They all flew home early on Sunday afternoon, leaving Angy here in town unsupervised, so she called me first thing Sunday morning and we made plans to spend the afternoon/evening together.
Once I got back over to the Paris, the first order of business was a cocktail. But when I saw the completely empty bottle of Captain Silver lying on the floor, I made the now-famous lament:
Why is all the rum gone?
It looked like the first order of business would be lunch, instead. I was going to try and talk her into holding out until later and going over to Maggiano's at the mall, but I didn't know at the time that my afternoon was already planned... So we ate at the cafe there at Paris.
We were seated immediately, ordered our usual appetizer of calamari (it sounds so much more exotic than 'fried squid') and thought about drinks. We settled on water, though. For lunch, Angy had the seafood crepes, and I had a big damn club sandwich. It was really good, but almost too big, so I took the middle slices of bread out and called it a BLT with turkey. Angy enjoyed her crepes, and I have no idea what the bill came to.
After lunch, we made our way over to the Frontier, as Sunday was the very last day it was open to the public before it's appointment with the wrecking ball.
And all I can say about that is It's about damn time! That place has been a dump for years--and the smell, oh my god--it absolutely reeked of puke and stale smoke. It was awful. Anyhow, we lurked around a bit before finding Tonya and Kikky hanging out at some slot machines, and from there the four of us headed towards the bar in the middle of the casino.
It was a mellow afternoon, so we ordered some drinks and just hung out and chatted. It was very interesting to watch the dynamic in the casino, however. It was still quite crowded, and yeah, they were still sweating the money like they always did--the table limits were $5 minimum to $100 maximum. I guess they didn't wanna take a beating in case somebody got lucky on the last day.
Apparently the employee's dining room was already closed down, as they had a potluck set up in the middle of the pit for everyone to munch on during their breaks:
Angy opted to play a little video poker, and actually won a couple of bucks while we were sitting there:
Inspired by her success, I wandered over to an empty Pai Gow table and bought in for a hundred. It seemed, for a moment, that I was in for another ass-kicking, but my luck turned, and after about a half-hour or so I was up $115, so I cashed out. Hell yeah--Stickin' it to the Frontier! Between that and the $500 I won there back in March Madness II after an epic dice roll, I own those bitches! (Although, 'owning' a puke-smelling dump like that isn't exactly something to brag about...)
I wandered over to the cage to get my cash before they shut me out, and just as I was walking up, a hottie with a huge fake rack ran up to me, gave me an enjoyable chest-bump and a hug, and insisted we get our picture taken together. Ok!
I tried to get a better picture, but that new camera Angy gave me takes some getting used to. This was the best I could do:
We were having an enjoyable conversation, right up to the point where she said You remind me of my boyfriend... He's around here somewhere.... So after that, I wandered back to the bar to 'dance with who I brung'.
Kikky, Tonya, and Angy
We hung out there at the bar for quite a bit, and had the honor of killing the very last bottle of Captain Morgan in the inventory. Once that was gone, we figured we had no reason to stick around.
The bartender shows us the very last bottle of The Captain to be served at the Frontier
On the way out the door, we figured we should get some souvenir dollar chips, so we stopped at the dead-on-one-end dice table and asked to buy a few chips.
Believe it or not, both the dealer and the boxman were complete assholes about it, refusing to sell us any. When I asked them why not, they said, If we sell them to you, we'll have to sell them to everyone.
I motioned to the non-existent line of people at their game and asked You mean all these people who aren't here?
They weren't budging, but when I finally got the floorperson involved, they had to sell them to me. Seriously--WTF? I don't understand why they had to be such dicks about it. So Doc and Ron, your dollar chips have been secured, even though it took a bit of hoop-jumping.
We'd been there for a few hours, and none of us were unhappy to leave. From the always-surly employees, to endless amount of duct-tape on the carpets and chairs, to the ever-present stench, I'm surprised the place has made it this long. I'll be glad to see this one finally imploded. It's funny, I was a little sad to see the Stardust go. But the Frontier? Forget it--push the damn button already!
From there we made our way up to Treasure Island, where we sat in the bar at Isla drinking margaritas (Pacifico, actually, for me) and eating chips and salsa. Well, I actually only had about four chips the entire time, but I watched Angy plow through two bowls like a stoner going through a bag of Cheetos. She said she just couldn't stop! After a couple of rounds and some good conversation, we decided to do a little gambling. Here it was Sunday night, and Angy hadn't played a single hand of blackjack yet!
That wouldn't do, so we found an empty $5 single-deck 6:5 game and sat down. It was actually pretty fun, and a guy joined us who seemed to have the magic touch when it came to cutting the deck, so we insisted that he do it every time. I ended up doing pretty well, and was up another $60 after finally losing four hands in a row, so I pulled the ripcord. I don't remember how Kikky did, but I think Angy was just about even.
We were both pretty tired when we cashed out, so after hitting the cage, we said goodbye to Kikky and headed back to Paris. I dropped Angy off so she could get some sleep, and I headed home.
Falcon Rob was off of work, and sitting in the living room watching TV. After giving him a rehash of my day, he suggested that since it was his 90-day anniversary of quitting his break-in dice-dealing job and he was now allowed to play at his old casino, we should go back over for some dollar craps.
Well, I was up over $150 for the day, so of course I agreed that it was a good idea.
So we headed out to Boulder Highway and the cheesy goodness of The Palace. No, not Ceasars Palace, the other one. No, not the Imperial Palace, the other other one... The Nevada Palace. Oh yeah--it's pretty bad. I think it won the LVRJ Best of Vegas award for 'Most Likely Place To Catch The Clap Without Actually Getting Laid'. It made the Frontier look at least as classy as the Gold Spike.
Well, we bought in, but as Rob put it, it was a comedy of errors. I was betting the pass line at first, and the table was cold, so I lost about $30 before changing to the Dark Side, when of course the dice got so hot that the fleas were making a fortune on all the fours and tens, so I lost another quick $30 before giving up, hoping to leave with some small shred of dignity. It didn't happen. Oh well, thanks to Rob and I, the Nevada Palace will be able to pay it's electric bill this month.
Pulling away from there for what I'm sure was the last time, we decided that we were hungry. It was after midnight by then, and I hadn't had anything to eat since that club sandy nine hours earlier. We decided on the Peppermill.
Making our way to the Strip, we arrived about 20 minutes later, and spent the first five minutes in the restroom, scrubbing like E.R. surgeons from the tip of our fingers all the way up to the elbows. Yep, I could literally feel the crud on my arms when I left the Nevada Palace, and it was a little creepy.
Breakfast was great--I had a vanilla milkshake and the chicken fried steak & eggs, with hashbrowns and sourdough toast. Rob had a Philly Cheesesteak, and I think we decided that as good a sandwich as it is, it's way overrated. But people from Philadelphia don't have much else to hang their hat on, so we kept the discussion to ourselves. But seriously-- a Monte Cristo totally kicks Cheesesteak ass. I'm just sayin'.
I got some much-needed sleep after that, and awoke the next day to Angy calling me up and telling me that she was almost checked out of her room. So I took a quick shower, made a quick stop at the bank to deposit what was left of my winnings, hit the post office to pick up my certified letter from the IRS telling me that they made a mistake--I didn't really owe them $900+ that they told me back in April, but that I actually owed them closer to $2300. Damn The Man! Ugh... Oh well, I wasn't going to let that piece of news ruin my day, so I tossed the letter in the glove compartment and headed for the Strip to pick up Angy.
You can read the rest of our adventures here. Basically we had a nice lunch, drank some good martinis, and then I dropped her off at the airport before heading home for a nap. I had to work that night, and it kinda sucked.
Is it March yet?
Mikey
No comments:
Post a Comment