Welcome back, Mama Tiger!
All right! Who’s ready for the next installment?
On Tuesday my aunt told me she was determined to have me see a show, even if the relatives were not interested, them being prudes and all. They had been all snooty before when told the show was topless. (I think they were regretting their haste, though.) She said at worst I could go with my sister or BIL and at least enjoy it.
We went down to buy the tickets. Now the way this works, is, if you buy the tickets at 4 Queens they have a tickets booth, and you get the tickets half off. So a $70 ticket to Splash! was cut in half to $35. But the drawback - a minor one - was that you had to go to the box office way early - like hours before the show - and confirm your seats, if you wanted them all together. Then you could go back 15 minutes before the show and take your seats.
We bought three tickets to start with, me, and either my sis and BIl or my aunt and someone. We went back to tell them, and my aunt did something that still impressed me. She turned to the two Indian people, and she said it like this:
“Look. My niece is going to see this show. It’s a topless show. Around here no one really looks at the topless part, though, everyone looks at the art, the dancing, the show. It also costs $35 per person. That’s a lot of money. Now in this country my niece and her BIL could go see it together. And if an unrelated young man and woman can go see it you know it’s no big deal. Now - do you want to go or not? Answer me simply, because I don’t want to buy such expensive tickets and then have you not watch because you’re embarrassed or think ‘We don’t do this stuff in India’.”
I about jumped up and cheered. And you could tell that they had just been hoping to be asked, too, and said YES!
Well, the next thing was getting everybody out of the casino and over to the Riviera Box office so we could get our tickets confirmed. This took some doing, considering the speed of my family (think concussed turtle) but we got there eventually.
By now it was early afternoon already. We went to the Tropicana, where everyone got a free slot pull. Now it was funny, everybody won something at this slot pull, even if it was only a free deck of cards. I went up there, and as I went, I was thinking, “Hmm, I wonder if he will ask for our ID.” He didn’t ask for theirs, but when I got up there he asked for mine!
Anyway, I pulled the slot, and I won - a free ticket to Foiles Bergere. Ugh! We were scheduled to leave Vegas the next day, and that night was Splash!, we were not going to have time to see it. Just my luck. I gave the ticket to my aunts, oh well. They were planning to come back on the 4th of July anyway.
We then continued on into the Tropicana and spent some time there gambling and collected our decks of cards.
After this we continued on to Circus Circus. We watched three shows there.
The first was a balancing act. A man took a section of steel pipe and laid it sideways, so it rolled, then put a flat piece of metal on top of it, and then climbed on to the flat piece and did all kinds of stunts.
The second was a man who juggled beautiful copper-colored hats, shaped like a witch’s hat.
The third was by far my favorite, so I’ll get back to him in a moment.
The forth was a stunningly gorgeous young lady who did some acrobatics using two poles that she stood up on with her hands.
Back to the third. Out comes this truly sexy and gorgeous guy, cut and built, in a sort of gladiator’s underwear thing and Grecian sandals. (Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?) And a lovely smile. Anyway, he brought with him 75 pound steel balls (snerk) which he then proceeded to lift up and toss in the air and juggle like 'twere nothing. He rolled them over and over his shoulders, and around his arms. We just stared.
He then put on a steel helmet, just a few bands, with no padding. He proceeded to lift up a barbell of who knows how much weight but obviously a lot, as he had a hard time lifting it. He put it in a little holder on the helmet, and proceeded to spin the thing around! Amazing.
The coolest thing about all of these guys is they would finish their act, and then stop and give you the most radiant smile. I mean, if the act didn’t set you to clapping the smile would. They all looked really happy to be doing it. And all these shows were free, too.
After this we all went around Circus Circus but got stuck playing Skee-Ball for a quarter. I mean, we were emptying all of our pockets for change. I was the first one to hit 270 points, on my second game, and won a cute little stuffed frog. A little later Aaron won one also. We then stopped to have dinner at McDonald’s, upon which the stupid F.o.B.'s* peeled apart the bread-and-cheese sandwich we had ordered for them to make sure we weren’t tricking them.
*Fresh-off-the-Boats. I rarely use this term but if there ever were F.o.B.s these were them.
The last thing we did that night was see Splash! And I couldn’t begin to describe this to you. Suffice it to say I’ve only seen one show equal to this in my life and that was when I saw Blue Man Group. I think the best part were the two drummers that came on to entertain us between acts. And it was indeed topless, but as my aunt said, it was decorative and not lewd and everything was absolutely beautiful. You had a hard time tearing your eyes off the stage.
Incidentally, you live right up the road a bit from me, I believe. We need a mini-MMP-fest, ya think? Or lunch or sumpin’…