Vegas: Friday

Finally…another entry in the Vegas weekend! I just keep getting further behind…

Update: Xebeth reminded me that I’d forgotten a key part of the evening — Bite, the topless vampire show! The end of the post has been updated to correct this grievous oversight. Believe me, the erotic rock angels should not be forgotten!

We slept in ’til about ten on Friday morning, then worked out our list of what we wanted to try to hit that day.

First stop: one hundred and eight floors straight up, to the observation deck of the Stratosphere’s tower. This was one stop that Prairie wasn’t entirely looking forward to, as she has a touch of acrophobia, but she declared that as long as either Xebeth or I stayed with her, she’d be willing to go. Up we went, and I was really proud of my girl — she did just fine, and even made a full circuit around the observation deck!

We decided not to head up one more floor to the outdoor observation deck (also the deck where the thrill rides are…there is not enough money in the world to get me on one of those things), and instead found our way back down to ground level.

Prairie and Xebeth had already decided on our next stop — without telling me — and we piled in the car and headed off. After taking an intentionally circuitous route to try to keep me from guessing, we parked in the MGM Grand‘s parking garage, walked back out onto the strip, and then up about a block until we found M&M’s World.

The store was a lot of fun — four floors of M&Ms themed kitch, silliness, and merchandising. We managed to make it out without blowing much money at all (though there were a lot of temptations, including a lot of the Rise of the Mpire Star Wars-themed plushies and figures that we don’t have. Still, we kept ourselves to some cute M&M playing cards and a bag of M&Ms to munch on while we wandered around. It was tough, but we managed to do it.

After M&Ms, we took a brief wander through a Coca-Cola store next door, then went back down to find the car. We hopped in, got back on the strip, and worked our way up to the Las Vegas Hilton, which has a small, out-of-the-way, hardly noticeable, little-known exhibit that I was interested in taking a quick peek at…

Heh. Not a bad day at all — M&M’s World and Star Trek: The Experience all in one day!

We started off by getting in line for the rides (the “experience” part), but eventually decided that on our current budget, we just couldn’t quite justify spending $40 per person for a 20-minute ride (I’ve since found that apparently, that $40 covers you for both rides — it sure would have been nice if this information was posted somewhere around the entrance, instead of us having to overhear it incorrectly when the person ahead of us bought their ticket). It was a bummer — and, silly as they may be, I would like to go on them at some point in the future (if they’re still around by the time we get down to Vegas again) — but not quite something we could do. We did find out that you can get access to the museum portion for only $15 per person, so we went ahead and did that (prompted by both Xebeth and Prairie after I groused a bit about not being able to do the full thing…) and then wandered through the gift shop downstairs.

After getting our fill of Klingon, Borg, Federation and other props, we went back to our hotel to rest for a while. Xebeth decorated her bed, and then we decided it was time for food. Since we were planning on taking the monorail down the strip to see the dancing fountains at the Bellagio later on, it made sense to head across the street to see what sort of food the Sahara had to offer. Mexican sounded pretty good, so Paco’s Bar and Grill did just fine — and our host was kind enough to get a picture of the three of us (the only one during the entire weekend, unfortunately).

Once dinner was done, the monorail took us down to Paris, where we crossed the street and found a spot to watch the fountains at Bellagio. During the evening, the fountains “perform” every fifteen minutes, with different musical selections rotating through. When we were there, the song of choice was ‘Big Spender‘ from the musical Sweet Charity — an amusingly appropriate choice for the Vegas atmosphere, I thought.

The minute you walked in the joint,
I could see you were a man of distinction,
A real big spender,
Good looking, so refined.
Say, wouldn’t you like to know
What’s going on in my mind?
So, let me get right to the point,
I don’t pop my cork for ev’ry guy I see.
Hey, big spender, spend…
A little time with…me…me…me!

Once the show was done, it was back to the hotel to make sure we were there in time for the evening’s entertainment — Bite, one of three shows available at the Stratosphere.

BITE is an erotic and sensual topless review based on deliciously evil vampires with a simple story line of sin, sex and seduction. The show centers around the Lord Vampire and his search for the perfect female specimen that he will seduce and make the queen of the night. Aiding the Lord is his coven of sultry and nimble dancers, the Erotic Angels of Rock. Their story will be told through the classic rock songs of the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s. Throughout the show, audience members will be chosen to become part of the erotic adventure.

Yup…that’s the official description, and the show is just as good (or, if you prefer, enjoyably bad) as you’d expect. Classic and modern rock serves as a background for topless vampire women dancing their way through a nominal plot, as a mix of audience members and “audience members” are brought on stage and either dismissed (if they’re actually audience members) or incorporated into the show (if they’re “audience members”). We had an absolute blast watching the show, enjoying (and rating) the eye candy (and determining which of the dancers had real breasts, and which were augmented), and watching the acrobatics (admittedly very impressive: two “audience members” turned out to be aerialists who put on a damn fine acrobatic display a few times during the show). All in all, much fun, and definitely worth the money (even more so, since the show was comped by Xebeth‘s friend Mark).

Once that was done, it was back upstairs and into bed for us. Two days down…one to go!

“Get Invisibly Paid” by Beck/Fischerspooner from the album www.djearworm.com (2004, 3:12).