Dispatches: Vegas, baby, Vegas (first in a series)
Posted on February 4th, 2008 – 10:45 AMBy Michael Rand
Chris Carr, the sports page designer who shares some but not all of his fantasy football knowledge with Star Tribune readers in the fall, is having an interesting vacation in Las Vegas. We offered him a five-day RandBall contract to share his experiences out there on a crazy busy weekend. He agreed and will file four reports: the Vegas arrival the Brock Lesnar Ultimate Fighting Championship beatdown that wasn’t, the Super Bowl and the aftermath. He sent all of part one via text message, with the last chunk arriving at 5:04 a.m., which is only 3:04 a.m. in Vegas, which we all know is very early there. Eat your heart out, Stephen A! (By the way, aren’t all blogs, by definition of the smashed together words “web” and “log,” online?). Also, just a word of advice: When looking on Google Images, always type in “Swingers movie” instead of just “Swingers.” A lesson learned the hard way. In any event, we are so glad we gave Chris this assignment. It’s a goldmine. Here we go with Part I, which includes memorable exchanges with JayZ and Charles Barkley:
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LAS VEGAS — For some it was “UFC Weekend in Vegas!” For others it was ”Super Bowl Weekend in Vegas!” For my wife and I it was ”Let’s find a cheap flight+hotel package to anywhere that isn’t 7-below weekend!” That place just happened to be Vegas. And it just happened to be Super Bowl weekend. And it just happened that our guy Brock Lesnar was making his Ultimate Fighting debut here at our hotel Mandalay Bay this past weekend. Add all that up and you get Las Vegas on HGH. Too much chaos not to record somehow we thought. So we deemed it worthy of a small RandBall project. And I apologize in advance for the length of these reflections of our first 10 hours in Vegas. Lengthy is what you get when we editors are let out our cages and allowed to write.
I remembered Vegas being crazy and over-the-top, but that was mostly because of the company I had next to me on the plane rides down and back. Spring 2004 was my last trip out, and I don’t remember seeing:
*New Yorkers dancing on tables and jumping from barstool to barstool.
*Sportsbook lines 80 yards long.
*Girls wearing napkins for skirts.
*Blackjack minimum bets in the triple digits.
*Blood spattering all over something called a UFC octagon.
*Barry Bonds Charles Barkley and Jay-Z within 10 feet of each other … I could go on but I’m already worried this chapter will crash RandBall with it’s weight. So here are the highlights of hours 1 through 10:
10:30 a.m. Saturday: On the ground. It’s good to be back. Casino looks so close I want to run to it but I know it will be an hour before we’re there. Hate that about this airport. Gets me everytime.
12:15 p.m.: Super Bowl advice is flowing from all fronts. Everybody out here you make eye contact with is ready to tell you how it’s gonna go down. Pats! Giants! Blowout! Overtime! I briefly consider putting 20 bucks on every possible outcome so as to not upset anyone. And one thing is clear: SB weekend means higher stakes. People freely talk in terms of hundreds and thousands. A sign hangs above one bet window that reads ”3000 minimum bet.” Meanwhile my wife and I are carefully trying to figure out if we like the $5 Brady scores first TD prop bet.
3:30 p.m.: Vanderbilt is not good enough to beat Auburn by 11 or more and that earns me lunch money and my first ‘’stranger high-five” of the trip from the guy next to me who obviously also collected. The stranger high-five is something I support and strongly encourage btw. A sportsbook staple out here. Start it up in your neighborhood! Make a difference in a child’s life!! (Sorry. it’s all these dang energy drinks they serve out here)
4:00: I have the smallest biceps in this larger-than-Richfield building. This place is jammed with the very recognizable UFC crowd. There are easily 300 guys here that could tear the door off your car. This isn’t the weekend to accidentally knock over some guy’s beer. It’s likely that guy won’t have a neck.
6:00: In-flight research pays off. Went like this: Read Jerry Zgoda’s Saturday morning Wolves gamer. Noted that Clippers stink. Noticed Clippers were at Cleveland Saturday. Wrote ”Cavs” on hand. Bet on Cavs. Watched Clippers stink. Collected money. Sometimes it’s that easy. (Sometimes it’s not. See: XLII.)
7:00: Enter the UFC arena. The crowd has definitely ”pre-gamed.” Loud large men are everywhere. The four minor fights are over and the placed is starting to get jacked. And the celebs are filling in: There’s Barry Bonds! Crowd boos loudly when his inflated head shows up on — make that dominates — the Jumbotron. There’s Stone Cold Steve Austin! (He’s still alive?) There’s The Undertaker! Crowd goes nuts. (Yawn). There’s half of the Cincinnati Reds! (Ken Griffey Jr. and a bunch of big guys with stubble that I cut from my fantasy baseball team.) There’s another UFC superstar who is making cameras click all over the place!
7:30: Lightweight fight winner apologizes to crowd for not being ”entertaining enough.” Simutaneously a journalist from Minneapolis picks his jaw up off the floor after having watched his first-ever UFC fight. From 10 feet away! To capture the moment I wrote in my notebook: ”Holy crap!” Not entertaining??!! This stuff is insane! It makes the rest of Vegas seem normal, which is not easy to do.
8:15: With press pass dangling, I’m making my way around the outside edge of the octagon during a break when all of a sudden cameras start popping off like mad. Loud cheering erupts. I’m doing the sideways shuffle thing through three or four bodyguard types in a crowded spot when I realize there’s an exceptionally famous man shuffling the other way six inches in front of my face . Almost close-talker range. I play it cool … and totally fake. ”Hey Jay-Z thanks for comin’.” I don’t know why I said that. ”No problem at all. Thanks for having me,” he says with a smile. I said something like ”have fun tonight” and finished shaking his hand. I really don’t know why I acted like I was the one who sent him the E-Vite to this thing. Weird. Jay-Z shuffles on I do the same and I notice another famous guy giving me a ”who the hell is that shaking Jay-Z’s hand?” look. I couldn’t resist. ”Chuck, how are ya?” I asked while offering my hand. ”Great, brother. Great,” Mr. Barkley responded, still looking at me a little funny. I gave him a ”War Eagle” and Auburn’s best-ever baller fired a ”War Eagle” right back and let out that famous Barkley laugh. For my choice of words I got a little extra wiggle on that three-step handshake that famous people do with each other (or with nobodys who make them laugh apparently) and kept on walking. I’m not big on celeb sightings but Chuck and the heavyweight champ of hip-hop in the span of 10 seconds — that’s pretty cool in my book. Didn’t expect that tonight. Didn’t know they were fans of Gopher wrestlers.
8:16: Fire off a dozen text messages at world-record pace.
8:17: A bit embarrassed for acting like a 15-year-old girl with the laughing and smiling and texting.
8:18: Remind self that grown men should not giggle and text at the same time. Especially not at the UFC.
8:45: Oh yeah the UFC… (You weren’t actually hoping to read about anything relevant here today were you?)
Part II, coming next: The Brock Lesnar experience.
18 Responses to "Dispatches: Vegas, baby, Vegas (first in a series)"
He sent that via text? Good heavens. Great stuff.
While Chris was texting everyone, Charles was calling new “T-Mobile Fave Five” addition Dwayne Wade asking why he never gives him a “War Eagle”.
Welp, that didn’t work.
Here it is in another way:
http://www.sherdog.com/news/pictures.asp?pic_id=55449&n_id=11136&my_page=7&my_title=Frank%20Mir%20vs.%20Brock%20Lesnar
Instead of shaking hands with Jay-Z and Sir Charles you should have been trying to pick pocket whatever they had on them. You could have paid for your vacation and then some.
Do you ever notice that almost every Las Vegas story you ever here goes a little something like this…
“I was up $5000 and the next thing you know…I’m [redacted] some guy in the bathroom for a sandwitch.”
If he sent that whole thing via txt msg, why wasn’t there a single OMG ROFL, or :
Dave MN, +1 for the commercial reference.
Randball - please let Carr know Rich Little is at the Golden Nugget tonite at 7. Still tix available. Oh, and Carrot Top at the Luxor. Either one a winner.
Chris Carr sounds like he could be having something akin to a Hunter Thompson visit to that old fart’s Fear and Loathing pulse pounding grounds, but Gawd (no offense Chris, I heard it was your vacation), I don’t think Thompson, may he drown in drink, would have brought his wife with….even if he was married
P3 - In MN, a wife is more than just someone that cooks the roadkill you bring home. Try talking to her sometime, it’s not as bad as you think.
Good point roughkat and we even let them bring home their own roadkill every now and then.
jama, that would require letting them drive. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves…
Dave MN
I just assumed they picked up the roadkill while walking home. I never said anything about letting them drive. I’m not that crazy!!
MMMMmmmmm, roadkill. Braised in the crockpot with barbecue sauce. Or cooked on the manifold if you’re mobile.
This is for real. I once saw a “minimalist” cookbook (at some place like The “Hungry Mind’…weird name since the mind feels no hunger). Anyway, one of the entrees was to wrap (tightly) a burger in foil with the fixings and position it on an engine block where it wouldn’t fall off, then drive “x” minutes. (I didn’t read it all to find out if medium rare was x-2 minutes and rare x + 2 minutes since the idea of car exhaust in the meat sickened me. But I thought to myself, if you have a car you probably have a way of some type even a bbq grill to cook it, so I looked at the author’s name and for sure it was Bud Grant. True story except for that Bud Grant stuff, since everyone knows he eats it raw…
I loved this post. It’s like Bill Simmons without the I’m-better-than-you vibe smeared all over it.
I anxiously await the next editions. (Blog idea: “Star Tribune Editors Uncaged”? Why not, says I?)
How about following Senators into airport bathrooms and zoom in on how they wiggle their piggy feet !!! What fun.. what video.. what denial !! Make it into a series of political exposes called perhaps “The Monica Files”. Ol’ Billy would love it..
