From The Ridge: December 2010

Monday we awoke to the sounds of vacuum cleaners and maids doing maidly stuff, we packed, and made our way to the car, out to the desperado for one last spin till the next time, and we made our way home. The drive was long and none too arduous, but it was a melancholy drive. We had enjoyed ourselves immensely, but it wasn’t necessarily because of the Fan Faire. The food had been good, but the MCing had been terrible and we hadn’t really needed to get our tickets at all. We could have just hung out in Vegas for its Vegasness. Now after coming back from that land of pelvic thrusting gyrating hard beat goodness, I was sort of down on the whole Fan Faire experience and was just wanting to go to Vegas for Vegases sake with my bro the next time. But as the months have gone by I realize that I will continue to go to this event year after year not because of the content or the MCing or the clientele. It will be because I want nothing more then to have time with my bro in the land of booze and women.

SOE Fan Faire 2010 Part Seven

The next day was the banquet and costume contest and we had decided to go. The shineys and I, as my bro had not brought his guild shirt, were all in tye-dyes and we decided to head there earlyish. Now this is were I got a tad bit irritated. The drinks they had were overpriced and pathetically small, but the food was not too bad. What was horrible was this guy they had for the MC position. After the fiasco at the Thursday night snack fest I was not at all looking forward to the experience at the banquet. And for what it’s worth I wasn’t disappointed in being disappointed. To lay it down as it were, he had us doing a rap chorus for some late night public access show this guy had where he was interviewing a geek rapper guy or something. It was heinous and all together unnecessary. If I had wandered into this thing on my own that would have been one thing, but to have Sony allow this guy to use it’s Fan Faire for furthering his own ends in a crappy showcase I’ve never heard of is the worst kind of insult that they could give. Sony, I say this to you now, fire that guy and get someone that not only knows the game that their talking about, but can give all of themselves to the Fan Faire participants and not try to get us to do stupid shit for their show. Really guys, after all the money I’ve spent to play a game I should be able to go to a Fan Faire for it and not be bombarded by idiots that play video’s of the rival dumb assed game to mine then have me be a free rap chorus flunky. Come on now Sony, get with the program.
It was nice this year as we had taken enough time so we wouldn’t get into the flow of the evil traffic so we really didn’t go too nuts on the staying awake till the dawn thing, though we did stay up quite late/early on some of the days.
Sunday was a nice quiet day as the shineys had split earlier then we awoke and were on the road and the Fan Faire was at an end. My Bro and I wandered like we had been doing for most of the time and drank as well and we mostly hung out. Though at this point I will stipulate that when you have a woman in a bikini of sorts with spanglies on dancing on a table you have to take a moment to appreciate her and her abilities. So she, and there were a few she’s, did her thing and we, as hetero males, watched and tried not to slip in the puddle of drool. Funny side note to the drooling was when misses shiney got a little perturbed at me for the way my neck would loose it bone structure and I would be unable to avert my gaze from a hottie she would say, slightly vehemently, that I was happily married. And I have to say that this cracked me up because every time she said that I would exclaim with great delight as if woken from a beautiful dream that yes, I did love my wife and yes, I was happily married and yes, my wife understands that I look at the menu but I ALWAYS eat at home. And for some reason Vegas brings out the animal in both men and women, and I thank all the heavenly glory that that is so. I would have it no other way and neither would about ninety percent of the waxing and waning population of that city. So as Sunday ground to a close and we felt the drawing of our respective wives and children my bro did an amazing and fantabulous thing and played the Lord of the Rings casino game. Now if you have never played this thing I highly suggest you do as it is more of a video game then an actual casino game. There are markers, milestones, and you have to log into it whenever you play it. Plus the sound on this thing is insane. But the really cool thing is that wherever you go, possibly in all of Vegas itself, you can log back onto the game with your password and it will keep all of your stats and figures and milestones and such so you can return whenever you choose to continue your adventure in the land of middle earth.

SOE Fan Faire 2010 Part Six

The next day we awoke, opened the drapes and had a smoke first thing. It’s important to remember, when abusing ones lungs to the extent that we did, that if you give them a chance to recuperate your doing it wrong. You want a healthy cough and a serious respect for the casino air that refuses, even with those ginormous fans and air-conditioning systems, to ever truly dissipate the smell of cigarettes and cigars. If fact I’m guessing that if you found a cache of their cleaning equipment the cleaners would be cigarette scented and have that beautiful black coloring to them.
We ended up finding the shineys later on that day as they had the urge to shop till they dropped and could not be denied. So we once again wandered and watched and drooled over the little dancing girls and felt generally male and virile for the day. We hooked up with the shiney’s and hung out with them in their fairly palatial room at Bally’s and watched them treat their caffeine with an almost crack head like rationing. Misses shiney was the funniest as mister shiney had kicked the dew habit for the past few weeks, possibly without realizing the ramifications when he finally did drink it and spun out. She would drink a bit and put it gingerly back in its place in the mini fridge they had going in their room. She had actually nursed a coke since three days before or so and had a slightly shaky countenance when she drank it a sip at a time. We spent a few days with them here and there but for the most part it was all about the bro and I having well, bro time as it were.
When we did hang out with the shiney’s it was mostly wandering about the wonders of Vegas, though we did do the live event with them and a few others as they had upped the group size to nine I think it was. If you go to the guild website the video of me trying to shove about nine marshmallows in my mouth, the most disgusting thing on the planet I might add, and speaking without the vomiting is something not to be missed. If you watch close there is a moment where I am almost done in and I do reflexively gag a time or two. But all in all we did Vegas as Vegas deserves to be done. With a healthy buzz on and smoking till we dropped.
Now what amazed me the most this trip was the lack of Fan Faire stuff we did, which we had agreed upon before we even left (it was to be about the free food and the live event), and how much we saw of Vegas. We walked and rode the shuttles all over that city and I saw stuff I hadn’t seen since I was nine years old. Cleopatra’s barge is now a dance joint, they have big psychedelic mushrooms in the Belagio I think it was, and all manner of other odd and unique Vegassy things around and about. So we mostly spent our days in transit from one place to another, clutching our drinks and praying that the air conditioning wouldn’t crap out.
The pool party was a strange and unusual experience as well. It wasn’t as crazy as the first year we went when it was held at the Rio pool but the drinks they had were tasty. One was called a Jedi mind trick and I had a few of them. Well, maybe more then a few, but I didn’t ever really have a serious buzz going. There was a point were the guy in the froglock costume went swimming, but when he did it was with the consensus that no one had ever seen a frog not able to swim like that before. Now the pool was almost vacant, but there were some serious hotties in string bikini’s and the like, and some larger folks in skimpy outfits, but the vibe of the crowd was semi subdued and not at all as crazy as past years but it was enjoyable. Mostly because we found a couple that had been playing EQ for years and the husband had split off for EQ2 and the wife was still holding onto the dream of EQ1. Now that was all fine and dandy but when we started talking about other things the conversation became much livelier. We started with odd and fringe stuff, mostly covered on Coast to Coast AM, then went to the ghost hunters, then to really odd Japanese anime and film in general. They were really into anime and turned me and the broskie onto other films we hadn’t even heard of. She was from Japan and he was from the US but they had met years ago and had gotten hitched and she had come over here for a taste of the culture shock. They were adorable and were very pleasurable to talk to. We had tried to contact the Shiney’s but they were doing other things and so we left the pool party, well after it ended and the security forces went to work with the standard “you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here” lines and we flowed out into the city again.

SOE Fan Faire 2010 Part Five

So we had finally arrived and in good form we lit up a smoke and searched for the best deal in booze. Now I don’t know about the rest of you but I remember a time in Vegas’s past when the cheap stuff was food, a show, and a room. I would surmise, being as in the ol’ days I was too young to enjoy the more complex and melodic joys of getting shit faced drunk, that in those times as well booze was cheap. But I really have no idea. Now a day’s, the price of everything Vegas seems to be on the rise and the “kid friendly” Vegas idea they had is waning. They still have the “shows” put on on the street and there is still a feeling of Vegasness, but they have begun to feel the need to rip off the common man, and woman I might add, and have ceased to be the land of 99 cent shrimp cocktails and comped rooms. Now you go to the Subway fast food joint and they have absolutely no 5 dollar foot longs. Their all six fifty. This year was the year of frugality, for me at least, as I didn’t have the funds to really go nuts and I was heading to Burning Man in about two weeks. So I had taken a bit of cash, and was actually a little worried about eating let alone drinking a lot. But I ate and drank and was Susan, or Delilah, or even Beatrice, but never Mary. Our usual haunt for booze when we do this cavalcade of geeks in the desert is Quarks bar at the Hilton in their star trek experience area. But as the Hilton decided, last time we went, to rid themselves of the start trek experience, we were hosed when it came to ass kicking drinks. So we wandered around and checked prices, as we were about to start drinking hard and being hard drinkers, and the first place we saw was a small bar off of the elevators at Bally’s. They had an obnoxious drink that was served in a fish bowl of sorts, but they had run out of fish bowls as everyone that got one thought it was so cool they snaked them, so they had started to serve them in pitchers. Two pitchers equaled one drink and it ended up being about ten bucks a piece. So we ended hitting them up a bit until we found another joint that was selling these slurpie type things. One was a Yager bomb, one was with espresso I think and baileys, and one was vodka. It was a rainbow of fruit flavors. The cool thing was that when you got one of these things the options were that you could add a shot, or more then one, to the already alcoholic drink. And when the girl serving said they had cherry flavored Captain Morgan’s I was hooked. We ended up walking around with bong’s with no stem holes in them and booze filling them for most of the time we were there.
So we ended up getting there on Thursday evening, and we headed over to the snack buffet thing they had going for the Fan Faire. I sat looking back out of the place and my bro sat looking at the fool they had hired to replace the other master of ceremonies that had been doing the Fan Faire for the entire time we had been going and I think he had done it before we started going as well. So the first thing this guy does is play, badly and with many bugs I might add, a WOW promo thing he had made up just for us. Now for those of you not in the know, to play a WOW video at a Sony gaming convention is pretty much signing your own death warrant. As I was full, and my bro was done filling his belly, we opted on leaving as soon as possible. Why bother watching this freak if we could be roaming the streets of Vegas with a drink in one hand and a stogie in the other.
We spent the rest of the night checking out different places and mainly just roaming and drinking and smoking then drinking then roaming then smoking then drinking then…well…you get the point I’m sure. We ended up back in the room, foot tired but smiling and giggling, and I once again turned my bro onto something new. He had never seen the wonder that is adult swim before, so we had lucked out as it was adult swim night so we parked the channel on cartooncartoon and giggled our asses off. He got a healthy dose of odd adult cartoonness and we got to sober up, just a bit mind you, for the long weekend ahead of us. I killed the box after he had started to snore and I was droopy in the eyelids. The sun retardant drapes blocked out most of the light from everywhere so the room was grave dark and that’s how I slept, as if in the grave.

SOE Fan Faire 2010 Part Four

As we crested into the desert we put in some Coast to Coast and, as it always happens, that sparked great conversation. We talked and we listened and I watched the land go by outside the passenger window. Now as I am usually the driver it’s nice every once in a while to take a break from it and be a passenger. Which is nice as you seem to see more of the travel then you would concentrating on the road and making sure you can merge into traffic or whatever it is you happen to be doing at that driving time.
We ended up stopping in baker at the Mad Greek as it was tradition. Or at least it was after we stopped there. My broskie had made a sort of proclamation at the beginning of our odyssey that wherever we had gone before, to truly make it a tradition we had had to do whatever it was three times. So the Mad Greek, along with the place were we got the sandwiches were forming a traditional slant to the trip. Plus if you’re headed to Vegas, you need to stop to see that big assed thermometer they have in Baker. Though I think it was off a bit temperature wise. The hybrids temperature gauge was telling the temperature at a higher then baker big assed thermometer temperature that day, which was around the low hundreds and fairly humid. So standing outside the car, sticky and hot, we smoked a bit and giggled at our proximity to the city of sin.
Now one of our “traditions” that became a tradition due to the three times rule is to stop at Buffalo Bill’s and ride the Desperado roller coaster. It’s a fairly bad assed crazy ride that’s slightly short but any more and I think my brain would explode. The rise to the top of the first drop actually is so high that the coaster has a chance to bend back almost on itself as you drop, then it shoots under and through a building. And that’s just the beginning. Now at that point, the point where the coaster begins to pick up speed and drop, is usually the point where the individuals riding this thing begin to either scream or shit their pants, or both. We, on the other hand, begin to laugh like crazed loons out from the asylum. Shrieking with laughter we shoot around the corners and fear for our lives. And then, out of breath and hoping that you don’t have to check your shorts in the boy’s potty, you wobble out of the cars and into air conditioned goodness. Hearts pounding we crossed the gaming area and made our way out onto the casino floor so we could smoke a few smokes. Tradition completed we headed back out to the car and on to Vegas and debauchery.
The other tradition I have to add in here real quick is the one, mine I have to admit, where I play “Viva Las Vegas” by the Dead Kennedys. Something about Jello ripping out that old bluesy tune with the voracity of a badger on crack. Crazed guitar rifts and a drum beat that goes faster then a human should be able to play it. Pure joy and beauty from the land of punk. And in all actuality I think that that is not yet a tradition as I haven’t played it three years running. But to me, it’s in the works.
So we saw the lights and the magic of that place in the desert, that town built primarily for the joys of gambling and booze and little to no clothing, and we played the tune that signals our arrival. We had been debating whether or not to head over to the hotel we were at or to head over to Bally’s as that was where the convention was to be held and we were almost too late, though we made it just in time for the check in. They were going to close it down at eight and I think we made it by about 7:57 or so. Just by the hair on our chinny chin chin’s. So we got our shirts, our bags of swag, and the chance to peruse the other folks attending and get that “I’ve arrived at the geek fest” feeling. I am here to tell you all that yes, it is a Christmassy kind of feeling to be one of “those types” of people that have gamed, still game, and always will game till I am dead. I plan on passing my “Zombies!” game down to my daughter but I think in time my nuclear escalation game will probably go to my son. Both are great games and I highly suggest securing copies for yourself.

SOE Fan Faire 2010 Part Three

So I woke up that day after not much sleep as I was freaky excited, and I ate a bit and then hung out waiting. When I started to get real antsy I called him and he told me I was holding him up. I was still laughing when I hung up the phone. About thirty minutes later and my stuff was loaded in the car, his hybrid, and we were on the road.
We cruised down the coast of California and as we traveled I was enthralled by the water of the pacific. It’s hard to realize the differing colors and hues of blue that are present in the world. From tye-dyes, to lakes, to the sunset as it drifts towards twilight, to the almighty seas of the world we see blues that shade and caress and actually flow out and back and then out again. As we were heading once again to the desert, that place of flaming suns and arid sands, I found my perusal of the sea much more encompassing and awed. There wasn’t necessarily a huge swell that day, but the calmness of it and the fact that she could change whenever she wanted, she could take lives, cities, even whole continents if Plato was to be believed was what seemed to be drawing my eyes to her. She will always be my lover, and to separate from her is to me to experience death of some large essential part of my soul.
The soundtrack to this journey never really seems to differ much. We start off with a little King Crimson. Discipline is the name of that game, at least for a couple times, and then we move on to Coast to Coast. My beautiful wife was very sweet, as she usually is, and got me a stream link membership to the website so I have the ability to download all the Coast to Coast I want and have time to download. My broskie has developed a serious taste for the Ghost to Ghost segments, along with my daughter actually, so I always bring a crapload of that. Pretty much the entire library of them from about 1995 to the present day. Then I decided to add a few more of them of different subjects, but pretty much the same genre. Weird shows about German World War 2 antigravity machines and demons and an odd ranch out in Utah, odd items of auditory goodness to twist our not so fragile minds. But as some of that is a little too intense for the kidlings, we stuck to tunage. Now along with a huge grip of Coast to Coast I had also included another disk that had different music on it that I thought my broskie would enjoy. Some ray lynch, some loop guru, and the original recording of tenacious D’s first album. Of all the things he enjoyed the most, it seemed to be the D. Now for those of you without that album, why don’t you have it yet? And for those of you with that album I can say only one thing to you that would form between us the bond of brotherhood that is our humanity and that is….
COCKAYUSS!!!!
Which of all things became the catch word of the trip. Sometimes with complete exhaustion, but more often then not it would be with a leg kick and great volume accentuating all of the heavy consonants.
So we traveled and we listened to age appropriate music and then we were there. We had traveled down to the bruthah’s dad’s house to deposit the kids with him, which we did. His dad had bought different pastries from a local bakery and we sliced them all up into fours and had a little of each. He had bought milk as well so we got some sugar and pastry fortifications in our bodies before we moved on down the road.

SOE Fan Faire 2010 Part Two

So the laundry list I got was told to me pretty much in this order. A carton of American Spirit lights, coast to coast am shows on CD, and I decided to turn him on to some new tunes. I had been letting him listen to some of the stuff I had and his usual response was that it had a good beat to walk to. When I heard that I immediately played a bit of the ol’ Prodigy for him, to his joy of a decent walking beat. Though running beat might be more to the point. So I decided, he being my bro and all and knowing the music he usually listened to, I burned a CD with such groups as loop guru, orb, joi, all the albums of ray lynch I’ve got, and to finish it all off I also included the tenacious D album I’ve got. He got the smokes, reserved the rooms, and we both got our tickets. Later there was a switch up of the rooms as he decided to get us a room at a different place because included in the room price was the buffet of buffets. Now this was the devils work as you could take a twenty four hour period and hit about seven or eight buffets at the larger casino/hotels in Vegas. Now if you’re going to Vegas and you want some food this would be the deal for you. Now some of them are better then others, and some are down right pitiful, but of them all the Rio is the place that got the number one rating. The buffet has almost every food know to man in it and stretches, if my eyes didn’t deceive me in my starvation addled brain, to the curve of the horizon far into the distance.
But I get ahead of myself.
So for the first few months it was anticipation, my bro’s favorite aspect of any trip so he says, and every time we talked or saw each other we would shriek in almost unintelligible delight “VEGASSSSSS!!!!!” and giggle with our white gloved hands before our mouths like not yet released debutante’s into the world of adults.. Towards the end he was reaching a fever pitch that was both frightening and infectious. So we waited and planned and waited and planned and shrieked and planned and giggled and planned. The week we left my sister from Georgia arrived with her whole clan and we had lots of family time and visits. And then it was the night before and we were ready. The plan was for him to pick me up, as I’m more on the way then he is to Vegas, in the AM and we would drop his kids off in Ventura at his dad’s and then it was freak out time in the desert. I had picked from my vast array of Coast to Coast shows I have saved to the hard drive all of the ghost to ghosts I have to some weird goings on at a ranch in Utah somewhere called the skin walker ranch.

SOE Fan Faire 2010 Part One

The trip had been months in the making. In February my bruthah frum anuthah muthah had let me know that the fan faire was again to be held in the city of sin that is Las Vegas. He was totally geared for the jaunt as he had missed last year due to a bout of colon cancer. He had called us mere weeks before the 2009 fan faire and had let us know and had then canceled his ticket and the room charge. I had been so frightened for him that I had not shown the usual petulance of a jaunt denied as I was worried that we would loose him. He had had to have part of his colon removed and had had a stint put into his heart for the chemotherapy to be able to shoot directly into that precious of organs. They, he and my sister and my niece and nephew had been planning a trip to Hawaii and they had taken my daughter along with them. In retrospect I’m glad, as I’m sure they are, that they decided to make the trip. It was beautiful and not totally undangerous as my daughters scar on her leg can attest to that. But the sea is a fickle mistress and they returned safe, sound, and for my broskie, ready for chemo and cancer ass kicking.
The year progressed and every time I saw him he was so exhausted from the chemo that he was always sleeping or groggy. I felt so bad for him, but glad that the combination of radioactive nastiness and his innate ability to never get sick seemed to be doing the trick. He is one of those people that never seems to get sick and his physique allows for a full lifestyle and an ability to withstand. I mean hell, he’s been my brother in law for years and anyone that can handle that would think that cancer was a walk in the park. So as a family we waited, we watched, occasionally we would be invited over, for Christmas or something, and we would give him the love we had, and the encouragement that he needed and then after a few scant hours together it was back to watching and waiting. Waiting to see which of them would win out in the end. And I’m proud to say that a year later, a year of chemo and stress and worry and heartache, the cancer got the fuck out.
So now we’re here, he’s waiting for the chemo to be done so he can serious drink, and in his head he works out that the Fan Faire would be exactly six months almost to the day that the doctor gave him a thumbs up and an all clear to begin to live again. So the next time I saw my broscotomie he was ready for Vegas, six months in advance.

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SOE Fan Faire 2010 Part Eight