…anyway it was 2012 and I was eating an $18 enchilada covered with green sauce – the enchilada was covered, not me – in the MGM Grand when the bartender asked, “Are you here for the convention?”
Earlier, a taxi driver asked the same.
“Are you here for the convention?” Taxi Driver asked, then added, “Beautiful women come to the magician convention.”
“Why do beautiful women want to be sawn in half so badly?” I asked Taxi Driver. He was silent the rest of the drive.
To the bartender, I replied, “You mean the magician convention?” It was cool that another person had assumed I was a magician, what with my David Copperfield good looks. (OK, so I look more like something a magician pulls from a hat – no, not the cute bunny, but the lint maybe … or the pellets the bunny leaves behind … or Danny DeVito, if that’s possible.)
“I mean the limo driver convention,” the bartender said. I noticed he didn’t mention that beautiful women flock to the limo driver convention.
“Dude, you mean there’s a convention for limo drivers?” asked Rod, an old surfer type beside me, his words barely passing for words due to his tequila-marinated tongue.
“There’s a convention for everything here,” the bartender said. “There’s even a convention for people who manage conventions.”
Rod believed what the MGM Grand needed was a surf shop. He was hoping to pitch that idea to someone representing MGM, which, at that moment, by virtue of being an MGM guest, was me.
Last I checked, Vegas was not connected to an ocean, though there was a pirate ship battle happening up the Strip at Treasure Island, and beyond that, gondolas floated in a canal through the Venetian. I couldn’t dash Rod’s hopes, though, since anything seemed possible among the high rollers, shiny shoes, long legs, and soap opera hair of Las Vegas – or as the funny Southwest flight attendant called our destination, “Lost Wages.”
My ego was bruised when the bartender assumed I was a limo driver, not someone who required one. Still, I did feel like a magician when I made a portion of the bartender’s tip disappear before his very eyes.
Entering my guestroom, I was reminded of that Motel 6 catchphrase, “We’ll keep the light on for you,” only at the MGM the catchphrase must be, “We’ll keep the toilet running for you.” My toilet would not stop running – and I had yet to even flush it. “Engineering” sent a man to replace the toilet tank’s guts. It did the trick … until the next night. Nothing robs my sleep like a toilet on the run.
Vegas knew this. It doesn’t want you to sleep. Sleepers seldom spend.
I called “Engineering” again. They seemed baffled by the baffle. Knowing that David Copperfield was performing onsite, I suggested they send him up to at least create the illusion of a toilet not running. “Engineering” wasn’t amused. I guess you need a rim-shot to get a laugh in Vegas. I’m sure there’s an app for that. Where’s Shecky Greene when you need him?
What’s not magical about Vegas are the homeless on the Strip’s pedestrian bridges and sidewalks who wait for the coin to ting in their cups – though I suspect coins are an insult to the down-and-out who are within earshot of slot machine chatter. Cardboard signs that once read HUNGRY, HOMELESS, NEED MONEY FOR FOOD have been reworded with cynical phrases like, WHY LIE? I NEED A BEER.
Along the Strip, I passed through a gauntlet of desperate hawkers who made snapping noises and pushed cards at me. Being from Indiana, I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings, so I graciously stuffed the cards in my pockets, assuming I was being gifted with discounts for steaks or Cirque du Soleil. The cards were similar in size to the Topps trading cards of my youth. When I finally stopped to examine a new batch, I saw not baseball players with names like Bench, Perez, and Rose but girls with names like Tawny, Marnee, and Desiree.
It would be an understatement to say the girls lacked uniforms.
I don’t recall my baseball cards having players’ phone numbers on them either. And where was the bubblegum? The long dormant altar boy within me wanted to erupt from my skin and shout to the neon night, “We don’t do this in Indiana.”
I panicked. I couldn’t just drop the cards on the sidewalk, for surely, I’d be arrested for littering and have to show up in court to face the humiliating evidence – “Your fingerprints are all over them.” With my pants’ pockets bulging with skin cards, I returned to the MGM. The song playing in the elevator was – I kid you not – Foreigner’s “Dirty White Boy.”
In my room, I couldn’t even throw the cards away in the trash can – for what would housecleaning think? I pondered calling Desiree just to come and take the cards away. I ended up ditching my collection at the airport before takeoff for home, proving once again that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas – unless you’re foolish enough to write about it.
This story is one of over 60 in Scott’s new humor column collection, “Quietly Making Noise,” available on Amazon. Contact him if you would like a speaker at a meeting or event at scottsaalman@gmail.com.