Farting On a Double-Decker Bus Is Straight Ignorant- Las Vegas- March, 2009...Part 2/2

(Pictured: The craziness that is Fremont Street...on a Wednesday night!)

Wednesday morning, or should I say about lunch time, we arose just in time to make it down to everybody’s favourite restaurant named after a former Miami Dolphin/winner of best actor EVER for his role in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Dan Marino’s. Only the finest cuisine at Hooters Hotel and Casino! After breakfast, we managed to saunter on over to the Luxor Hotel to check out the Titanic exhibit. I was a little sceptical at first about paying $30 each to see some artefacts from the ship (not like I had choice, women rule the world) but it ended up being pretty awesome. In addition to the hundreds of artefacts recovered from the ship, they also had re-creations of various parts of the ship that you walked through, including the third class area (steerage, as Leo called it in the movie), grand stairway, and other areas. The tour also had the largest piece of the Titanic ever removed from the ocean, that I would have to estimate was about the same size as that world’s fattest man I see every night on Discovery Channel in the same stupid one-hour special. Lou and I killed of the rest of the afternoon just browsing and gambling our way through Luxor, Excalibur, and Mandalay Bay. We attempted to go the Shark Reef exhibit at Mandalay, but the line-ups of little kids and people like me who don’t seem to grow up seemed to stretch forever! We finally met up with Mr. Clean and Drunko around dinner time and swiftly made our way over to the bus stop to catch “the Deuce”, which is the bus that takes you to Fremont Street/ the old part of Vegas. The bus was a double-decker packed to the point where it was standing room only on both levels. My brother Drunko saw this as the perfect opportunity to let the dirtiest of dirty farts go. I’m pretty sure everyone around was either dead or near death, and the guy behind me who looked and acted like Soulja Boy was recording the whole thing. Slightly ridiculous, yes I know. Once we disembarked from the now foul smelling bus, we took in all Fremont Street has to offer. In the last few years, there has been a major revitalization of the area, and the entire street is now covered with a canopy that is actually a giant screen, where they play light shows every hour on the hour at night. I know it sounds bizarre, but it is something that you would have to see to believe. Aside from the light show, I bought some of the nastiest food you could ever imagine in the form on deep-fired Oreo’s and deep-fried Twinkie’s from Mermaid’s Casino. Delicious! That night, Mr. Clean also made his best investment of the trip, when he bought a “grow-a-girlfriend”. While, Clean and Drunko went off with Lou for a bit (I later learned they all tried to go the strip club, but cover was too much) I had the opportunity to take in the Poker Hall of Fame at Binion’s. Yes, I do love poker that much, and I am a nerd. After I hooked back up with Mr. C and LouLou, we went and pissed away about $100 playing the “big wheel” at the Four Queens for a couple of hours. We failed to find Drunko (somehow got lost), and eventually the three of us just went back to our hotel for the night, but not before Clean tried to climb a palm tree at the bus stop in front of like 30 people and severely scraped his legs and both of his arms. Ahhh, the power of alcohol and all its wisdom!

The next day, I made my way down to the Sports Book in the morning, in hopes of duplicating my success in betting on college basketball from a year earlier. It was not meant to be, and I ended up going 0 for 4 on my sports bets. Next, I made my way back to Bellagio, this time with enough money to buy into the 15/30 Limit Hold’Em game they were spreading. At one point within being there only a couple of hours, I was up over $700, but promptly took some bad beats and ended up leaving ahead like $8. After my not so profitable gambling experience I headed back to meet up with the Mrs. Drunko wanted to know if we wanted to pre-drink before dinner (this was at 4pm). I told him that he might need to find some new hobbies and that Lou and I were heading out for dinner at Planet Hollywood. On that note, we caught the bus over to Caesar’s for a romantic $100 dinner at Planet Hollywood, which was beautifully accented by the movie props and cardboard cut-outs of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. That night, Mr. Clean and Drunko went to the hypnosis show that Lou and I had already seen. Later on, we all met up with the intention of going to Dixie’s Dam Bar, which was the new bar they had opened up inside of Hooters. The only trick was that my brother and Mr. Clean had to go ahead of us, as Jr. was using my ID, and I thought it might be a little suspicious if two Brent Moreau’s show up at the exact same time. So after giving our two padres a head start, Leeanna and I made our way down, only to discover that the place was dead. We could see in through the frosted glass, and decided against paying the $10 cover to join Mr. Clean and Drunko at SausageFest ’09. Unfortunately, we could not get a hold of the other two, so we just ventured out on our own to Diablo’s Cantina for some brews. While we were out on the strip, we happened to see the same homeless guy we had seen the night before on the other side of the city. He was easily recognisable due to his scruffy attire but near-new Nike sneakers. For some bizarre reason I just found this to be the greatest thing ever! Our next and last stop before heading back to the hotel was at the 24-hour Subway to indulge in my new favourite snack, a Spicy Italian sub. Make sure you get it with Italian bread, white cheese, onions, parmesan cheese, and chipotle sauce. It’s to die for, and I recommend at least one day as a part of a balanced diet. All this eating clearly tired out the ole GF, but I was born to live so I decided to stay up until after 4am playing blackjack in the casino.

Friday was home time and was pretty uneventful. We went for one last breakfast at Mr. Marino’s where we met up with Mr. Clean who had just returned from the Gun Store. I played a little bit more blackjack, and then it was off to the airport to catch our flight home.....and play some slots! You gotta love how McCarron Airport has slot machines all over it. Only in Vegas baby! Anyways, we got back to Buffalo after midnight, and rolled into the booming suburb of Bradford at around 4am Saturday morning.

On that note, another journey successfully completed. So long, amigos and would someone tell summer to hurry up and get here!

Don't Get Hypnotized, Or You'll Look Like An Ass - Las Vegas - March, 2009...Part 1/2

(Pictured: Me and the other two dudes, living large with our gold medals and clown noses.)

So, it’s been a while since my last travels, as I’ve been in trade school, and it will probably be a while until I get to travel again, as I am so broke it’s ridonculous! On that note, I decided to take another pilgrimage to my Mecca, Las Vegas! This time though (unlike the last couple times I went)it was more about good times and less about gambling my life away, as I would be joined my girlfriend Lou, my friend Mr. Clean, and my constantly drunk/why aren’t you guys getting drunk brother, Drunko.

Originally, Lou and I were scheduled to travel on stand-by out of Toronto on March 22, but due to the fact that all of the flights were full, we took the plunge and paid full price to fly out of Buffalo. On that note, I arose Sunday morning with a dastardly hangover (my birthday/a country bar/lots of shots/Garth Brooks/Russian cab driver) but was a man on a mission to get on that plane. We made it down to America’s armpit, errr Buffalo a bit early, so we grabbed some grub at the Anchor Bar (albeit not the original one, the one in the airport). For those of you who are not grease-connoisseurs like myself, they are the inventors of the buffalo chicken wings which kind of makes them a big deal. Due to sandstorms in the deserts surrounding Las Vegas, our flight was delayed for a couple hours. I found this to be the perfect opportunity to catch up on all my celebrity gossip thanks to the fine people at Star magazine. That Jennifer Aniston, what a bitch! Fast forward a few hours, and we arrived in Las Vegas about 9pm and cabbed it over to the classiest hotel of classy hotels, The Hooters Hotel and Casino. Believe me, for under $40 a night it was well worth it! Later that night we tried to get into the restaurant in our hotel, Dan Marino’s (yes, that Dan Marino), for some 25 cent chicken wings between the hours of 12am and 6am but the line-up was too long. So we did the next best thing and went to the 24 hour Wendy’s, bought some booze from the souvenir shop, and called it a night!

Monday morning, we had to move rooms as we had booked Sunday night on a different reservation than the rest of our nights. I`m sure that this probably did not make the wife happy, as she now had to go from having her own queen bed to sharing a bed with hairy legs (could be worse, could be excessive Sasquatch back hair). After that, we headed over to the legendary/very old/ghetto Tropicana for their Island Buffet. We spent most of the afternoon wandering the strip, and stopped in at the Planet Hollywood Casino (used to be Aladdin, got renamed/bought out, just like Hooters did with the San Remo) for some blackjack lessons for Miss LouLou from yours truly. After we made it back to Hooters, I played a little bit of 1-2 No-Limit Poker, which is the only poker game they spread there other than their daily tournaments. To call it a poker room would be a vast over statement. They have two tables tucked away in the corner. I lost a bit of coin but nothing to write home about. That night we had bought tickets to go and check out the show Dirty Hypnosis: Unleashed at Krave/Planet Hollywood. It was what it sounds like, a dirty hypnosis show. Lou was one of the unfortunate people who volunteered to get hypnotized for over an hour, and believe me it worked. Without getting too graphic, let’s just say some of the HILARIOUS stuff the guy had her do included smoking invisible weed, thinking her breasts were growing about 6 feet off her body, making her think she had a male appendage, and my personal favourite, where he gave everyone on stage a balloon and told them it was a sex toy and to describe it (let’s just say the words “fourteen” and “inches” came into her description. I’ll leave it at that. Awesome show though and highly recommend it. Fuck the Blue Man Group and Elton John. After the madame kind of snapped back into it, we went back to our hotel and met up with Mr. Clean who had just gotten in on his flight from Toronto that night. We did a little in room drinking, went and played some blackjack, and then decided to try Dan Marino’s again for the wings. We did get in for the wings, but let’s just say I’m pretty sure they were the reject wings that Hooters scraps during the day. Terrible.

That morning a mere 4 hours after I went to bed, I hear a loud knocking on my door at 7am, and low and behold it’s Captain Clean, all rip-roaring ready to go for the day. I told him to fuck off and not to bother me until after lunch. I ended up getting up a couple hours later, and went over to the Bellagio on my own to hopefully play some 15/30 Limit Poker. Unfortunately, my bank card was acting like a dick-head, and would not work, so I was forced again to play some 1-2 No-Limit. I took a small win, but again, nothing crazy. I promptly made it back to Hooters a bit after lunch time, and low and behold my brother Drunko had showed up from Toronto, just waiting for me to give him my extra ID (he’s 19, I’m 25. I can grow facial hair, he can’t). All four of us decided to head over to New York New York, and ride the roller coaster. We bought a family pass for $56. Yes, that’s right, for four of us to ride a roller coaster once it cost about $70 Canadian! When in Vegas. We followed that up with a solid session in the children’s arcade where we won cheesy gold medals and clown noses for all (Thanks Clean)! At 6:30pm we had tickets to see the live show “The Mentalist”. It was pretty cool, and was basically a mind reading-magic-illusion show. I can’t figure out how they do that shit for the life of me, but then again I guess that’s supposed to be the point. For more info, just google “Mentalist” or “Gerry McCambridge”. The guy had his own CBS special and stuff like that. Next up on my agenda for the young night was to play in the Hooters nightly poker tournament. Long story short, there ended up only being 9 players and it was winner take all. I made it to the final two with the chip lead (about 60% to 40%) and we decided to split the money as I was absolutely shittered (see: drunk on free beers) at this point. I took $300 the other dude took $200 and I promptly went over to the Hooters restaurant to meet up with Mr. Clean and Lou and drank some more. I’m sloppy, I know.

Life and Times of A Degenerate - Las Vegas - March, 2008...Part 2/2 - Look Mom, It's Nelly Amongst the Degenerates!

(Originally published March 31, 2008)
(Pictured: The Bellagio, aka my home-away from home while in the classless heart of America, Lost Wages [or as some call it Las Vegas])

The morning of March 27, I woke up bright and early (by my standards at least) and made my way over to the MGM Grand to play their 11:00am $65 craps tournament, errr poker tournament. These tourneys are a joke, as they have next to no play and the skill level is borderline non-existent. Anyways, I managed to go pretty deep, finishing 11th/84 people, but as Momma once told me “that don’t pay the bills fool”! I hung around for a bit, playing a little $1-2 NL Hold’em, again nothing really brewing and I took a small loss of about $20. I decided to make my way over to the sports book to place some coin on that night’s NCAA Sweet 16 games. I bet $100 on a 4 game parlay. I bet on Western Kentucky (+12), Xavier (+1), and also Louisville and North Carolina to win outright. I watched the early games and won both of them, but then we HAD to go and watch Carrot Top. Anybody who knows Carrot Top knows that this guy is the master of prop comedy, and rather bizarrely he’s quite muscular. Makes for a weird combination to say the least! Either way, the red-mopped comedian put on a good show, although I’m not too sure it was worth the $60, but then again nothing in Vegas is worth what you pay for it. When we emerged from Carrot Top, I booked it straight to the Sports Book to find out the results of the late games. Turns out, I hit all 4 games and my bet paid out a nice $698. That means one thing, keep on gambling! I wasted away the rest of the night in the Luxor Poker Room, and won $105 playing $1-2 NL Hold’em, but promptly lost it as I blanked in a $65 and $55 tournaments. Can only mean one thing....time to go back to Bellagio tomorrow!

Friday was to be our last full day in Vegas, so I had to take full advantage as far as getting my money into action! I slept in late, and made my way over to Bellagio around noon and sat down at the $15-30 Limit Hold’em. I caught some hot cards early, and was up over $1000 at one point in under 2 hours at the tables. Eventually, Jon came to get me around 3:30 to go out for breakfast/lunch/dinner and I cashed out ahead about $740 for the afternoon. As we were leaving Bellagio, Slim noticed that none other than Nelly was sitting in at a poker table like 2 away from mine. While he was wearing a ridiculous hat, he was sadly not sporting a band-aid, although it may have been in his 6’10”, 600 lb. bodyguard’s pocket! That afternoon, Slim reported that he had also seen Criss Angel walking through the poker room at the Luxor. Then he disappeared. Goulet. So Super Slim and I made our way over to Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville for some food, and well margaritas! We both slightly over-indulged from a food standpoint and had trouble getting back to the hotel as we both felt violently ill! We managed to make it back, albeit barely and I put another $100 on a 2 game parlay, where I bet on Kansas (-12.5) and Memphis (-5) before retreating to my bed to recover for a couple of hours. Both games hit again for me and it paid out $360. So in true Brent Moreau fashion, I took the dough over to Bellagio and lost $540 playing $15-30 Limit Hold’em in less than 2 hours. Should’ve stayed in damn it! After, I went back to Luxor and played some drunk $1-2 NL Hold’Em with my homeboy and dumped off $250 playing really bad poker until the wee hours of the morning.

Saturday was pretty uneventful, involved me flying home and contemplating my life. God, I’m such a deep person. Cough, cough. Anyways, for the whole trip I booked a ridiculously small all-around gambling profit of around a couple hundred dollars (thanks NCAA, boo poker). Guess I can’t quit my day job just yet!

Stay easy peoples, and keep on truckin`!

Life and Times of A Degenerate - Las Vegas - March, 2008...Part 1/2 - Hey hooker give me a room key!

(Originally published March 31, 2008)
(Pictured: Damn it feels good to be a gangster. How tough do I look holding that Uzi? Bitches beware!)

So....It's been a while since my last trip report, as I've been living the dream and working construction outdoors in balmy southern Ontario all winter. God I love the weather here. Anyways, Slim and I decided to head on out to Vegas for 5 nights to do some gambling, drinking, and more gambling. This is my 3rd trip to the great state of Nevada but it would be Super Slim’s virgin voyage.

So Monday morning rolled around, and I was up bright and early to catch my flight to Vegas. Slim would be travelling separate and not arriving until late at night as I was travelling Air Canada and he with West Jet. Anyways, I made it into Vegas by about 10:30am local time (after another flight with a non-functioning TV) and dropped my bags off at the Luxor (big pyramid hotel for you CSI people!). By 12:00pm I had made my way over to the beautiful confines of the Venetian poker room. I promptly lost $200 playing $1-2 NL Hold’em and $4-8 Pot-Limit Omaha (lots of poker talk in this story. For those not interested in poker/gambling, when you start to see numbers, skip ahead!). Not the greatest start to the trip, so I decided to try my luck over at the Mirage. Turns out the Mirage tigers were not there (renovations) and neither was any decent action in the poker room. This left me to turn to the comfy confines of the Bellagio, my favourite! Bellagio has always been my favourite place to play in Vegas for a couple of reasons: 1) higher stakes action 2) great poker room 3) possible celebrity sightings 4) It’s Bellagio come on! Anyways I saddled into an $8-16 Limit Hold’em table and proceeded to make $600 over the next 12 hours playing drunk poker (common theme throughout my trip, the drunk part, not the making money part!). By 2:30am when the game finally broke, it was me and 9 Asian guys at the table. Who says Asians aren’t degenerate gamblers? Not this guy! So I stumbled back to the hotel and was supposed to meet Slim at midnight, but was 3 hours late. When I couldn’t find him, I asked this skinny white dude who was with this big black hooker if they could swipe their room card into the elevator for me to get up to my room. They told me to politely fuck off. Eventually I found my Ukrainian counterpart and promptly crashed. Happy times in Sin City!

Tuesday morning I woke up and discovered that I had fallen asleep in a shallow (albeit very shallow) pool of $100 bills. I had always dreamed of doing this since Uncle Scrooge had that swimming pool full of money on Duck Tales. Slim Jim and I made our way over to the MGM Grand for a $65 tourney at 11:00am and were both promptly eliminated. On the positive side, we had fired up the beer train during the tourney! I spent the next few hours playing $2-5 NL Hold’em at MGM but couldn’t get anything going other than beers down my throat. I ended up down $75 for the session, which was a big disappointment considering there was this old, rich dude at my table who dumped off over $3000 to the other players. All I can say, is at least he had a hot, younger wife! God Bless America and all it stands for! That afternoon I put $100 on a parlay bet for the Maple Leafs to beat the Boston Bruins and for the total goals to be over 5.5. Slim and I made our way over to the ESPN Zone restaurant to watch the Leafs game, but turned out they were showing every NBA and NHL game except for that one. We stayed anyways for some pints and grub and found out the final score was 6-2 for Boston, and the Leafs were eliminated from the playoffs. My day of hard boozing and gambling made me tired and I KO’ed by like 8pm. Shit’s weak.

Wednesday started very early for me, as I woke up at midnight from my nap. Slim was fast asleep so I left his sorry ass and cabbed it down to the Bellagio for some late night/early morning action. I sat down in a $15-30 Limit Hold’em Game. I took some pretty sick beats, including a guy flopping a straight flush on me, while I turned an Ace high flush, which equalled a nice payoff for the other dude. I ended the session a $407 loser, but on a more positive note, I did get a chance to see Men ‘the Master’ Nguyen playing that night. For those of you who are ill informed, he is one of the greatest poker players of all-time and has won more ‘Player of the Year’ awards than anybody. Period. After my not so stellar session I stumbled my ass back to the Luxor and crashed by about 6:00am before re-awakening at about 11:00am. That afternoon, Slim and I went to check out this place called ‘The Gun Shop’ where they let you fire guns. It’s pretty weird. You go in and basically just pick a gun off the wall (everything from pistols to rifles to machine guns, etc) and then you get your ammo and pick out a target (we both took the picture of Osama, seemed to be the overwhelming favourite amongst the gun-loving masses there). I chose to fire an Uzi, while Slim chose the M16. I definitely felt like more of a man after the experience. Kids, if you want to make a lot of money, open a gun shop in Nevada, place was crazy busy. That afternoon, I played some $1-2 NL Hold’em at the Luxor and dumped off $200 playing really-bad-drunk poker. That evening, Slim and I decided to check out the Comedy show at the Tropicana, which was a good deal, as it featured 3 comedians for $20 and a free drink. It wasn’t quite as good a deal though as the $7 steaks and $2.50 beers we had beforehand at Excalibur. Mmm Mmm good! Anyways the comedy show was funny (not influenced by alcohol at all by this point) and the beer was cold. After the show, I decided I needed to buy a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts and consume as many as I could on the spot. Six donuts later, and let’s just say our toilet didn’t like me too much the next morning. Is the box half-empty or half-full?! I don’t know, but you have a better chance of guessing how the porcelain was! Haha!