Monday, April 16, 2007

My Vegas Vacation

Now that my brother lives, and plays baseball in Las Vegas, I will probably be visiting a lot more often, what is probably one of my most favorite places ever. I had such an interesting time this last weekend, that I thought I would share with you some of the happenings, and maybe expound upon a few of them.

First of all, my Dad and all of his "connections." It doesn't matter where we go, or what we do, there is always someone he knows that does something, or who knows somebody else. This trip was no exception. My Sissy and I went online to see what kind of prices we were looking at and there was absolutley nothing for the weekend we wanted, and come to find out, even our "connections" couldn't get us one. I guess NASCAR was in town or something, not to mention all the other crap that was probably going on at the same time. Then one of the "connections" has a friend who was out of town.

This guy is an NBA basketball referee, who is apparently single and owns a 10,000 sq.ft. house just outside of Vegas. He said his friend was leaving to go out of town, and offered us his house to stay in for free for the weekend. This guy has autographed pictures all over his house of celebrities from the likes of Jack Nicholson, to Muhammed Ali, and George Foreman's "Rumble in the Jungle" fight (this was a very famous fight a very long time ago). So nice except for then my Dad invites a bunch of other people to come stay too, and my prego sissy and I end up sleeping on the floor! RUDE!

Next of all, there were very funny, "only in Vegas would you see..." type of scenarios that I noticed all over, but I wanted to relate only one or two.
At the ballpark in Las Vegas, snow cones are available for an extra $3.00 with a shot of Smirnoff Vodka, Jack Daniels Whiskey, or Bacardi Rum. ONLY IN VEGAS! Very tempting, (or at least very tempting to knock out the two pains in the butt under the age of 4, who were whiney and onery the whole weekend)!!!

One scenario that you would think would be an "only in Vegas" moment, however, this one was the other way around. The first weekend in April, my brother's team the Las Vegas 51's,came to open their season in Salt Lake with games beginning from Thursday and going thru Sunday. We all thought because the Sunday game was on Easter Sunday, there wouldn't be a very big crowd. The crowd was huge. Who wants to go to a baseball game on Easter? Apparently, lots of people in Salt Lake did. Then in Las Vegas, we anticipated the Sunday game to be very crowded, but there were significantly fewer people at the game on non-Easter Sunday, and Vegas is supposed to be Sin City!!!

Lastly, my brother will forever be known as "The Chicken Cheater." We went to Circus Circus so that a few of the kids could play and ride some of the rides since we had a few hours to kill before we had to go to the game. After letting my nephew Easton go on some of the kiddie rides, my brother Mitch was trying to win the kids some prizes at some of the games. One particular game was a chicken catapult of sorts. For $5 or so, you get three rubber chickens which you place on a catapult, and with a hammer you hit the other end of the catapult to launch the chickens. If one of the chickens happen to land in a bucket, you win a prize. One thing you don't do to Mitch is dare him to do something and not expect him to follow through with the dare.

So, my other brother Thad, who drove up from Arizona to watch the games, dared Mitch to just hit the catapult with his hammer, and then throw the chicken into the bucket with his hands when the guy wasn't looking. Sure enough, as soon as the guy turned around, Mitch hits the catapult with the hammer, (it makes a noise btw, kind of like that strong man game with the sledge hammer that the goal is to hit the bell at the top of the scale) and then throws the chickens one at a time into the buckets with his other hand. The first one he missed cause he was trying to hurry before the guy turned around again, but then when he noticed that the guy wasn't really watching all that close, he took his time and made the next two.

I think what was even more funny, was this Asian family who had just won a prize at that game (the correct way) saw what Mitch did, and died laughing at him. I wonder what that worker guy though when he turned around and saw about 10 people laughing at this guy who was pointing out to him that yes, in fact, he had made two chickens in the buckets.

You can't take my family anywhere anymore!

3 comments:

FOODIE said...

I forgot about one more awesome "only in Las Vegas" moment!

In all the minor league baseball games I have been to (and that is a lot), all of the ballparks have promotion nights where they sell concessions for cheaper, or give away a replica hat to the first so many fans that come to the games.

The most common one I have seen is really cheap hot dogs. One park had one night a month they called "Dime-A-Dog Night" where all of the hot dogs are ten cents, at another park they are $1.00!

Las Vegas does not follow this trend exactly. Their main promotion for the year is called "Budweiser Dollar Beer Night." All beers are $1.00!!!

"Hey baby let's go to Vegas!" "Kiss the single [or married] life goodbye!" THEY GOT CHEAP BEER!

goddessdivine said...

Ah, Las Vegas....the city of sin. I love how the slogan "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" is a LIE. God is watching.

Kristeee said...

The chicken in a bucket game cheating is hil-A-rious! I wonder how many people do that. Surely he's not the first (but it's still dang funny).

Have you been to the Pirate show at Treasure Island lately? They changed it - it's no longer the cool, family-friendly pirate show that I remember as a kid. It's now the Sirens of TI, and they pole dance in lingerie and slut around while all the parents in the crowd try to cover their kids' eyes.

Some day I'd like to get to the race track there - they have cars you can take racing. That'd be cool.