A Friday Night

Pam felt like heading out last night, though it wasn't immediately clear why.  As soon as we left the house she said she wasn't feeling well.  On we went, though, toward a piano bar on the near northeast side of town.  Actually getting there didn't make Pam feel any better.  She didn't like her drink (bartender was too stingy with the white zin) and didn't like our seats (situated directly around the piano).  "I can't talk with the piano player being so close to us," Pam complained.  "What would you like to talk about if only you could?" I asked her.  "The quickest way to go home.  I hate this music," she added further.  And it's true.  As I've often complained, I don't know what compels reasonably competent singers to deluge the audience with nothing but pop covers songs from the past thirty years.  They can do better than that.  Something had to be done.  Sitting next to the piano player as I was, I asked for Cole Porter's "Night and Day."  He and the singer kindly obliged with a very nice Porter medley.  "Billie Holliday's 'Don't Explain,'" I asked for next.  They wouldn't touch it but did offer me "God Bless the Child."  Pammy started to perk up.

"'It's Almost Like Being in Love,'" I wanted after that.  The duo told me they would sing me every top hit of 1947, or almost every hit.  It was a valiant effort at comprehensiveness for sure.  Pammy and I were pleased.

In fact, Pammy was so pleased that she didn't want to go home after we practically closed the bar  down.  "Let's got to The Orleans for some blues!" Pammy insisted.  The blues had already gone to bed by that point.  "Let's find Rico!"  Rico wasn't performing last night.  "Let's take a ride down the strip!"  No, no, no.  "It's Friday night, Pam.  We'll be sitting on the strip for an hour and I'll probably still miss the fountain at The Bellagio.  Let's not.  We said never again after the last time," I reminded her.  This was all to no avail.  We put the top down on the convertible and prepared to cruise down the six mile strip from The Stratosphere to the Luxor.  

We sat, and we sat, and we sat.  Traffic, inexplicably, doesn't move on the strip.  In spite of the crush of the crowd and the heat of the cars, it IS always a good time just loitering on the strip.  I even caught more of The Bellagio's fountain show then I normally do.  Then my view got blocked by a Chippendale's moving advertisement.  For a solid 15 minutes I stared at this:

The ads are basically huge billboards positioned on the back of a truck and driven back and forth along the strip all day.  We got boxed in by some similar adds for prostitutes ("These girls want to get to know you NOW!" the truck informed us), but I was too lazy to get my camera back out of my bag at that point.  There is always something to while on the strip. Just don't get too picky about what you're likely to see, ok?