Vegas Vacation Part Two

As you may have heard, there are several things to do in Las Vegas.

One is to walk up and down Las Vegas Blvd so you can get massive blisters on your toes. That and dodging the Naked Lady Baseball Card People.

The Naked Lady Baseball Card People are what appears to be, to put it gently, people new to this country, if you catch my drift, amigo. In their hands are stacks of cards promoting, um, “escort services”.

It is Marketing 101: Have a card with a naked woman on it and give it to a man. However, 99% of men are walking with either their wife/and or girl friend and even if they were in the market (ha, ha) for that sort of thing, they wouldn’t accept it. In 2006, before the economy went south, The Naked Lady Baseball Card People would leave you alone if you were walking with your wife. In 2010, they don’t care. They will do almost anything to give you a card. If they had a roll of Scotch tape, they would tape it to your back.

Of course, what happens is that the sidewalks are littered with Naked Lady Baseball cards. Don’t say nobody ever warned you.

We encountered the worst of The Naked Lady Baseball Card People on our way to see “The Fab Four”, a fake Beatles band. We had tickets to see Frank Caliendo.

Frank Caliendo is this generation’s Rich Little. He’s the guy that imitates John Madden and does a great Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The ticket prices for his show, by Vegas Standards, are reasonable. On top of that, he usually does a meet and greet with the audience after the show. But, he and the other comedians in town decided to take the week off and he cancelled the show we bought tickets for.

We really wanted to see a show. Last time we were in Vegas, we saw “Gregory Popovich Comedy Pet Theatre”. It was a circus act that featured dogs and cats doing tricks. Since we have a cat, we wanted to see what kind trick a cat would do because our cat does nothing. He had cats pushing shopping carts and sitting. He told the audience the secret of training cats: “Let the cat do what it wants”. The man is a genius.

We wanted to see something else this time. No offense, Gregory. The problem was we didn’t want to spend an arm and a leg to see a show. That’s where “ The Fab Four” came in.

Their show, which is about an hour long, features four musicians that sort of look like the Beatles if you had your glasses off. One of them, the Fake George Harrison, looked a lot like George Harrison. Fake John and Fake Paul, kinda of sorta looked like Real John and Real Paul. Fake Ringo didn’t look like Ringo or anybody else in the British Invasion.

But,"The Fab Four” play all of their instruments and they sound very, very close to The Beatles. I was expecting all kinds of cheese, and it was cheesy, but it was good cheese. Afterwards, my wife (who loved this show) and I went up to the cast. In a moment of brilliance I told Fake George Harrison that he really looked like George Harrison.

Las Vegas Boulevard during the weekends is packed. Tons of people. We saw a group of guys wearing “Dumb and Dumber” tuxedos. Lots of young women wearing next to nothing on. Lots of people drinking lots of booze.

The best time to see Las Vegas Boulevard, in my opinion, is early in the morning, around 7:00 to 7:30. To my body, it is 10:00 when it is 7:00 there. You get up and go downstairs. In the lobby, you pass the people that have stayed out all night. It doesn’t seem so glamorous then. There are people at the slot machines that have been there several nights. You hit the sidewalk. It is empty, except for a few joggers. You can take in the Strip without having to wade through the riff raff. It is an amazing town and the hotels are incredible to see. Then you meet your old friend. Denny’s. Reasonably priced breakfast. Over hear a couple of Minn-a-sota, talking to their daughter, don’cha know. See the group of kids that stay out all night. Of course, one of the girls does something inappropriate. They leave and they are replaced by a family from Boston that found the place so wicked awesome.

Next time: A Dam Trip