Pug’s Place

Stephen and I have returned from Vegas; we got back late yesterday afternoon. Between the last post and now we wandered more of the strip, went through the recreation of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Luxor, enjoyed a photography gallery in the Forum Shops which reminded me very much of Rebekka’s work on Flickr, saw Spamalot and hung out in a posh lounge in the Wynn. Finally, before leaving Vegas yesterday, we visited Stephen’s old house.

During our morning wandering Friday we just had to head down the strip to see the Luxor, the giant pyramid-shaped casino/hotel, and since we were there we decided to take the 10-minute tour through the recreated burial chamber. Dad and I went through that tour some years back when we stayed in the Luxor but it was a nice distraction from gambling. The voice actor they had play Cartier went over the top on the narration, but what else do you expect from Vegas?

After mediocre pizza in New York, New York, we slowly made our way back up the strip (via things like the Forum Shops at Caeser’s Palace) to a pre-show nap. Following said nap we proceeded to the Wynn and Spamalot. Spamalot was the best live comedy I’ve ever seen, or as Stephen put it: “Freegan ‘wassome.” The musical loosely follows the plot of “Quest for the Holy Grail.” Highlights were:

• The Black Knight scene, complete with all of his limbs being chopped off on stage
• The Lady of the Lake’s first musical number (“In every show there is a song which goes like this!”)
• The Knights Who Say “Ni” demanding that Arthur and his band become famous on Broadway (“You won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews”)
• Arthur showing his amazing tap-dancing skills (courtesy of Patsy on the coconuts) while in Camelot
• The Lady of the Lake’s cheerleaders while in Camelot
• Concord being struck by the arrow - and being knocked several feet backward by the impact

With our Spamalot tickets the Wynn gave us entrance passes to one of their lounges, The Lure. We loitered until a bit after 9 pm to allow it time to open before proceeding inside; while loitering we spent some time watching wall panels being lifted into place and welded onto the superstructure of the new tower at The Venetian. Anyway, the Lure was not just any lounge, it was an ultra lounge complete with a quartz fire pit and a view of … the construction at The Venetian! We ordered ridiculously expensive drinks ($5 glass of coke, anyone?) and talked about jobs, Phoenix, the future, school, airplanes and any number of other topics. When the conversation started dimming Stephen interrupted two middle-aged gentlemen lounging on a low sofa to introduce us. That conversation turned to a discussion of physics and mathematics between Stephen and one of the guys which eventually became a description in recent papers about metaphysical math and Bayesian Surprise Theory; I listened, nodded, recognized metaphysical mathematics and smiled appropriately. Some time later while Stephen and I continued discussing whatever was the topic of the hour, two sisters wandered up to us to ask after who we were, “since [we] didn’t look like typical Las Vegas guys.” We looked like we “had jobs” and didn’t “spend all day in the tanning booth.” We chatted for a few minutes and then they excused themselves to go back and take care of their drunk friend (drinks without food while spending all day by the pool makes for a poor evening, apparently). Conversations continued between Stephen and those girls a few times more during the night, but my ears aren’t attuned to the noise so rather than actually taking part in the conversations I was spending my effort at those times trying to teach myself to read lips. About this time the music had turned from Genesis and Sting to Beastie Boys, Fergie and other, louder music. At midnight I excused myself to walk back to the hotel and stop cramping Stephen’s style; nothing interesting happened on my way back aside from passing two grandmotherly-old ladies on the sidewalk who were carrying yards of Maragaritas. Stephen stayed for about an hour after I left, chatted up the girls a bit more, spoke to some other folks and passed a Vegas wedding couple on his way back.

We left the next morning, swinging by Stephen’s old house on our way out of town. He’ll probably write about his impressions thereof, and I’ll put up the pictures we took there shortly and add a link to this post. Our drive back was uneventful (no 1lb hamburgers), we played some Wii Sports after getting back, hit Los Dos Molinos for dinner and crashed. Sunday we talked Chris into playing D&D for the first time in 20 years. I together a short story by cannibalizing parts of The Speaker In Dreams and customizing it for their low character levels (they started at level 1 and by 11 pm were level 5). I kept throwing them into very hard encounters (EL 4s when the two of them were level 1, for example) but they were so destructive and generally tactical that they kept pulling through. I’ll write more about the D&D game later.