Happy Hour Hero

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. I just haven't had anything to say that was worthy of bumping the Dogs Playing Poker custom artwork from the top spot on my page.

So I'd already heard from Big Show, who was in Vegas for the perfect storm collision of NBA All-Star weekend, Chinese New Year, and Presidents' Day, that the city was an absolute shitshow that weekend. Now, MGM CEO Terry Lanni commented on Mirage missing their quarterly earnings estimates, "The gang-bangers and others who came for purposes other than attending the game, they weren't very good for Las Vegas." Great stuff. He added, "In talking to our casino hosts, a number of people stayed in their villas and suites. They felt uncomfortable."

In other words, the NBA entourages and fans created such a hostile atmosphere that the Asian high rollers were AFRAID to come out and gamble! FANNNNNNNtastic.

Yesterday, we had another similar perfect storm of events: Drinko de Mayo (a retarded holiday made up to give people who have no Mexican connection at all an excuse to drink margaritas at 10am,) the Kentucky Derby, and the Fight of the Year - Mayweather-DeLaHoya. My observations in New York, however, are that no one was afraid to go out and party.

Interestingly, walking through the uber-hot Meatpacking district on my way to dinner and my second consecutive moe. show, it seemed as though the City was strangely subdued - almost as if everyone had crashed and burned earlier - passed out in the wake of early afternoon Patron shots.

I had the opportunity to see moe. live this weekend. Twice. This was an aggressive proposal, considering that I'd never seen the band before, and had only limited exposure to a few live shows of theirs. They were playing a 6 night run to open a brand new venue within walking distance of my apartment - the Highline Ballroom - a 700 capacity general admission area, roughly 1/2 the size of Irving Plaza. My hopes were dimmed somewhat by a failed voyage several weeks earlier to check out Umprey's McGee for the first time. I felt like the crazy old dude at the concert, surrounded by a sea of kids aged mostly 16-23. Rony and I weren't standing there for 3 minutes before some plastered 17 year old asked us to buy him beer. No thanks. Umphrey's percussion-centric jams didn't do it for me, and I kept the faith that moe. would be better.

Friday night's show was awesome - but I had barely recovered sufficiently by Saturday night to properly pollute myself again. In any case, I recommend checking out moe. if they come to an area near you. And yes, the band's name is m-o-e-period, in case you were confused.

Mrs. Dynamite won the "best text message of the year so far" award, with last nights simple message: "Oscar just took a shit on the carpet in the bedroom!!!" I was at dinner when I got this message, and burst out laughing, immediately thinking that Oscar was exercising some defiance and protest over the bath we'd given him earlier that afternoon - but it turned out he was sick and undergoing some serious gastro-distress. He spent the rest of the evening following Mrs. Dynamite around and rolling over submissively onto his back whenever she looked at him - clearly upset at what he'd done. She even took pictures of the pile of crap on the rug - but I'll spare you those for now.

until next time,

KD