Las Vegas - and I can say this with authority now having spent New Year's weekend there - is a hotbed of manic human behavior. Walk anywhere, on or off the Strip, in to, out of, or through the various casinos, and everyone you see is in either a state of complete euphoria, absolute dejection, or a weird flux between the two that can only be described as a mixture of hope and desperation. This is true for each person you will run into whether they came to Vegas to gamble, party, fuck, or to do any combination of those three things.
Brian and I went to Vegas this weekend to party and we did it old-school-style, therefore spending most of our time falling into the first aforementioned stage: complete euphoria. At some point on Monday morning I figured that the ratio of hours I had spent drinking in Vegas against the hours I spent sleeping in Vegas was over 4 to 1. That ratio didn't change by the time I left. In fact, I'm typing this up after finally getting home but still being stuck on Vegas time - which has nothing to do with the offset from GMT, but has more to do with the fact that if you're drinking then you're awake and time is immemorial. In other words, I have no idea what time it is but I can tell you exactly what I've had to drink (two shots of Tezon Blanco and two beers). That's Vegas, baby!
The whole time we were there we were constantly trying to figure out what time is was back home, mostly because it makes it crazier (and therefore cooler) if you're still partying at 4 AM when 4 AM is really 7 AM. Each night we went to bed no earlier than 5 AM PST (that's 8 AM here) and slept no longer than 4 hours. I can't tell you what fuel is keeping me going at this moment, but Vegas does that to you. I got home to Connecticut at 10:30 PM and was genuinely disappointed because not only were all of my friends in bed, but the bars were all closed. It's going to be a tough adjustment period for me - Connecticut is pretty much the opposite of Vegas in every way imaginable.
Oh, and the players that made our Vegas trip complete, to them we owe a toast. Some became fast friends like the guys (and girl - 'sup Colette!) from Destructoid, or Toledo Tom - my favorite perpetually drunk construction worker who took me to Cirque Du Soleil because his girlfriend had passed out and therefore couldn't use the ticket. Others were peripheral characters like Sugar the Blackjack dealer, the drunk dudes from Canada, the guy who had wrecked his motorcycle days before and whose girlfriend had a premontion about meeting a guy who had been bitten by an alligator, Rodney the limo driver (whose ride prompted Brian's quote from the bottom of a shot barrel: "This Cab Is Higher Than Giraffe's Nuts"), and of course Richard Cheese, who rang in our New Year's in such swanky style.
While there I watched the Patriots go to 16 and 0, learned how to play casino table games, had dinner at the world famous Nobu restaurant, and rung in the New Year in a way I haven't dreamt of in years. It was the best weekend I've had in recent memory, and is going to be a hard vacation to top.
Note: Hard to top, that is, until next month when Brian and I go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras...
