Fun in the Ocean

Let's get this out of the way: "Ocean's 13" is way way better than "Ocean's 12." If I'd been a blogging man back in December of Ought Four, I would have written something along the lines of "What were these people thinking when they made this movie?"

Thinking back on it, there were a few big problems with that movie. The entire plot was just so uncool. They were returning Terry Benedict's money? What gives? They were in boring ol' Europe? Half of the 12 was hardly mentioned. Julia Roberts played herself playing Julia Roberts? C'mon!

Every big problem with "12" was fixed with "13." It had its own difficulties and problems, but the movie was good fun. Back in Vegas, no Julia Roberts, a fun bad guy, the cast well uniformly well used, I thought.

Just good wholesome fun throughout. As long as it's set in Vegas, I'm totally OK with an "Ocean's 14."

Jubilee

Last night Mary and I crossed another "Vegas experience" off the list -- the Jubilee topless revue that has been running 25 years now.

This was one of those "classic" Vegas showgirl numbers with--as the ads say--hundreds of thousands of rhinestones covering hardly anything.

It would be hard to overstate how utterly ridiculous this production was. How much time and money and thought went into something so ... bad. Admittedly, at the beginning there was a certain kitch factor. There were lots of scantily-clad dancers (the topless dancers were expected, but the men in thongs and cod pieces were a surprise to this theater-goer) parading around in funny hats.

(My favorite hat was about 3 feet in diameter and about 4 feet tall. It looked like they created the hat by cutting off 4 foot sections of Mr. Snuffleupagus' trunk, dying the sections either pink or yellow, and then attaching them to the poor head of a dancer who must have had 10 pounds of Muppet trunk on her head.)

With all that, the show started kind of fun but it quickly got boring and incredulously bad.

The second act was a "lesson in ancient history" when we revisited Samson and Delilah. It took awhile for what I was actually sinking but, but at some point when Samson is fawning over Delilah, I couldn't help but think, "Did the producers really think that staging a Bible story with topless dancers was a good idea?" They must have figured that out of the number of people who could tell you that Samson and Delilah is a Bible story, most of them wouldn't be at a topless revue to start with.

It went from weird to worse.

Act IV was their take on the sinking of the Titanic. The story ended, inexplicably, with a full chorus line doing high kicks and singing Yankee Doodle Dandy. Because that made a lot of sense. Fellas, it was a British ship!

Mary and I quickly scooted after that.

What a very odd theatrical experience. Next time I'm here, I'm going to skip the Vintage Vegas thing and just go to "O" at the Bellagio.

Desert Dawn

I see I've failed to mention why I'm in Vegas. First, I've been celebrating the pending wedding of Caleb, one fellow senior year roommate from Carleton '02. Other fellow roommate was Joe from Minnesota, and best man for the pending ceremonies.

As it happens, out of the five guys here for the bachelor party weekend, I was the only guy who'd been here before, so I was the unofficial tour guide. It's been an awesome weekend, although not a little expensive. Ah well, such is Vegas.

I should note that the last two days I've seen dawn. The first morning, Saturday morning, it was unintentional. The drapes were left open accidentally and the three guys in the room all woke up at the same time, as our Flamingo room faced east, directly into the rising sun. We struggled mightily to get those drapes closed.

And last night we partied all night long and got back at dawn. So, two nights in Vegas, two dawns. I do not expect that trend to continue.

With the bachelor party behind me, Mary's here now and we're on our way out again after a pitstop back at the room.

Livin' la vida loca ... and all that jazz.

Sleepy Lions

Great times so far in Vegas.

Walked past many things today and saw the sights ... late night last night, but out by 11 this morning. For now, here's the MGM lion sleeping on top of the pedestrian walkway.

He's a biggggggg cat.