Look Who's Back!

Wow, so I'm back, after more than 2 years of being dormant! Didja' miss me?

I originally started this blog to correlate to the 2006 World Cup, where I provided daily updates about the tournament and my take on the day's games. I really wanted to keep it going, but just couldn't do it on a daily basis. Frankly, I got bored and a little burned out, not to mention the numerous other projects going on at the same time. In addition to my real job w/ the Government, I still hosted and produced my weekly tv show "This Week In Soccer" as well as acting as the Head of Public Relations for the USL's FC Fredericksburg Gunners. Kind of a lot, huh?

The tv show is no longer around, since the station itself shut down, and I've stepped down from my position at the Gunners. I wish them well and will continue to support the organization.

All of that boring stuff said, I'm going to try and post here 3 or 4 times a week. I'll talk about soccer, but also other sports, life, and generally vent about things that piss me off. So, I hope you find this stuff entertaining, but from a personal standpoint, I hope it's theraputic.

Okay, onto something (hopefully) interesting:

I just got back from Vegas. And yes, my wife Kim and I got our asses kicked big-time by the big ol' nasty casinos. We hemorraged money the first few days, but recovered enough to break even the last few. A great trip overall, probably the most fun I've had in the past few years (we try to go every 6 months).

Why was this trip better, you ask? Well, for starters, we stayed at the off-Strip property at The Orleans. Our first time away from the glitz and glam of the Strip...yeah, right! Basically we got tired of hanging out w/ a bunch of young assholes spending Mommy and Daddy's money, trying to look cool, hip, and wasted. We're no longer cool and hip, but we both got wasted several times, so we had that goin' for us.

Anyway, the gambling, the shopping, and the food on the Strip has become so bad that we actually considered going elsewhere for our vacations, because it just hasn't been as much fun. The place was more about seeing and being seen, waiting 2 hours to try and get into the ultracool new lounges, and basically acting like an ass.

Several of my friends over at The Las Vegas Advisor (lasvegasadvisor.com) told us to try staying off Strip and gambling at the locals places and eating at some of the locals restaurants.

Long story short, we got a $24 per night room rate at this 3-star hotel, had some great and fairly inexpensive food (save for the dinner at Ruth's Chris), struggled early with the gambling but caught up a bit as the week went on, and went to a ton of locals casinos where they actually treat you as a customer instead of some jackass to rob blind, as they now do on the Strip.

There was only bad note.

Since we were staying at a New Orleans themed hotel actually CALLED The Orleans, we figured their Mardi Gras (i.e. Fat Tuesday) party would kick ass. Disappointing is probably the nicest thing I could say.

Around 5 o'clock, a 5-piece dixieland band walked around the hotel and a couple of glammed up females in next-to-no clothing walked around passing out t-shirts, but ONLY to people who were gambling at the time. If you were watching the band or standing around, you got nada, zilch. I saw several people ask the blond girl giving them out for one, and she rudely said "you have to be playing...so sorry!" A couple of people looked like they wanted to punch her in the face. I never condone violence against women, but this girl, sporting a mammoth "lower back tattoo that's going to look so good when I'm 60," thing, looked like they literally got her straight out of a dumpster and promised her a free drink if she did 10 minutes of work. I just walked away. Mind you, it was just a t-shirt, so for me it was no big deal. However, have you ever been to a sporting event where they shoot those stupid-ass 75-cents to make shirts into the crowd? You'd think it was friggin' water from the Fountain of Youth the way people fight over them, and yes, I have ACTUALLY seen people fight over them!

So that was it for the party.

Saw some pretty drunk people that night, though, as apparently many wanted to make their own Mardi Gras party. The picture above looked like one of many I saw that night. But that's okay, we had a great time and can't wait to go back in July.

Later in the week I'll get to posting some hopefully interesting stuff, like sports...of course, there is no guarantee of that.

Thanks for reading!