Las Vegas Slideshow

I just put together a little slide show from our Las Vegas Marathon trip.

You can check it out here:

Las Vegas and Hoover Dam

and here:

Las Vegas Marathon Running Elvi

Hope you like it.

Saturday morning coffee

It's time to make the transition from Las Vegas Bubs to Holiday Bubs, and so far I think it's going smoothly. It helps that we now have a tree in our dining room--I ran out Friday afternoon and got a nice little balsam from the tree lot across from the liquor store. They guys who run it are from the U.P. and real friendly; we've gotten trees there for several years now. So, now, the entire dining room smells piney fresh, which is nice. We'll decorate it tonight, and the baking starts today. Mmmm...

Our household is about to take on a unique holiday smell. It's kind of a medley, a steady undercurrent of pine thanks to the tree, with an interweaving of strong coffee, roasted pecans (around this time of year I have to fight the urge to throw roasted pecans into everything) and cocoa, with occasional strong notes of freshly-peeled oranges, crisp bacon, roasted garlic and caramelized onion. There's cinnamon, of course, and frequently the distinct aroma of bourbon whiskey or mulled wine, or, even better--glogg. Right now the smell is pine tree/coffee/fresh orange/maple cinnamon oatmeal. It's comforting.

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Part of the reason I'm so enthusiastic about my household smells is that, as part of the transition from LV to holiday season, I need to get the Las Vegas smells out of my head. What are the Las Vegas smells you ask? Well, it depends on where you're at and what you're doing. There's always the smell of unwashed foreign tourist that can grab you at any moment; likewise the over-cologned 20-something party guy or gal. You're never far away from smelling a good cigar, either, or some good cooking smells. While Las Vegas does not offer the riot of smells that New Orleans does, there's still a lot to experience:

• Wonderful casino smell--a pleasant combination of vanilla, coconut and some floral notes. It's usually accompanied by a cool or refreshing sensation in the air, and you really notice it when you walk into the swankier casinos like Mandalay Bay, Mirage, Bellagio or Wynn. There's always just a hint of cigarette smoke in the background, but not much. The best casino smell ever was at the Desert Inn. I've gone to great lengths, at times, to reproduce this smell in my own home.
• Good casino smell--you still get those pleasant notes when you first walk in, especially near the hotel registration desks, but it's less noticeable throughout the casino. The smoke smell is stronger, and you can start to detect the scent of human desperation along with it. The Luxor and Monte Carlo have this smell, along with most of the other big casinos on the strip. The air does not seem quite as cool as in the top casinos.
  
• Bad casino smell--the classic example was the old Westward Ho, torn down a year or two ago. It was a combination of cigarette smoke, stale alcohol and chili dog onions, making you want to sniff your own armpit occasionally to make sure you weren't smelling your own B.O. The worst example is found at the Gold Spike downtown, where the funk of human fear and hopelessness almost overpowers decades worth of ashtray stench. The high end of bad casino smell can be found at places like O'Shea's and Casino Royale on the strip. They still have the heavy beer/smoke medley, but the smell of raucous human party time sweat is not entirely unpleasant.
• Double Down Saloon smell--now this is in a category all its own. The place is a cool dark haven, the happiest place on earth, truly. No matter what time of day or night you go there, it looks the same. You can only tell if it's day or night when someone opens the door. If it's daytime, you can see the people sitting along that side of the bar wince and recoil from the sunlight. We bought a couple of tee shirts to replace our old ones, and when we went to pack them up Tuesday morning we realized they absolutely reeked of smoke and some other, indefinable, something...whether it was the fabled Ass Juice or bacon martini, I couldn't tell.
• The weird sewer smell that you get at odd intervals along the strip from the Planet Hollywood south to the MGM Grand. We also noticed it in the Miracle Mile shops at Planet Hollywood. At first you think the tourist in front of you ripped one, but then you realize it's actually much more than that.
• On this visit I also experienced runner smell, made all the more unique by the fact that the race expo and pre-race Elvis assembly was held at the Mandalay Bay. Morning runner smell is a combination of sunscreen, mint/menthol (from all that pain cream on everyone's knees and legs), shampoo and arousal. Post-race runner smell (especially hundreds of them together in a confined area) is something else altogether, and I won't describe it here.
  

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Another thing that's really got me going is food. I mean, even more than usual. When we first started visiting Las Vegas we'd visit different restaurants and always treat ourselves to a couple of really good meals while we were out there. When we first visited there were a few celebrity chef restaurants, and they all offered an excellent value for the quality of food. It seemed that you could afford much better food than you could in other places, because to some extent the gambling still subsidized the food and drink. Over the past ten years though, that's changed.

There are many more excellent restaurants, many bearing celebrity chef's names (Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, Todd English, Michael Mina, etc) than there were ten years ago. There are also buffets at places like the Paris and the Bellagio that offer an astonishing variety and quality of food. So that's nice.

In the past people went to Las Vegas because middle class folks could get a level of service and entertainment that they couldn't afford in their home town. The problem is that food and entertainment now make up a much bigger percentage of hotel/casino income; the casinos have all realized that people are much more willing to pay more money for food and drink. The days of the cheap buffet/prime rib dinner/$5.99 steak, at least at the nicer places on the strip, are long gone.

A new ethic has arisen among visitors to Las Vegas, particularly younger visitors. Instead of viewing Las Vegas as a destination where you get more for your money, Las Vegas has become a destination where people expect to spend far more than they normally would. It has become a place dedicated to conspicuous consumption. Visit message boards like Open Vegas and check out the comments. You'll hear people say things like "I went to X club, and spent $50 cover for two of us to get in, and we got bottle service for $400, but what the heck, it's Vegas, right?"

So, if you stay at a nicer property on the strip, expect to pay $6-$8 for a bottled beer like MGD or Lite. Expect to pay $10-$14 for a mixed drink or for name brand booze. Sometimes it's ok to spend more for quality booze, like if you want to sit somewhere really swanky like the Red Square at Mandalay Bay and drink cocktails containing 3 shots of high-end booze off a bar made of ice. The only problem there is after you have too many drinks and stick your tongue to the ice bar on a dare and have to be removed by the staff. I'm just saying.

Expect that if you visit a place like the Luxor Steakhouse you'll spend $175 for two people on the same quality steak dinner you'd get at Wildfire for about $50 less.

Needless to say, food had become less important to us over the past few visits. It just didn't seem worth the effort. This time, though, I wanted to find something special and have a really good meal.

We had the best meal of our lives at Rosemary's on Sunday night after the race. Rosemary's is run by chefs Wendy and Michael Jordan. They both have roots in New Orleans (Michael worked for Emeril Lagasse) and their restaurant reflects a distinct southern influence, but with some really unique flair.

On Sunday night they offer their wines at half price. We each had the prix fixe dinner ($50) which allowed you to choose 3 items from the menu (entree, and an appetizer, salad and/or dessert). The food was amazing, the service was amazing, and the restaurant was just perfect. The bill, including two stiff bourbons, a bottle of wine and the prix fixe dinner for two came to about $200, tax and tip included. We spent about 2 1/2 hours there. I've never experienced service that was this good without being intrusive or pretentious, and I've never had food this complex and well-prepared that wasn't fussy.

Here's what we had:

an amuse-bouche of whitefish salad on a crispy tortilla,

a nice Tinto Fino Spanish red wine,

Beef & Maytag Blue Cheese Carpaccio
Arugula & Granny Smith Apple Salad, Candied Walnuts & Port Wine Drizzles,

Hugo’s Texas BBQ Shrimp
Maytag Blue Cheese Slaw,

Wilted Spinach Salad
Port Wine Shallots, Goat Cheese Cake, Spiced Pecans & Sherry Mustard Dressing,

Seared Sea Scallops
Parsnip Potato Puree, Apple Cider Beurre Blanc, Crispy Prosciutto & Fried Parsnip Strips,

Grilled Veal Tenderloin
French Green Lentils, Apple Smoked Bacon & Sherry Mustard Butter Sauce,

Dessert was a coconut bread pudding, which was served as a timbale and was actually the weakest part of the meal, but still pretty damn good. After dessert they brought out a little dish with truffles, lemon bars and peanut butter balls that was like a second dessert in itself. I can't say enough good about Rosemary's. If I lived in Las Vegas I'd weigh 300 pounds and be broke.

I wish I'd taken pictures of my food, but I didn't want to look like a total rube. All I managed was a surreptitious camera phone shot of MizBubs' Vegas cleavage. That was classy.

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Enjoy the weekend you crazy kids!

It's that time

Time for scary Santa.

The girl, her intuition far more developed than her hapless brother's, stares straight ahead in a silent plea for help.

December 26: Here's an idea

What would people think about maybe having our December 26th get-together at the fabulous Hala-Kahiki Lounge? It should be pretty roomy on a Wednesday night, and I've been there with parties of 10 or 12 people on short notice with no problems. The drinks are cheap and strong, and there's beer and straight liquor for the unadventurous.

The Hala-Kahiki is in River Grove, on River Road between Belmont and Grand Avenue. It's pretty easily accessible from I-90, I-294 and the western suburbs. It's easy to get to from the north side of Chicago as well. Here's a map:


View Larger Map

Just thought I'd throw that out there. I'm happy in pretty much any old gin mill.

Peroxide and wrestling

And what the hell peroxide and wrestling has to do with anything, I have no idea. I just know I found a cute pic of a hot dame and a snowman, and it's wintertime and it's three weeks until Christmas and I got snow all over my yard...so there. There's your winter pinup.

Enjoy.

Dam

Classy!

Las Vegas places a high premium on the appreciation of the classics. It is a classy, classy place.

Consider, if you will, this example of statuary outside Caesar's Palace.

Is this a gryphon? My eldest says it's a Greek sphinx, traditionally depicted as a winged lion with a woman's head.

The Las Vegas version is traditionally depicted as a winged lion with the face of a cocktail waitress and stripper boobs.

Thank you. Thank you very much...

Well, I'm back. Whew.

I have had a peak life experience. From the Wikipedia entry:

"Peak experience is a term used to describe certain transpersonal and ecstatic states, particularly ones tinged with themes of unification, harmonization and interconnectedness. Participants characterize these experiences, and the revelations imparted therein, as possessing an ineffably mystical (or overtly religious) quality or essence."

Words can't describe it. But since I'm a talker, I'm sure I'll try. I have a few themes I plan to expound on in the coming days:

• Good casino smell
• The changing nature of food and alcohol in Las Vegas
• Mega casino theme confusion
• Who is this "Elvis", and what does he mean to us?
• The Hoover Dam is really, really big
• "Progress", very often, sucks

In addition, the brave new science of narcozoology might be about to expand. More on that later this week.

Thanks, everyone, for all the nice comments and good wishes. I wish you all could have been there Sunday. It was a blast.

Now, a few pictures.

This is me on stage at the Elvis pep rally Saturday afternoon at the race expo. The media director for the race got me up there with all the Elvettes (female running Elvi). Being one of the only non-jumpsuit Elvi paid off.

Here's a bunch of the Elvi mingling at the race expo:

This is the Elvismobile. It's a cart with loudspeakers powered by a car battery that plays Elvis tunes. Loudly. And it's got some horns, and a cooler with beer. A big contingent of the Elvi run along behind the Elvismobile.

That's all for tonight folks. Time for sleep.

Who's the big winner?

I am, that's who. And I hope MizBubs feels like a winner also.

Because when you're sitting in front of your Tiki Torch penny video slot machine watching it ring up your $26.00 win, while you're swilling down Jack Daniels that's been brought to you by a cocktail waitress whose breastuhses are pouring out of her dress, well, my friend...that's just about as good as it gets, isn't it?

Sunday evening cocktail

Here's the Sunday evening cocktail, courtesy of Paymon's Hookah Lounge. We stopped in for a nightcap after we at the best meal of our lives at Rosemary's.

Anyway, the drink is the Babylon Spice. MizBubs drank this one; it's loaded with coconut, ginger and mango flavors.

The half marathon went great. I set a new personal record for fastest time running in an Elvis costume.

I'll have more tomorrow. It took a while to get internet access here at the Luxor, which, sadly, is not as good as it used to be. I'll say this--running as one of the running Elvi was the best experience I've ever had running a big race, and I'd love to do it again. I've got a couple good stories to tell, but they're going to have to wait until I get home.

And they're off...

A journey of 13.1 miles starts with a single step.

The countdown continues...

I just finished my last training run, a quick 3 miler. The starting temperature was 29, and what kind of Chicagoan would I be if I didn't throw in the wind chill factor, huh? That made it feel like 19.

It felt good. For some reason this felt like a particularly powerful run. And why, I wondered, was that?
Was it the power of the Elvis hair (even if it was suppressed by a cap during the run)

Was it the powerful new tights?


Or, more likely, was it my good luck mutt, Duffy, who was waiting to see me when I got home?

Now it's time for laundry, some housecleaning and packing before the youngest gets home from school and MizBubs gets home from work. Then it's time to try on the full Elvis suit. I'm not sure if I'm ready for it yet.

TCB!

Counting down

Ok, so we didn't solve the murder we were working on yet...but we're going to. These things take time. Damn you, videotaped statements. I had hoped to be celebrating clearing that case before I headed for Las Vegas, but real life lately has frequently refused to adjust to my timetable. But that will not stop me from having a good time. No sir. Today is the first of 11 days away from work, and I aim to enjoy them all.

Middle age male vanity is a powerful and ridiculous force. Part of tonight was spent dying my hair in order to achieve the proper Elvis color for Sunday's run. MizBubs, girl dynamo, altered my gold lame jacket and got the sleeves to the proper length. I picked up some extra Body Glide at the running store this afternoon, and solved the pants problem. Pants problem? Yeah, it turns out that the gold lame pants that came with the jacket really aren't suited to running. MizBubs, girl genius, suggested that I hit the thrift shops and find some black pants to run in--turns out Elvis only wore the full lame suit a couple of times before ripping the pants, and most of the times he performed in the gold lame jacket he wore black pants as a result. I hit the jackpot--I found two pairs of black pants at the Wings resale shop! One is a comfortable loose-fitting old pair of shiny black dress pants, high-wasted and pleated, and the other is actually a pair of Nike black running pants. I have all day tomorrow to decide.

I went to the library and got some Elvis material for inspiration. While my hair turned color and MizBubs sewed her pretty fingers to the bone we watched the first two disks of Elvis--The Great Performances, which was chock-full of very cool early footage of the King.

And now it's time for bed.

TCB!

So many things

So many things to write about, and so little time, and so few remaining undamaged brain cells, to use to write about them...

For starters there was the whole MizBubs family early Thanksgiving the weekend of the 16/17/18: 20+ people for dinner, at the end of my 80+ hour week, while our upstairs bathroom was totally gutted. Good times. We kept the turkey fryer in storage and instead got a turducken through the mail from Prairieville, LA, which worked out great. Then, after gorging ourselves on turducken and beer, we got up and ran the Lincolnwood Turkey Trot (only the 5k) which has become kind of a tradition with us. Your humble author managed to log his best ever 5k time, but remains humble in the knowledge that, compared to fast people, I still run like I'm carrying a refrigerator on my back...

I was reminded of running because I just got a new set of running tights in the mail, piggybacked onto an order that MizBubs made from Sierra Trading Post. And get this--MizBubs has taken up running too!!!!!! I am a happy hillbilly. We have now become those freaks who you see running around in tights and fleece in freezing weather. Who would've thought?

Getting back to the bathroom...after having to call the installation department at Home Depot TWICE when the toilet backed up after the remodel was done, and finding that the contractors lost not one but TWO rags down the toilet stack, we are now enjoying the new bathroom. When I came in from running last night I finally took my first bath in the new, gloriously deep compared to what we used to have tub.

We have a ridiculously small bathroom, but at least now we have a nice ridiculously small bathroom:

It was very, very soothing. Our eldest now works at Lush, and brings us wonderful fragrant bath products. I myself was wonderful and fragrant by the time I came out of the tub.

While I'm showing y'all pictures of my house, I may as well show you the tiki bar. MizBubs found this on Ebay, and we had a nice road trip to Michigan a couple years ago to pick it up:



Here's a detail shot of the shelves behind the bar:

Ah well. I'm exhausted. Hopefully, in the next couple of days I'll have more.

On Saturday we leave for fabulous Las Vegas, and I plan on taking plenty of pictures and updating everyone from the Las Vegas Marathon.

Now I gots to sleep.

Plushie freak of the week

Southside bureau chief Dena stepped up again with this one, feeding me material while I was otherwise occupied:

Accused thief found with stuffed dog used for sex

Winnipeg police were called shortly before 6 p.m. on March 26 after a Chelsea Avenue resident spotted the man breaking into her garage. The man exited the garage a short time later and moved on to a neighbour's garage, where he stole a lawn mower, a mountain bike, a blanket and a stuffed toy dog.

The man eventually returned to the first garage, where police found him nearly two hours later passed out inside a boat.

"He was lying there with his genitalia exposed next to the stuffed dog," said Crown attorney John Peden. "While the police report doesn't describe it this way, the dog might be appropriately characterized as now being anatomically correct, as opposed to its condition before he removed it."

Oh, one more thing. Alcohol was involved.

OK, let's start getting in the Christmas spirit...

Rise and Shine!

Sorry for not stopping by and commenting on your blog; things continue at a furious pace around here, at home and especially at my job. At least we have a working shower again, and it's a darn fine one, too. The Las Vegas Marathon is next Sunday and I've barely prepared. My Elvis costume hangs in my closet, unpressed and unaltered. I promise that at some point before Christmas I'll return to our regular fare of freaks, perverts, clowns and animal attacks. Until then I'm just throwing up random videos and pictures in a desperate effort to hold on to some readership.

We've taken to listening to motivational speakers and inspirational music lately, just to keep us on track and moving forward.

I'd like to share some of that, so here it is, my gift to you this Monday morning.

Check out these enthusiastic swanky bastards. They're playing "Powerhouse" and swinging it pretty hard, I'd say.

Continuing our celebration of Thanksgiving...

...and wanting to continue the theme of pilgrims and Indians living in harmony, I bring you the rocking video "Apache". This was big in Denmark.

Happy Thanksgiving

Shock the clown

Alert South Side Bureau Chief Dena has informed me that former cop/counselor/daycare worker/minister/clown and noted downstate Illinois child molester A. Paul Carlock died in custody after being Taser'd by jail guards.

According to this story in the Springfield Journal-Register, Carlock had a pre-existing heart condition.

Carlock was better known as Klutzo the Clown.



He is now smoking a dog turd in hell.