Hi Vegas fans,
First, the Good. 10 days till Vegas. It will be such a blast. And, the weather looks great to boot (60/40 for the high/low temps). We're staying at the Flamingo, and it looks fab. Have any of you been there? Lemme know...
Ok, now the Bad - I don't know if I can make it till then! Every day I wake up I think it's a day later than it is... today I swore it was Thursday until I saw the newspaper. If you have a time machine, please move me forward 10 days, then freeze it. Unless I lose all my dough playing blackjack and craps next Friday.
As for the Ugly, I'm going to include some of Andrew Yoelin's 50 years of Vegas memories. When I say "ugly" I mean stuff that Andrew does not like (shows, people, etc.). You may find that your mileage varies greatly. That's one of the coolest things about Vegas. I love the Fremont Street experience, but you may think it's pure cheese. That's the reason I came up with Simplifying in the first place... pick categories of stuff that you like, and find out for yourself what it's really about.
Anyway, I'm rambling now. Here's Andrew's take on the Ugly in Las Vegas:
Let me just say, up front, when I walked out of the Danny Gans show, about 2000, I was pissed. In 50 years of visiting Las Vegas, only one show sticks out as the worst show in the history of Las Vegas shows: Danny Gans. Call me discriminating, call me viscous, call me ripped off. His musical ability is average, his ability to imitate anyone is arguable. He acts like he’s a talent people pursue. I’m convinced that no one attends this show except that it IS in Vegas, they had nowhere to go, stumbled onto it or it was comp’d, free. HORRIBLE! NO TALENT. Likes to show off his big Ron Burgundy guns (arms)...who cares? No talent. One hundred dollars per ticket, it is the worst show and the worst value of a show in 50 years.
...I saw Siegfried and Roy in 1998, and it was horrible. The whole act was this sado-masochistic mess, like a Broadway musical-gone-terribly-wrong; both were outfitted in black costumes that highlighted their groin areas. One of the them, Siegfried or Roy, would get “captured” by a bunch of chorus boys and the other would rescue him. I kept saying to my friends, “I just wanna see a tiger disappear.” Again, like the horrible Danny Gans, it was horrible.
One night, if it wasn’t my 5th birthday trip, it was soon after, the whole family walked out of a Judy Garland show. I think this was at The Sands. If I knew who she was at the time, I might have recalled more, but I was a little kid, unimpressed; she didn’t look a lot like Dorothy in Oz, but she was so blitzed, slurring her words, so out of her mind that my Dad said, “Let’s get the hell outta here. She’s a mess.” And she was. Bad night for Judy.
... I saw Liza at The Sands. The upholstery on the seats was torn and stained; the curtains were falling down and ripped. Liza was a joke. She was horrrrrrrrrible! Horrible!
Worse, Luci Arnez was the opening act. She was worse than Liza. And while she was singing, “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” I started thinking, ‘this is the best she can do?’ The entire time she isn’t performing she can look for material to perform and this is what she came up with? What a horrible trip and a horrible show.
I might have accentuated the “horrible” here, but Vegas is all about extremes and has been all my life.
Indeed! Thanks, Andrew, for your candid comments.
NEXT WEEK: See Mike's head explode in excitement two days before his Vegas trip.
Viva,
Mike
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