Vegas Baby

If you haven't yet, read Sports Guy's recap, because he perfectly captures the atmosphere of the weekend. The energy of knowing that at any moment you could be in the same room as someone like Jay-Z and/or get shot is just insane. Just after arriving I headed over to the Palms, where the players were staying, despite having no chance of getting into any of the clubs. As we made our way to the front door we literally walked into Suge Knight, who apologized for bumping into us. On our first lap around the casino we saw the Maloofs, Steve Kerr, Matt Harpring, Jim Gray...later in the lobby there was Brooke Hogan and her mother (more attractive than expected), Caron Butler, Josh Howard, Vince Young, and Vince Carter. Shortly after that the blackjack took hold and I lost interest in celebrity sightings. (Not that I could have gotten a glance let alone a "hello" from anyone, with the NBA groupies there. The NBA groupie is a class of "woman" unto itself, for which hoochie is way too classy a descriptive term. If you are black, over 6' 3", and can pull off a track suit, a monochromatic unbent baseball hat, and sunglasses at night indoors, or all three, you need to be at all-star weekend because these girls will pounce on anything they can even pretend is a professional athlete.)





To those of you anxiously awaiting crazy Vegas stories, we've run into a slight problem...turns out I REALLY like gambling. That I enjoy gaming came as no surprise, given my past relationships with video poker. That I would start twitching when I left the blackjack table for more than 20 minutes became a bit of an issue. I had always been nervous to play table games alone because I wasn't really sure what to do, but once I sat down and got comfortable it was all over. I left to sleep around 6am Saturday (after having been out of the room in various casinos since I went to watch the Georgetown game at 9am) and when I got back up at 10:30 my first thought was "maybe I should go play some more blackjack." Which I did until 4pm, when 3 tickets to the All Star Game itself fell into my lap thanks to a very thoughtful NBA employee (thank you BT!).




As for my favorite (suitable for the internet) tidbits from the weekend:




Finding and using pedestrian walkways in Vegas is complicated.

Around noon on Sunday I realized that since I'd arrived Friday night I'd subsisted exclusively on cocktails, ice cream, and the $1.55 graveyard pancake special.

Saturday night around 5am I sat at a blackjack table with a Hispanic gentleman who napped between each turn and seemed to speak no English except for "awwww" or "EVERYBODY WINS!" depending on the outcome of his hand.

I sat next to Tyrus Thomas on the plane home. He was tall, well dressed, and not pleased with the the movie offering of Marie Antoinette

Notice on the right: sunglasses, indoors, at night, plus a ridiculous sweater. Yet he's cool. This was the theme of the weekend.










Only 11 months until NBA All-Star Weekend 2008: New Orleans, aka the Apocalypse!