Vegas Baby! - Friday Night

That's what Seal decided to call Las Vegas during his show at the mirage. Can't say that I blame him. Well, contrary to popular opinion and conclusions drawn up by the many sewing cicrles (dubbed the 'got-no-lifers') I decided to go to Las Vegas for three reasons:

1) I haven't had a vacation in over two years and needed to get out and party my ass off. (Which I did)
2) Well, I was at work one day and browsing pollstar.com, as I like to do sometimes, just looking at what artists were playing around the country. I then clicked my way to the Shows playing Las Vegas on the same weekend.

Seal
Al Green
Velvet Revolver
Ultimate Fighting Championships
George Wallace
Tom Jones
Rob Zombie
Slipknot
Toby Keith/Lee Ann Womack/Shooter Jennings

This list doesn't include the shows that are playing on a more permanant basis...and yes I'm not listing Celne Dion on purpose.

3) Place a few bets at a Casino's Sports Book.

Friday Night

Anyways, going to see concerts was a great reason to head out to Las Vegas as I wanted to go see Seal, Al Green,

Velvet Revolver, Slipknot, and/or Rob Zombie. Not only that but I've been watching Vegas Related shows on the Travel Channel and E! so I had a bunch of other things I wanted to go check out (especially the Clubs!). So I booked my trip and headed to the Desert.

Just a word of advice, if a travel agent ever asks you if you'd like to have ground transportation to and from the Airport, SAY NO. Take a cab to and from the Airport, otherwise you'll be waiting in the desert sun breathing in disel exhaust.

Anyways, I made it to my hotel, the Flamingo, and the first order of Business was to get Tickets for the shows I wanted to see. I was wanted to see Seal on Friday night at the Mirage, Velvet Revolver on Saturday night at the Alladin, and Slipknot on Sunday night at the House of Blues. I was able to see everything I wanted to see except for Slipknot. Slipknot was so sold out scalpers were asking for WAY more than double the face price of $55. Once I got tickets for Seal and Velvet Revolver the next order of businsess was to get into shorts flip flops and a tshirt and look for booze. Within the Flamingo is Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, a place I've always wanted to go to in New Orleans or Key West. Anyways, I quickly got loaded on 'Last Mango in Paris' Margaritas (Mango Margaritas)the Official Drink of my Vacation and just kicked back and chilled until it was time to go see Seal.

Seal was nothing less than amazing especially the Venue he was in. This Venue at the Mirage is so intimate it's like watching a concert in your living room. Seal wasn't supporting any new CD's or anything like that it seemed like a tour just to have fun (Plus No Opening Act). The Concert started off with the first track off of his first CD and the whole show went up from there. The energy from the crowd was amamzing which Seal and his band (to whom he refers to as 'his family') took in and directed the concert to another level. The Show seemed short but was worth the $$$ I spent on the show.

One thing to note about the show is that Sigfreid and Roy attended the show. From what I understood it was the first public appearance of Roy after getting mauled by one if his tigers on Stage. When they entered the crowd gave them a standing ovation and soon after the ovation ended, a good portion of the crowd went up and got pictures of the two together. Me personally, I'm a pretty big chicken when It comes to getting a photo with Stars/Celebrities which happened twice my weekend in Vegas (the other time was Pete Rose signing autographs at the Forum Shops in Ceasers Palace).

The Seal show got out at approximately 11:30-11:45PM and I as wondering what I was going to do with the rest of the evening. I mean I'm on Vacation and 11:30 PM is WAY too early a time to go to bed. (Keep in mind I got up at 5:30 AM to get ready to go to catch my plane to Vegas.) So I started thinking about where I wanted to go for the rest of the evening. Well, as I stated earlier, I watched a bunch of shows on the Travel Channel and E! so I drew upon the cool things I remembered about places where I wanted to go. The first place I wanted to Visit was the The Palms Casino.

Let me tell you that Beautiful Women were EVERYWHERE in the Casino. Granted a good portion of the Beautiful Women were hookers (the clubs at The Palms let 'Women Who are residents of Las Vegas' into the clubs for free). Anyways, I checked out the Casino and it seemed smaller from how it's portrayed on TV. I sat down for one of two short gambling sessions during my weekend in Vegas and I played until I was practically fell asleep at the table which was about 2:00AM or so. In retrospect, I should have ordered up some Red Bull but didn't think about it until Saturday night (Actually Early Sunday Morning) at Ceasers Palace. I then went back to my hotel, got some late night Grub and then crashed. Naturally, I didn't fall asleep until 5:00 am which would make my time that I was awake for just about twenty four hours straight.

More later...

Here's some Friday pix from my -500 Pixel Camera Phone.