17 BLACK...
WINNER!

I left for Las Vegas on a Friday morning with a dream in my heart and a smile on my face.

I awoke with a start, mere seconds before my rarely utilized alarm clock got a chance to finally end his silence. Ha! Sucker.

It was 8:00 o'clock. Apparently they have one of those in the morning now, too. G.W. was right, the damn gay marriage is ruining everything.

After a quick packing job (hour and a half) we left the house, and we only had to come back twice to grab things we forgot. So we set out for the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank at 10:15 for our 11:00 flight and we made it just in time.

By just in time, I of course mean, just in time to give up our seats to some stand-by passengers in exchange for a trip in a "shuttle" to Ontario Airport, which I for one, had never even heard of. It wasn't that bad because we also got a free flight, and some drink tickets. Oh, and $250 dollars, each.

So by the time we actually set foot on Nevada soil, or rather, carpeting, we were already up a deuce and a half. No, I'm sorry. Do me a favor, take that number, and double it.

After we checked into our first hotel, The Tuscany, we quickly walked down the street to meet my good friend, Swidler from Homicide, in his very crowded living room that just happened to be in the same place as the sportsbook at Ceasar's Palace. We grabbed a couple drinks in one of the bars, and they tasted way better than they should have for only 8 bucks a piece. We watched the first half of the Huskies loss to UAB, and then headed back to the hotel to get ready for some dinner.

Our actual reason for being in Las Vegas, as if we needed one, was our friend Carrie Jenkins. She's finishing Graduate School at UNLV with a degree in fine art, and she held her thesis/gallery show that we had the honor to attend.

Once we arrived on the UNLV campus I felt the familiar pangs of regret that I always experience because I never got the chance to owe a school like this multiple thousands of dollars.

The gallery was very nice. Completely empty of furniture, and featuring white walls and hardwood floors, it seemed to look exactly like it should. Oh, and there was an open bar.

Bravo Carrie. Bravo.

During the evening I met a lot of different folks. First and foremost, was my man Jim Beam who is awesome with just a couple ice cubes. The gallery patrons were an interesting lot. The majority of people were Carrie's family and then there were some folks between 40 and 50 and it seemed like they went to art shows with some frequency.

Then there were the art students. You could tell who they were by their crazy hair and tattoos all over their bodies. I immediately warmed to these folks and wished that I had more tatts and/or piercings to impress them with, but alas. One incredibly cool girl named Jessica Starkey took us to her studio, and we listened to some gangsta rap, looked at some of her hilarious artwork, and smoked some great hash that her boyfriend brought.

I was really enjoying myself. And I hadn't even started gambling yet.

When we returned to the gallery it was really crowded, and I decided to step outside for a minute to make some drunken phone calls, it's one of my favorite hobbies.

Once the party was over I went with the freaks to a dive bar called Champagne's, where ironically enough, they don't have champagne on the menu. It was fun just watching the local drunks hit on the local prostitute and then get in fights with each other only to be hugging two minutes later. Someone made the remark that if you just ignored the fact that they were human, it was like watching the Discovery Channel. Only in real life. Oh, and you're drunk.

We went back to the hotel and I proceeded to win 75 dollars playing Craps, which I am notoriously bad at, then we went to bed. I wanted to gamble more, but I knew there would be ample time for that.

NOTE: That night we watched the "movie" Timeline, which is so bad that it rivals Battlefield Earth for worst movie of all time. Watch it only if you're currently making a movie and need a good example of what not to do.

The next morning I woke up and ran down to the casino. In hindsight, I could have walked and kept that $120 for a least two more minutes. Oh well, I lied to myself, it's only money. I laid by the pool for a while and drank the first and last pina colada of my lifetime, and strategized on a system that this guy told me about to win at blackjack. The way it works is this:

Every time you lose, you double your bet. Eventually, you'll win and make all of your money back, plus one bet.

Now that sounds simple, I know. But that's because I left out the part about needing balls of solid rock to pull it off. Let's say you're betting $5 and you lose. And lose. And lose.

If you lose six times in a row, which you will, you will be placing a bet of $160. If you lose again, it's $320. I don't want to sound like a pansy, but I'm not so sure I have what it takes to put that much money in the little betting circle after I'm already down three hundy. In fact, let's be absolutely clear, I'm positive that I don't have what it takes. I'll just stick to betting dollars on Roulette.

That reminds me, it's time to get to the good part.

On Monday, Darla and I decided to take in a little film called "Dawn of the Dead", and being the zombie fan that I am, I enjoyed it. However, my fragile girlfriend informed me after the show that she needed to "scrub that piece of shit off of my brain" and so we walked to the Bellagio Hotel and Casino to look at their fabulous flower garden.

Since I regard flowers in much the same way that Darla regards zombies, it wasn't long before I had chosen a roulette wheel to throw my money at.

I dropped my hundred dollar bill on the soft green felt and asked the kindly dealer named Illysha for "nickels, please.", and she gave me a stack of twenty red discs. I took six of them and placed one straight up on 17, my lucky number, and spread the rest out on the board in such a manner as to guarantee me at least my 30 dollars back, as long as the ball didn't land on 1,2,3, or the 0's. After about two spins, my fears were realized as the dreaded number 3 appeared. There goes my $30 bucks. Waitress!

But the waitress was nowhere to be seen, so I picked up six more chips and placed them strategically, and man, am I glad that I did. Sure enough,

"17 Black. Winner!" Said Illysha as she pushed over a stack of chips towards me that equaled $175.

"Wow," I thought. "maybe I should stop now." But I didn't. Thank God.

I went on to hit 17 three more times at that table and then went to other casinos and hit twice more. And that pretty much paid for the trip.

So, I'm forced to harken back to my last blog post, when I mentioned the four words that keep me and millions like me going back to Sin City.

What If I Win.

When I posted that pre-trip, I was kidding, just poking fun at the incredible gullibility of the general populace.

And now that I've won? Have my feelings changed on the matter?

Of course not. But my new basketball shoes sure are comfy.