Programming Notes: I’ve gotten pretty lazy and haven’t ‘written’ much for this blog, falling into that old blog standby of just posting a bunch of pictures. Well you get what you pay for. The Democross will probably have another ‘final’ post when the video is put together DVDs are being mailed to Craig for compilation as we speak. I’ll post up a teaser clip below. In the meantime I’ll wrap up our SEMA / Las Vegas experience with some more pics and details. I’ll start classifying my ‘opinion’ stuff on politics clearly so that you can skip ahead if you’re just here for the awesome racing action. Also I'll post more pictures on Facebook so you can see more automotive lunacy there.
[start Political Diatribe]
Since we left off we now have a new president – Obama. His ‘change’ appears to be mostly hiring all of Clinton’s old cronies, what a crazy radical. I’ve gotten a few comments on my not so sly political commentary. For the record I’d characterize myself more as a Libertarian than a true Republican. I’m against government in just about any capacity (hence DTOM) and even more so against taxes. I couldn’t care less about things like abortion, church vs. state arguments, gay marriage etc. Live and let live is my motto there, just keep your hands out of my pockets. I can also tell that no one bothered to read my links to Man vs. Welfare and Economics in One Lesson. If anyone is smart enough (I’m not) to point out holes in Henry Hazlitt’s arguments please send them along, it all seems to resonate pretty well with me, but I’ll keep an open mind that running up a huge deficit, taxing successful businesses and people to sustain a bloated bureaucracy is somehow good for America, and the kids (don’t forget about them).
[/end Political Diatribe]
I touched on this already but I’ll restate - SEMA is awesome, and from all accounts this one wasn’t nearly as cool as years past. Seems that the auto industry isn’t doing as well as it once was who knew. Still there are 5 main halls (I think?) each filled to the brim with every type of doodad and whiz-bang you can think of for your car. Since this is a trade show it is supposed to be Business to Business sales, but I certainly didn’t get that vibe until we walked over to the APEX show. SEMA is full of lights and girls in mini-skirts (or less) and chrome, basically designed to send you into ADD seizures. APEX on the other hand is the grim underbelly. It reminded me of Planes, Trains and Automobiles where Del Griffith (John Candy) is a shower curtain ring salesman. This place was full of Del Griffith’s - guys that make a living on 1% margin. Not pretty. Needless to say we spent maybe 20 minutes there vs. 32+ hours at SEMA.
What else did we do in Vega$ you ask? Craig and I stayed at Harrah's for the first part of the week, not a bad room but small and right on the MONORAIL (which rules -Were you sent here by the devil? No good sir I'm on the level). When the girls came we moved to the MGM Signature which was really nice (gated entrance - BAM!) and well we ate — a lot. So much that my last meal in Vegas was Sunday morning, I didn’t get hungry again until Monday night. After nearly 3 months of emails on where we were going to eat dinner every night during this week (seriously 3 months of discussion), we ended up about 50% for the list. I’m not much on the food channel but apparently Dave White, Clay, Craig and Dan are all big fans. I’d never heard of any of the places they picked but for the most part these guys know how to eat. First time I met and hung out with Dan Fitzgerald from www.diffsonline.com, super cool guy and has a disturbing knowledge of mixed drinks. Our itinerary if anyone would like to retrace our footsteps along with my comments:
Monday – Batista’s Hole in the Wall Italian. Not bad, big selling point is that every meal comes with unlimited wine. It tastes like communion wine, but it gets the job done.
Tuesday – Garden of the Dragon Chinese. We had a meeting here so no choice. In hindsight I would have preferred Diego’s which is where Dan and Dave went (Mexican).
Wednesday – Mesa Grill. I was leery of this since I’m not a big Southwestern fan, but it ended up being my favorite. I had a pumpkin soup that was delicious and a fat NY strip that is probably one of the best I’ve ever had.
Thursday - Craftsteak. Did you know you could spend $250 a plate on a steak dinner? Neither did I. Thankfully we didn’t since Christine had come out by then and it would have been $500 for two. Yikes. The highest quality Kobe beef is on the menu. I decided I’d rock the NY Strip again to do a heads up comparison. It was good, but I give the nod to Mesa by a smidge probably just my personal preference.
Friday – Sushi Samba. The only place I could have done without. First off I’m from the Midwest. Seafood to me is deep fried perch, raw fish is called ‘bait’. Secondly this place was uber-hip. Like eating in a night club. Loud pounding music, very dark, and they were showing an old Godzilla movie on the walls (which was actually the coolest part). None of this was conducive to a ‘cozy’ dinner or any conversation. I rocked the NY strip – AGAIN just to complete the circle, and basically that was the only thing on the menu I would have eaten. Result – 3rd place, but still not bad. **Sidenote, one of the funniest things all week. Clay ordered this super cool cucumber martini cocktail drink. Then gets up to go to the bathroom. It is delivered, and Crystal (Clay's girlfriend) proceeds to chug it dry while he is away. She finishes just as he walks around the corner. He sits down and looks at the empty glass with a huge chunk of cucumber on the side and can't quite figure out what the deal is (he has had several others by now). Before he can figure it out a bus boy walks by and snatches it almost from his hand. You might have had to witness it for the full effect but the look on his face and the timing with which it all happened made it seem like a TV Sitcom in execution. Good times and well played.
Saturday – Wynn Buffet. I’d been asking for this since our 3 month email began. The food snobs derided buffets as if I were suggesting the Golden Corral. We managed to convince Craig and Shelley that it would be ‘okay’ to eat there and I think they were surprised. It isn’t on the same level as a dedicated super fancy restaurant but 1. you’ll make yourself uncomfortably full 2. It is ‘reasonably priced’ 3. The deserts alone are worth going for 4. They always have roasted turkey even in July.
Sunday – Bellagio Champagne Breakfast Buffet. After gorging myself the previous evening (and past week really) we decided what a better way to say goodbye to LV, and yes for the record the champagne is unlimited.
What else did we manage to do beside eat and look at cars? Well on Thursday night baller Clay managed to score an invite to the Gran Turismo Awards. So after eating a light steak dinner we headed over to the Hard Rock Café where they checked to see if we were ‘on the list’. We got the 2nd class citizen wrist bands (no free bar access) and were let through the door. Here 500 of our closest friends stood around and waited for the show. Atlanta Rapper – Ludacris was scheduled to perform, which was awesome since I love Hip Hop rap and Atlanta. It was a weird crowd and I’m not sure that Luda was the best pick, but I guess I couldn’t have come up with anyone better. The first half of the show started awkwardly while a bunch of middle aged white drunk people swayed around and ‘threw their hands in the air’. It got better when Dave Navarro and Tommy Lee came out on stage. Since there were only a few hundred people, I was literally in the 4th or 5th ‘row expending absolutely no effort. Christine playing the role of hip high school teacher and official DTOM photographer weaseled herself next to the stage and submitted the pictures (attached). It was all pretty surreal, Tommy Lee has some issues. He SMILED THE ENTIRE TIME. Not a grin or a smirk, a full on both rows of teeth showing SMILE, and his teeth were supernaturally white. Navarro is roughly 5 feet tall, and they are both heroin skinny. Luda’s watch – if real – had approximately $1 million dollars of diamonds on it, and he was wearing a diamond earring the size of a marble. Atlanta truly is where the players play.
Friday night after our sushi nightclub dinner, Christine wanted to go down to Fremont St. to see the light show. This was described as 15 minutes and awesome, our references included an elderly taxi cab driver and a partially remembered experience while inebriated several years ago from Craig. In hindsight we probably should have done more due diligence. The ‘light show’ is maybe 3 min., 5 at the most, and it isn’t a light show it is a commercial for the casinos downtown set to music and projected on an overhead canopy. After seeing the dude that wet his pants in the john and having a falling over drunk girl accost me on the street I wouldn’t have called the strip ‘high class’. Well that shows what I know. The downtown scene featured a pretty crowded walkway full of people carrying around 70 oz beers in plastic cowboy boots, guitars, and faux ‘yard’ glasses. It also had a variety of gift shops that all sold the same 5 sweat shirts and 10 t-shirts. They weren’t even as inventive as the shop next to our hotel that had the “I (heart) to Fart” shirt we almost bought for Dave. My suggestion is to save the $50 in cab fare that it costs to get downtown and back and spend it gambling.
Saturday night after gorging on dessert and turkey at the Wynn Buffet we went to see Le Reve. Full disclosure here, I’m not a big fan of the French (SHOCKER), ballet, or shirtless dudes in Speedos. If you share those inclinations, I’m going hazard a guess and say that this show and Cirque du Soleil in general probably isn’t for you. My biggest problem was trying to figure out the ‘story’, if there was a story, and if maybe I was too stupid to understand what was going on. It turns out that isn’t what you go to these things for. In terms of some pretty amazing athletic ability this show and its performers have it. The entire thing is done in a large ‘swimming pool’ / stage surrounded by seats. They have these crazy trapeze things come down and pick people up, where they swing around and then dive into the pool while live music plays and synchronized swimming, and people dancing and doing gymnastics. If that sounds like a hot confused mess, well that is pretty much how it registered to me too. The entire time I wondered – what part could I play in this if I had to make a living since they all could do back flips (answer I’d starve), turkey makes me sleepy, wow there is a lot going on, what happens if that dude slips or loses his grip straight to a blow tube wheelchair, how do you practice this stuff, etc.
Like all good things Vegas had to come to an end, and that is where things started to go south. All the anger and vitriol that I dish out eventually comes back to me postage paid. Our flight was delayed two hours, thankfully Shelley is also a baller super traveler and had access to the Delta Crown Room where weary business people sit and pour drinks and peanuts into their bodies in an attempt to forget that they fly all the time to make a buck. Doesn’t sound so bad? Well it served as a constant reminder that she was flying first class, while Craig and I were not only in coach but in middle seats. Moral – NEVER let anyone book your tickets, since they don’t care where you sit. I barely fit in an airplane seat. I certainly don’t fit comfortably in a middle seat and not for four hours. To make matters worse, Craig finds his seat where the dude that was on the aisle WANTS to sit in the middle to be next to his wife. $#&*#$^%.
I have a good friend that used to work in Customer Service for the phone company. This was before cell phones became ubiquitous and everyone had to have a home phone. I used to joke at “customer service” in a virtual monopoly. I’d ask what do you tell people, “Tough sh!t Mr. Customer if you don’t like it we’ll disconnect your phone, and when you get sick of walking to the gas station everyday to make your calls, we’ll charge you $50 to hook it back up.” That sums up the airline industry. I honestly wonder if the govt. could do a worse job at running it. The same thing will happen to them that has happened to wireline phone service – who needs it now? Everyone looks at me like I have two heads when I say this, but remember in the 70’s no one knew what a cell phone was, and Pullman Sleeper cars used to be the height of traveling luxury. The absolute minute that people have a choice, not even a better choice maybe one that isn’t quite as distasteful they will run from airlines and all of those clowns will be hustling shower curtain rings and deservedly so. I’ll sit in my middle seat and wait.
BTW – here is a hot tip for the security people. When a 6 foot blond dude blows something up, I’ll submit to the strip search, until that time stick to the dude’s that look like terrorists. This isn’t racism, its common sense. Honestly I’d roll the dice just to keep my shoes on at this point.
Democross Video Teaser!
Weird Al's Demo Cross Car jump from Scott McMennamy on Vimeo.
Did I mention how cool this thing was?
Crazy Rat Rod
The mythical Racer X Spec E30?
They see me rollin' they hatin'...
Dave White's Girlfriend / Not all booth babes are cute and slim. (but I'm sure she is a nice girl with a great sense of humor.)
Yep, an angel airbrushed on a Lambo. SEMA has everything!
LUDA!! - check out the watch! bling.
