Nicely done, Lorraine

I woke just before seven. During the night someone had stuffed a three-pack of Charmin into my open mouth so I spent a few minutes upon waking trying to work it free. Every time I moved my head, though, the corkscrews inserted through my ears tightened, producing sharp pains behind my frontal lobe. I rolled out of bed and found that someone, perhaps the same joker, had swapped 300-watt light bulbs for the soft white ones formerly present throughout the villa. I threw some clothes on and headed downstairs to play a little video poker when I remembered the crap game last night. I decided I was in a foul mood and viciously stuffed bills into the five-play machine trying to get it to cry uncle.

Arnie came down and watched me play interspersed with trips to the blackjack table. Around 8:30 I asked him to give Pluto a wake-up call, expecting him to be in at least as bad shape as myself after the Picasso staff forced glass after glass of wine upon us last night. Pluto answered the phone groggily. Arnie said in his unforgivably cheerful voice, “Hi, this is Arnie, the Compmeister!” Pluto shook off the cobwebs and racked his brain trying to figure out which department of the casino compmeisters worked in and whether an early-morning phone call was good or bad.

At nine I was entered in an invitational slot tournament. The whole gang cheered me on as my first two spins were the top two jackpots. I took the early lead but after halftime the machine went cold and I ended up barely in the top half of the contestants in the first of three rounds. We played some more video poker and I got terribly hoovered so we went for lobsters at Emeril’s. They saw us coming and had four huge chilled steamers at the ready. They were the best ever.

After lunch I had booked Pluto for three hours of spa treatment while I played the second round of the slot tourney, finishing again in the middle. Video-poker expert Bob Dance was sitting two machines away from me and I asked him what the best strategy was in a tournament like this. “Push the button,” he said.

When Pluto finished his treatments we went up to write and change for dinner. We had 6:30 reservations at Brown Derby and sat at a nice booth with a slow waiter who never refilled our wine glasses. The food was top-notch but the service was not up to par. I had the escargot with edible foccacia plate while the rest had excellent crabcakes. The main course was chateaubriand, prepared perfectly. We ordered a bottle of 1994 Opus One to go along with it but they took forever trying to get approval for some reason and we had to rush the dessert, which as I rule I don’t eat, in order to make our limo. I did scarf down just one order of the famous grapefruit cake à la mode while Pluto had a chocolate decadence and Gary his favorite crème broulee. Arnie was good and just had some berries. The bill came to $1000 including $540 for the one bottle of wine. We stiffed the waiter on the wine because of the bad service and left 18% or so on the food.

Tonight was the big surprise for Pluto, comp seats to his favorite show, Penn & Teller. He thought they weren’t playing but they just started at the new showroom at the Rio so I fooled him. The show was great as always including one of my favorite bits as well as Pluto’s, the one where Teller holds his breath in a tank of water while a bimbo times him with a stopwatch as Penn takes his sweet time with a bumbling card trick, pausing every thirty seconds to reassure the bimbo with the stopwatch, “Nicely done, Lorraine.” We returned to MGM around midnight and played a little craps, winning back a tiny portion of last night’s hoover, before retiring early around one.


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