Las Vegas Trip

Here is the second installment regarding the Las Vegas trip. I noticed that when you are in Vegas, you do not think about home. Your eyes are too busy, and your mind has way too many things to think about.......and that's a good thing.

Last night I watched the movie "Leaving Las Vegas" and there was one scene in which the actress Elizabeth Shue was walking on a pedestrian bridge over Las Vegas Boulevard. That bridge was the very same bridge that I was standing on when I shot the above photo. If you have seen the movie, it was the story of a hooker and a suicidal drunk. There is plenty of that in Vegas. On that same pedestrian bridge, I saw one of those drunks sitting and holding a cardboard sign. On his sign, it read "Why Lie About It?....I Need A Drink!" I opted to not take a picture of him..........it just did not seem right to do so. Besides, I would have felt an obligation to give him a dollar or some change....and that would only encourage his demise.

We stayed at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino. It's a fantastic place to stay. Very family oriented and you would think "Disney" to look at it.

There is so much to feast your eyes upon. Daytime AND nightime, and you absolutely have to get a look at the place at both times of the day because it is really awesome to see everything lit up.

Everywhere you look.............Video!

Not the greatest picture but I had to take it. Las Vegas Boulevard at night.

When they build these places, they spare no detail. The architecture alone, everywhere you look, is something to behold.

Some people never look UP.........how else are you gonna see flying saucers..........or.........stuff like this?

This is the New York, New York Hotel & Casino. We caught the Roseanne Barr stand-up act there. She was fairly good........not the greatest, but entertaining.

They weren't kidding around when the advertised Vegas being for families. There is alot there for children to do. Example: Notice the roller-coaster ride.

You gotta love the neon lights.

This is the Paris Hotel & Casino. Just look at the detail on the building facade if you can take your eyes off of the fountain.......hehehehe.

I had been to Vegas once before and stayed at the Treasure Island. (the building on the left)

Right across the street is the Venetian. The Venetian is a must-see if you ever get to Vegas. It is a work of art. Seriously.

On the Venetian complex, is a bell tower. This whole place is an exact replica of what is found in Venice Italy. The building on the right is part of the Mirage.

I have never been to Italy, but I have a pretty good idea of what it looks like after being at the Venetian.

The hotels and casinos in Vegas, each are places that you, if you choose to do so, can be content to just stay on the premises and never leave the building. Cities within the city. Shopping malls, restaurants, entertainment, etc, etc......all under each roof. After walking around, I noticed something I had not ever seen before. I never thought I would see the day when you could be browsing along in a shopping mall, in a hotel, in Vegas......and encounter an "oxygen bar". Imagine that!.........flavored oxygen! Unbelieveable! Now, you do not have to wait for COPD, Emphysema, or Lung Cancer, for you to get hooked up to some pure air.......hehehe.

This is what it looks like inside the Venetian. You would think you are outside....but it's all indoors. I would look up and almost swear I saw clouds moving. You can even take a ride on a gondola........just like in Venice.

If you have read my blog in the past, you would recall that I wrote about my trip to New Orleans and how I encountered a mime standing across from the Cafe DuMonde. Well, as it happens, while strolling through the Venetian, I encountered a human statue. He doesn't move.

Apparently, the drunks haven't caught on to this concept.......just look at all of the money people willingly place in front of him!

These shops inside the Venetian are NOT "dollar stores"......hehehe. They are obviously where the women go to spend their husband's "winnings".

I could not write about Vegas without mentioning Frank, Dean, and Sammy.

And........go figure............you can find stuff like this in "Sin" city.

Items like the Rat Pack statues and the Lord's Supper are not cheap...........I saw one small painting inside this very same shop.....it was done very well.....nice framed picture of a WW2 bomber.........no big deal, right?...........try $1,500.!

Yep.....even a Mickey D's on the boulevard.

It's not a good idea to try to cross Las Vegas Boulevard by foot.

Here's a photo of the famous Mirage. Siegfried & Roy still have their animals there, but their show has been replaced with a Beatles/Cirque duSoleil show.

In the Excalibur is the Tournament of Kings extravaganza...............you get to go back in time to medieval days and eat with your hands and watch a fantastic show consisting of knights, Merlin, damsels, a midget, horses, jousting, fire, smoke, lights, action! It is like really being there.

I recommend this place...expecially if you have kids with you. It was said "Use of cameras inside the facility is forbidden and strictly enforced." I managed to get this picture before the show started. You can always visit their website I suppose.

Vegas Wedding

Sometimes you are busy, and sometimes you just don't feel like doing anything........and then there are those times when your laptop refuses to cooperate with you. All three of these may be applied as to the reason for my not posting much to this blog lately.



So there I was..........on a plane to Las Vegas. Not to gamble.........not to frolick..........but a very special occasion..........a wedding..........a quick, short, simple, and sweet wedding. NO......it wasn't ME getting married..........although I have been married twice to the same woman (Supernurse), and that's a whole 'nother story.............but it was the marriage of my Number Two Daughter (Noodle). I won't get into details too much here, so the pictures should speak for themselves.




We all stayed at the Excalibur Hotel. I had a real nice view of the Luxor Hotel next door. For what it is worth, here are a few pictures of what can be found inside the Luxor.

Pretty scarey eh?

They even have an IMAX theater in there.

It must have costed a crapload of pesos to make this hotel.

For those who have no clue about the Luxor.........the main building of their complex is a huge pyramid. Surely, some people have wondered what it must look like inside. Well.....now you know. This picture is the inside of the pyramid.........I was looking up at the ceiling.

The view from my room.

The airport is very close to the "Strip".

When is a sign not a sign?...........when it's an obelisk!

I think it is rather neat that Vegas is surrounded by mountains.

You cannot visit Vegas without a stroll along Las Vegas Boulevard. Themed hotels are the big deal. You can just about see the world in a short walk. Pyramids.......Medieval Castles.......New York........France.......Rome..........Venice..........you name it!

In Vegas....everything is BIG! The signs alone are HUGE!

The weekend that we were in Vegas, it also just so happened to be Cinco DeMayo. It also happened to be the weekend of the BIG FIGHT........Mayweather vs. De Lahoya. Needless to say.......people were there in droves.

The majority of the signs have video advertising...........and not just small screens either......some of these are HUGE!

I imagine it takes a HUGE chunk of change to actually live in one of these.

Oh.........that's right.............the wedding!

Everything went without a hitch........well.......a few minor glitches, but nothing that could not be resolved easily. This was yet another major milestone in my life...............now all of my daughters are married. My "Noodle" girl is all grown up and I have gained another son-in-law.

Now there's a nice looking couple. I must admit..........I had tears in my eyes.

Me, Noodle, Noodle's new Other Half, and the love of my life......Supernurse.

I am such a lucky guy!

Alot Of Stuff Can Happen In A Month's Time

Okay....okay......so it has been almost a month since my last entry to this thing called a blog. No....I haven't run out of things to say...........and No.......we haven't run out of morons or bogosity to write about. Let's just say I have been busy doing other stuff...........a little travel, a few special occasions, and a good dosage of unexpected good fortune.

Speaking of good fortune............that's me holding a decent array of one hundred dollar bills.

I recently took a trip to Tennessee to visit relatives. Everything was great and a good time was had by all. This trip was extra-special in that I got to visit there at the same time a long lost cousin was visiting from Newfoundland. I had not seen her since I was a little kid. I also met her husband, a retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer. As I stated.....everything was great and the weather was fantastic.

Now that I am no longer a young guy, driving twelve or thirteen hours straight is way too draining. On this trip, we broke up the drive and stayed overnight in Knoxville, on the way there. Coming back, we stopped in Salem, Virginia and had a good sleep and headed on up I-81 in the morning. As I approached the exit for Baltimore/Washington...........I got an idea in my head to keep going straight towards Winchester instead of turning off of the Interstate. I had gone this way once before....many moons ago......I figured I would cut on over Rt 7 to 340 and head thru Harper's Ferry WV...up into Frederick MD, hop on I-70 and go right into Baltimore. No problem........and at one point, as we were approaching Charles Town / Harper's Ferry, I need to stretch my legs a bit.......I told the wife, Supernurse, that I wanted to stop for a bit and she responded with......... "Stop at Charles Town and play the slots for a while".............Imagine that!

As it happened, we did stop. We entered the casino, I put a twenty dollar bill into a slot machine, sat there for a while....took my time......Supernurse grabbed a bite to eat.........and in a very short period of time, I had racked up about two hundred dollars worth of credits on the slot machine..........and it was a NICKEL SLOT! The wife sits down next to me and starts yakking on her cellphone and she hints that we ought to hit the road. I agreed........and I thought for a moment and figured I would keep playing until she used a different tone of voice.....hehehe.

All of a sudden, lights were flashing, the machine froze up and a big message was on the screen for me to "See Attendant". I thought I broke it....hehehe......so I got Supernurse's attention and asked her to look at the screen........her eyes got big when she saw that I had just hit for some sixteen thousand credits or so. I forget the exact amount it was. I asked her how much that worked out to be............she didn't know.......neither did I......and then some lady walks over to me and looks at the machine and tells me I just nailed that machine big time. You can imagine how I began to feel.............I looked at the wife and said "we should be jumping up and down and screaming, shouldn't we?" Well.......we didn't. We acted like it was a normal routine thing....hehehe......didn't want too much attention brought our way. The attendant shows up, gets some pertinent information from me and comes back with a shitload of cash and counts it out, hands me a t-shirt, and congratulates me. It was $1,600 dollars! and she tells me to try the machine again before she walks away so she can make sure it functions properly. I say "OK" and notice I still have more than 200 dollars worth of credits on the machine!

Not a bad chunk fo change for an hour's rest.

I plan on visiting Charles Town again.....real soon!

Before our trip to Tennessee, I got a visit from a friend of mine that I had not seen in twenty years. Man........where does time go? Paul........I love ya man and you are in my prayers.

Global Warming?...............hehehehehehe, you got to be kidding me.

I am glad Spring is here......Baseball has begun......flowers are blooming........now if we can just get the weather to cooperate.

I have much more to write but I shall save it for another day..........

'til next time.

Moron Of The Week - Rosie O'Donnell

Okay......It's been a while since I last put something on the blog.........but...gee.....sometimes a guy has other things to do........even if those things are not very important. I have been somewhat lacking in keeping up with the various morons of the week, so this week I am gonna have to give you a Moron Of The Week that will cover all of the times that I have failed to come up with one here on the blog.

To choose Rosie O'Donnell as the Moron Of The Week......well.....it was a no-brainer. Aside from her most recent barrage of anti-American, pro-terrorism, ultra-liberal verbal diarrhea..........here are a few more things that come to mind to describe the moron known as Rosie O'Donnell:

Fat

Loudmouth

Feminine?......not a chance

She cannot smile

Looks like she smells something bad

She has never been funny....ever.

Did I mention that she must be addicted to twinkies?

Her bottom teeth are always showing, unless she snarls as in the photo above.

She is allegedly suffering from depression.........who would have guessed?

And now on to some stuff I gotta mention about other things:

Stick a fork in ole Oscar............the award no longer impresses me. Toss Oscar in the trashbin with the Grammy. Both awards are so flagrantly predictable, it just wastes your time to bother watching.

No doubt about it, it was a sad end to this sad person. If her life was a circus, it was no surprise that after she died, the show must go on. During the Judge Fonzie show.......the media reported that it was a "circus" in the courtroom. Well anybody could have said that and it would have been true indeed....but the icing on that cake came about when that video of Anna Nicole Smith with clown makeup was played in the courtroom. If you are gonna have a circus....you gotta have a clown. It is sad. Here are a few things I have to say about this whole fiasco:

In my opinion:

If a woman, regardless of her notoriety, has numerous sex partners, and in return she recieves "perks" and "gifts" such as "favors", "money", "living arrangements", and even "drugs".......there is no other words to describe her profession other than "prostitute". I am sure we will hear of all sorts of fairly wealthy old farts that have done business with her.

Howard K. Stern is nothing but a wannabee, whose entire existence relied heavily upon whatever he could suck out of Anna Nicole Smith. Did he have affection for her?........of course he did...........he still does......and he is doing his damned best to make sure he can do some more sucking.

All of those lawyers involved. They are not kidding anyone here.......each and every one of them see dollar signs.

Anna Nicole Smith's "estranged" mother. I feel sorry for her to a certain degree.......but......she is seeing dollar signs too. I am also not surprised that she and her daughter were not all happy-happy together.....after all.......I wouldn't think any drug addict would have a close, warm and fuzzy relationship with her mother if her mother happens to be in law enforcement. Of course Anna Nicole was upset with her mom....her mom was a cop!

The baby.........unfortunately, the best thing for this kid would be if all of the above named persons all went away. If ever there was a kid needing adoption.........there ya go. Personally, I would have no problem with this kid's actual biological father getting custody........with certain conditions. Keep the kid off of the TV, no movies, and no money from any possible inheritance until the age of 21.

My personal thoughts on the death of Anna Nicole Smith AND the death of her son Daniel...........homicide......plain and simple....it's a no-brainer. Most likely there is more than one person that should be held accountable. Without a doubt, WHOEVER "supplied" the drugs needs to be in jail. WHOEVER "dispensed" those drugs needs to be in jail. And WHOEVER "enabled" and "encouraged" the abuse of those drugs needs to be in jail. I predict that the doctor's involved in this, along with Howard K. Stern, will be rung up on charges very soon.

This should sum it all up.........normally, when somebody dies...........immediate family members, and very close friends, do not find it upon themselves to lawyer up with dozens of lawyers. Also, when someone dies, it is not the norm to bargain with media and give exclusive rights to video of the funeral. Then again.............most of us really loved the person that passed away and are not blinded by flashing dreams of millions of dollars. It is sad. What all of this tells me, is that none of them really cared for Anna Nicole the person.......they only cared for what being associated with her might get them.

And Jesus God.........will somebody please teach Greta Van Susteren how to say "Anna Nicole Smith"??????!!!!!!!! She simply cannot say it correctly.......she continually says "Ann Nicole" or "Anna Cole".