”

“Our house brand. Monte Carlo.”

“But the guy over there,” she points vaguely behind herself, “said you could get Vivo Cleko.”

“That’s the high limit bar, ma’am. I don’t have everything they have.”

“He said you could get it. He specifically told me you could.”

“I can call him and see if I can get it from him. But I don’t have it.”

“That would be great. He told me you had it. Specifically.”

The bartender crosses to the phone and has a brief conversation.

“He’s already locked the cage. I can’t get it.”

“But he specifically said you could.”

“I can’t. That bar is closed. It’s probably why he told you to come here.”

“But he specifically said you could get Vivo Cleko.”

“I can’t…”

It went on like this for quite some time, with the bartender obviously being too polite to tell the uppity bitch that the reason the other bartender sent her to him was the had clearly committed some unforgivable sin against the other bartender and had to be punished. Oh, and by the way, it’s “Veuve Cliquot.”

I honestly don’t remember whether she got her champagne, but I do know that for the last week, I keep thinking that the only thing this place needs is a little Vivo Cleko.

It's midnight, why am I blogging?

Frankly it's because I don't think I'll be sleeping any time soon. This despite the fact that I spent the latter half of today feeling a lot like I spent the first half drinking cheap corn whiskey out of mason jar filled with old cigarette butts. I barely made it through dinner.

I've been working out a lot lately but balancing that with eating badly and drinking too much. Welcome to my half-iron training plan. Half-assed is a viable description, maybe even half-witted. Certainly haphazard. Okay, enough of that.

It's been a while since we visited the Big Book of Stupid Things Ryan Does. For tonight's reading, we're going to start with last Friday night, at the wine, cheese and chocolate party. I actually got through it unscathed, without even reaching for an emergency beer, though I did get into a rather elliptical (and drunkenly stationary) political argument. Thankfully, other, more intoxicated people were there to break things up by trying far harder than I was to be coherent. I beat it before they figured out how to turn on the karaoke machine.

Made it home around 1AM, tried unsuccessfully to sleep. Valuable lesson learned: When drinking wine and eating chocolate and carb-laden crakers, your body gets a bit jacked up. When you do sleep, your dreams are jittery and Tarantino-like. Lots of jump cuts and marginal acting. Surreal montages of dancing costumed characters like the ones at Disneyland only creepier. But I digress.

I finally entered this, let's call it a fugue state, at about 3AM. Just in time to have the alarm go off at 6 so I could head down to Coronado and help the TNT squad learn to grab water bottles while cycling. Valuable lesson learned: When newbies unload their used bottles, check their hand position and be ready to duck.

After the TNTers wrapped up, it was time to do my training for the day, which consisted of crashing Katie's far gnarlier than anticipated workout. Stay off the Strand at 1PM. And definitely at 3. Trust me. Even without sweating out red wine, it sucks when you get blown out of your aero bars. And the running is best left undiscussed.

Needless to say, when I made it home around 7PM I was largely non-functional.

Sleep helped, though I crashed right through my planned Sunday surf session. What's one more week's worth of dust on the board? Did manage a cove swim, though not the planned 2-miler. (There's always this week, right?) And then it was off to meet Mark for a beer...er, Mark and Tauni for four pitchers...

Monday sucked. And the visit to UCLA didn't help matters. Have I ever mentioned my irrational loathing of the City of Angels? Another post entirely.

Skip forward to last night and the 80's cover band at the House of Blues. How do you go wrong with a fat bassist in a Devo costume, a singer dressed like Spiccoli (complete with white zinc on the nose) and a wannabe Slash on lead guitar? You just can't, I tell ya. You just can't. Especially when they know Don't Stop Believin' AND Come On Eileen. Oh, and we got free tickets to see Dramarama. Even though the cover guys played Anything, Anything, so I get to be all blase about it and compare the originals to their imitators. Hope they bring their A game.

Again, too much beer and a sketchy salad led to weird dreams and not enough sleep, so of course I got up and joined Brian and the gang for a swim this morning. I missed the bat rays, but I did see a seal. And I swam like I was still drunk. Brian, you couldn't stay in my slipstream because it was a moving target. I blame the currents. Yeah. Currents. Not the Red Trolley. What would a trolley be doing in the Cove anyway?

I'll close with this: I got a call today from a client telling me that the audio on their main display had gone out. I tried everything I could think of to fix it remotely. I rebooted their computers. I had the guy on site check the TV volume and make sure no one had turned it down. I read PC log files looking for weird cryptic error codes. Finally, I gave up and drove down to El Cajon to see for myself. Guess what? They had unplugged the #$%#!@ speaker.

And curtain.