Las Vegas Trip -- May, 2001

(Click on thumbnail images to see full-size photos)

Sometimes, I make stupid faces in photos to be funny or ironic or whatever.
But I really haven't got the slightest idea what is going on in this shot.
Am I doing a gay talk show host bit ... or am I pretending to be feklempt ... or what?

Until Ion sent me this photo, I thought that "white man's overbite" was just a figure
of speech Billy Crystal made up in When Harry Met Sally. But check out Lowe
in this shot. It looks like he's getting so deep into Gowan's Strange Animal
that he's going to puncture the base of his lower lip. If there is a whiter dude than Mark,
I haven't met him. The girl behind him looks like Tania Tretiak.

On Saturday night, we went to Morton's and ate porterhouse steaks. Silo bought the
table some wine and we had a great evening. The only problem with immortalizing
a moment like this is that -- no matter how you compose the shot -- everyone ends
up looking like an asshole stockbroker from out of a Michael Lewis book. Roger
(far right) is the worst offender in this regard, which is ironic since Sgt. Squeaky
didn't so much as glance at an appetizer for fear of having to pay a pro rata share.
When it was time to ante up, he slapped, like, 12 bucks or something on the table.

Ok, this looks like some generic photo of Allistair and Mike wenching it up.
But I think a few words need to be said about this girl because she's a real piece of
work. I forget her name and every detail about her except that she comes from
some bottom-quintile college somewhere in the rust belt. When we came
out of Morton's (see previous photo), she and her friend approached us
and engaged the group in some idiotic chit chat. I swear to god I really genuinely
thought they were hookers. God knows we could have been drunk
conventioneers -- good hooker targets -- because of the way Kip and Mike
carry on. But as the evening wore on, I found out that they were not prostitutes...
at least not in the perfectly literal sense. Their objective -- and I
at least give them credit for being up front about this -- was to go
through a night of partying without paying for a thing. And thanks to the above-
depicted suckers, the pair succeeded -- right down to the Denny's breakfast
a three-legged Allistair bought them the next morning shortly after Roger awoke to
find the giddier of the pair riffling through his posessions looking for loose change.
I am not making this up.

I had trouble coming up with a caption for this one. However, I finally settled on
"Dr. Hans Von Guttmannschtein and his Bauhausian tunnel of gay horrors."

Paris and Ion feel compelled to take this sort of "dude photo" on every trip.

Overlooking the famous Las Vegas Strip, the MGM Grand hotel features 5,034 elegant
guest rooms and magnificent suites, all offering the very finest in amenities and personal
service. There are also several swimming pools. In this shot, you can see me and Naudie
reading works of non-fiction in the hot Las Vegas sun. I am reading The Money and
The Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America, 1947-2000 by Sally
Denton and Roger Morris (Knopf, 479 pp.). Chris is reading An Affair of State: The
Investigation, Impeachment and Trial of President Clinton by Richard A. Posner
(Harvard University Press, 288 pp.).

While partying on Sunday, we ran into the members of Poison after their show at Ceasars Palace (they
were opening for Paula Abdul and the "Straight Up" Dancers). They took us around Vegas
in their limo and showed us where to score blow. We all freebased and Paris barfed
in the limo icemaker. Bret and Bobby both freaked out and started going apeshit all over
Paris' passed-out ass. But C.C. and Rikki were very chill. We threw Paris out of the car in
the parking lot of some 24-hour liquor store and went to go get lap dances. It all gets hazy
after that.

Kippy suggested I caption this "Five guys sucking." But I reject that because it has gay
overtones. I much prefer "Five guys sitting around drinking tropical-themed drinks
arguing about what was Broadway's best all-time glam musical."

Chris, Greg and Jon. But we only assumed this slack-jawed TV-watching posture for a few minutes
as a sort of social experiment to see if we could understand what attracts Mark and Kip to this
lifestyle. Whenever we came into their hotel room, they were lying semi-comatose on the bed drinking
warm American beer and eating fried snacks -- watching TV with their heads at right angles to their prone,
lifeless, bodies. The only conversation to be heard typically consisted of Mark urging Kippy to explain
some plot detail from Relic Hunter -- or why Spade was so pissed at Farley.

*** Final sequence of gorilla-themed photos have been deleted ***