Liberace lives

I needed to retrieve my car from the Luxor, where I had left it last night prior to imbibing the large blue sphinx-shaped triple margarita, so I walked through the casino, over the walkway connecting Mandalay Bay to Luxor, past the talking camels, through the casino, and found the valet parking. When I got back to Mandalay Bay I popped into the casino host to see if my prodigious hoovering qualified for any ex-post-facto comps and it did. They credited one night at $99 plus tax, which I thought was very decent of them. They also graciously offered me a special rate for my next stay. It’s nice to feel your business is appreciated.

I was set to meet Dave Rottweiller in the Rainforest Café in the MGM Grand for brunch so I used the video checkout and hauled my bags down to the valet-parking exit on the lower level. There was one old guy there taking tickets behind a huge marble counter. His entire job is to tear off the stub, hand it back, and say, “Through the glass doors, turn right, wait across the driveway for your car” several hundred times a day.

It took only 10 minutes to drive across the street to the MGM Grand so I was early for Dave. The Rainforest was a gimmicky place with mists spraying all over and wild-animal sounds piped in. Teenage waiters wore safari suits and served overpriced food reminiscent of Applebee’s or Red Robin. They were out of the veggie burger that Dave wanted and we took the opportunity to decide to eat elsewhere, elsewhere being Emeril’s. Also in the MGM, Emeril’s was one of my favorite lunch places in Vegas. We split a phenomenal New Orleans-Style (fried) sushi sampler and I had a half-pound of spicy peel-and-eat shrimp while Dave had a portabella mushroom pasta dish. As a rule I don’t eat dessert but Emeril’s had their world-famous banana-cream pie so we split a piece.

After lunch we decided to visit the fabled Liberace museum, which we had passed when driving down Tropicana toward the Hoover Dam. We walked in to the sounds of piano music while I told Dave that I really liked Liberace in that old Star Trek episode. We entered the lobby of the museum and were able to see through openings in the walls several jewel-encrusted pianos, candelabras, and so on. We decided that was enough and left without paying the $6.95 admission to tour the whole museum.

We took one more drive in the Chevy convertible down the strip. Dave pointed out which hotels he thought they should spare when they level the whole city. We drive all the way downtown then looped back and took the freeway to the airport where I dropped Dave at Frontier Airlines. I had some difficulty finding it as it is not listed on the signs for either terminal. We said our goodbyes and I headed back to Mandalay Bay for another hour of losses at Pai Gow Poker. Five minutes before I had to go, my luck turned and I began a short winning streak, but I needed to race the car back to Alamo. I cashed in, took the incredibly fast new route to the airport by way of Russell Road and I-215, and made my way to the incredibly hard-to-find Alamo lot. Thankfully the bus driver warned us about it’s being hard to find on the way out. Alamo checked me in every bit as quickly as Hertz or Avis and the shuttle bus dropped me at United.

There was a long line at the First Class/Premier counter so I just headed up to the gate. On my way I passed a Monopoly machine and figured I had five minutes to play. Jackpot! I parlayed $5 into $12.35! I tried to cash in my nickels but that slot island was only set up for losing, not winning, so I hauled my nickels all the way to gate D39. I arrived there just after the 20-minute cutoff so I once again lost my seat assignment. The agent joked that there was no First Class and I would have to sit on the wing but then handed me a boarding pass for seat 1D. I raced over to the slot cashier, changed my nickels, and raced back onto the plane where the stewardess asked if I was the last of the Mohicans. Yes, I said, seat 1D. I put my bags into the dwindling overhead space and ended up switching to 1B so that a mother and six-year-old daughter could sit together. Her 10-year-old son was also on the flight. All three of them were Premiers.

Service was nice on this Shuttle as I’m coming to expect on the LAX-LAS-LAX run. We pushed back 15 minutes late because of a fuel-gauge problem but somehow made it up en route. I sipped a Black Label and soda out of a plastic cup. I had brought mixed nuts but didn’t break them out because I was still full from Vegas. We arrived at gate 80 and I was outside on the street in two minutes waiting for a taxi.

The taxi driver was from Eastern Europe and apparently so was his meter! It was running faster than a turkey at Thanksgiving. I pointed it out to him and he turned it off, asking how much I usually paid. I said I’d give him $15 including tip. He was quite embarrassed and said he’d been having problems with it and thanked me for helping him out. “You help me this time, I help you next time.” I can’t imagine he could get away with cheating people in LA for very long without the taxi police coming down on him so I tended to believe him, especially after he told me he had five cabs, lived in Redondo Beach, and was married to a doctor.

He dropped me at home, where I scarcely had time to download my email before Hunnybear arrived. She was so nice to come home to.

The end.


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