Around
the States in Eighty Days
Being an irregular and erratic account by the
Greedy Bastard himself as he sets out to traverse America on
a comedy tour.
Day
Seventy Three. Vegas Baby!
Saturday,
December 13, 2003 - Day Off in Las Vegas.
I
wake up in the desert. Well in the bus. But driving through
the desert. The sun is rising yellow over a canyon rim. Green
spiky cacti stand like aliens bright in the dawn light. There
are weird shapes everywhere. I fall asleep again and wake
up only as we pull on to Frank Sinatra Boulevard. Vegas baby.
At eight o'clock in the morning we stumble into the deserted
marble lobby of The Mandalay Bay hotel and soon I am
having breakfast in the luxury of The Verandah restaurant
next door at The Four Seasons.
I'm perched high in a huge suite overlooking the airport.
Spectacular sound proofed windows give a me 180-degree view
along the Strip to my left and across the desert to my right.
Directly outside my bedroom my name keeps popping up on the
gigantic moving screen billboard, between the constant Shania
Twain ads. It's funny to see the words The Greedy Bastard
Tour over the strip. Directly below me, so close I can
almost touch it, is Las Vegas International Airport. Tiny
toy planes are lined up. Between me and the airport are a
few remnants of old style two-storey Vegas motels grouped
around miniature pools, the last vestigial traces of the old
Vegas, here where the strip petered out into the desert, before
these monstrous constructions dwarfed them.
I take the smoothly efficient tram past the gleaming pyramid
of the Luxor to Excalibur. This is certainly
the site of Spamelot. The singing and dancing Knights
of the Round Table belong here no question. Too bad this tram
doesn't continue. It would be a great way to see the eccentric
layout of the strip, one fantasy world replacing the next.
I stroll down Las Vegas Boulevard in the fresh morning air,
but it's hard going on foot (well my foot) so I return to
Mandalay Bay for chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, spam and
chocolate at the White Swan. Here in this oasis of chocolate
I am almost thrown out because my hotel room is registered
under my pseudonym Mister X while my driving license
says Eric Idle. They reluctantly accept my explanation that
I am appearing at The House of Blues tomorrow and I
am so famous I need to be protected from my raving fans. Yeah
right. This is a peculiar form of humiliation. I resolve next
time to register as Michael Jackson. To make myself feel better
I go for a delicious massage at The Four Seasons Spa
where a very wonderful young lady called Kim applies her magic
fingers and soon I feel a lot better and then the missus comes
in for lunch so I feel a lot lot better.
I have made an important investment in a tiny portable humidifier
(about ninety bucks from Sharper Image.) There has been an
instant improvement in my lungs. I have been dry and sinusy
for days and this little portable toy efficiently pumps water
into the air. It's especially important here in Vegas where
everyone smokes. There is the nasty lingering nostril polluting
smell of cigarettes everywhere, even in the rooms. With the
dry desert air this should be a really good spot for lung
cancer…
It has always been a personal ambition of mine to play Vegas.
We had an idea that Monty Python might play here live on stage
in the Nineties and it's a pity that we didn't because Monty
Python Live in Las Vegas is a great title, but in the
end there were tiny cold feet and the whole thing fell apart.
Over the years I have made several strange appearances here.
Apart from my ass-whupping of Wayne Brady on Celebrity
Jeopardy, which I'm happy to see still rankles with him,
I sang Always Look On the Bright Side for Penn and
Teller's TV Show at the MGM Grand while wrapped in chains
and suspended upside down over a vat of boiling oil. I once
appeared briefly with Clint Black during Rodeo week singing
The Galaxy Song, and last year I sang Sit On My
Face and Tell Me that You Love Me to a Convention of Sex
Therapists for Pamela Connolly. But I have always wanted to
do a full gig here. Last time we didn't include Vegas on our
tour because I was reluctant to play a night club and was
a bit wary of the House of Blues or The Hard Rock
type of venue because they serve drinks. Now that I have played
these places I don't worry at all. They're not the same as
theatrical venues, but they work just fine for comedy.
The first time I ever came here to Vegas was with a bunch
of friends for the opening of Carrie Fisher's mum's hotel.
There was Patty Smith, the singer, and now Mrs. John McEnroe,
the dry mordant wit and novelist Bruce Wagner and of course
the Fisher Queen. We couldn't stay at The Debbie Reynolds
Hotel as planned because of a last minute disaster with
the Fire Department's License. Apparently they had tested
the sprinklers and water just trickled down the walls of the
rooms, so we were shoveled into a nearby hotel on the strip:
the Dunes or The Prunes, or the Sands or the Glands, I forget
which because it has long since been pulled down to create
Venice, or Paris, or Madrid, or is it Berlin? Long gone are
the days of sand and gambling. Nowadays Vegas succeeds because
it creates everything but desert in the mind. It is
built on illusions. A dream of naughty pleasure. Literally
titillation.
Debbie was opening a tiny Boutique hotel, complete with mini
casino, just off the strip. I think she had been enticed by
the success of The Liberace Museum. When we arrived
from the airport we were taken by limo straight to The
Debbie Reynolds Hotel where we were greeted by the most
extraordinary sight. Right there in the lobby Debbie was doing
her act, in full glam, in sequins, costumed to the nines,
singing Tammy on a tiny hand mike to a bewildered group
of Japanese Tourists. It was the most amazing sight. Welcome
to Vegas baby.
Previous
Total
|
11,697
miles
|
| Seattle
WA to Eugene OR |
284
miles |
| Eugene
OR to Boise ID |
545 miles |
| Boise
ID to Spokane WA |
444
miles |
| Spokane
WA to Portland OR |
370
miles |
Running
Total |
13,079
miles |
|
