What Happens In Las Vegas ...

(In an effort to return to more lighthearted fare, regarding the latest on Katrina, I'll just refer you to Keith Olbermann's comments on our Gubmint's response to the disaster, here. I'll have more to say on the subject later, but for now, let's brighten the mood a little bit ...)

I'm home. And I believe I can say, without fear of contradiction, that five days in Las Vegas is plenty. (And this is coming from a former resident.)

It was quite the eventful weekend. Let's see ... we drank, attended a wedding, drank some more, watched the bride pass out in her mashed potatoes at the post-wedding dinner, tippled a bit, learned that the groom's daughter had picked up a limo driver and missed her flight home, imbibed a little, listened to the screaming from the adjacent hotel room where the daughter and the groom were having it out, sipped the fermented grape, paid WAY too damn much for a bowl of pasta, chugged a brew or two, and were accosted on the Strip by more timeshare saleswomen than by panhandlers and porn hustlers combined.

And oh yeah, we drank.

We're all familiar with the "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" tag line. Well, there's a huge billboard on Flamingo that reads, "What happened at the Palms ... never happened." Karen was desperate to climb up on the billboard and spray-paint "Including Britney Spears' first marriage", but cooler heads (mine) prevailed.

Karen hit a slot jackpot and she got so excited, people were convinced she was having a seizure. Now, you must understand that Karen is fascinated by small, shiny objects. She likes to watch the reels spin. She is, without question, the happiest slot player in the entire casino, even when she's losing. And let's face it, when a buxom blonde starts bouncing up and down and giggling, she's going to attract attention. And Karen can bounce and giggle for hours on end. So when she hit the jackpot (only $100, but on a penny slot machine, that's a big-un), she insisted on sitting there and watching her credits increment upwards. Ten thousand credits, one at a time. She could have hit a button, gotten her money instantly and continued playing, but not my wife; she sat there until every single penny had been electronically, slowly credited to her. I had long since given up and gone back to the poker room.

My significant event was that I won my way into my first-ever World Series of Poker event: the $500 buy-in No Limit Hold'em tournament. This was easily the biggest tourney I had ever played in. (And no, I didn't win. Nor did I get to meet poker babe Jennifer Tilly. But I spent a lot of time fantasizing about both those things.)

And then, there was the alcohol. But since we hardly left the hotel (a rarity for me, who usually tries to get away from the Strip as often as possible), we posed a risk to no one. Except for Karen, who got too excited playing slots and accidentally knocked a cocktail waitress into a bank of nickel machines, causing them to topple over and start a domino effect that took out half the slot machines in the casino.

Or, maybe she didn't. Remember, what happens in Vegas ... never happened. (Because you're too damn drunk to remember it.)