Vegas MLK 2K10 Part II - March Of the Penguins

If you missed Part I, check it out now.

Anyone who has been to Vegas knows that there is the strange phenomenon of female visitors acting - how do I put this - well, acting like they wouldn't act at home.  They take the "What Happens In Vegas Stays In Vegas," tourism motto at face value and unleash their inner wildcats: sucking down plastic yards of pina coladas, getting tattoos, attempting to set new records in terms of public drunkenness and shortness of skirts, and generally whoring it up.  One thing I've noticed over my last few trips, though, is that the demographic of these ladies seems to be changing.  Thirty year old wildcats have been replaced by barely legal wildkittens - and skirts have, almost impossibly, gotten shorter and tighter, and heels higher.  It seems that the only women walking around are 21 year olds out for the first time, teetering on their high heels on polished marble hotel floors while trying to make sure that their skirts are pulled down far enough to cover their ass cheeks.

After lunch on Saturday, I proposed a theory to explain this behavior to my crew.  See, as the bubble burst, most people realized that Vegas isn't something you need to do repeatedly.  Of course, for degenerates like us, the theory doesn't apply - we'll still come to watch football, play poker, and absorb negative EV at the table games -  but for ladies coming to Vegas to let loose, it's a minefield of dangers that simply don't need to be dealt with.  Women who've come to Vegas understand that it has a higher douche concentration than anywhere else on the planet (except perhaps Yankee Stadium), and that there's simply no reason to endure it.  Why get dolled up, whore yourself out to go to the club, be treated like a piece of meat, spend the night with your hand over your drink to avoid being roofied, and then try to make it back to your hotel afterward without getting assaulted by one of a million uber-douches walking around in Ed Hardy shirts and faux-crocodile loafers thinking that you should bed him just because he has a new flaming skull tattoo on his triceps?  In other words, after coming to Vegas, the ladies realize that unless they like acting like and being treated like whores, Vegas sucks for them.  Thus, the population of ladies is increasingly made up of Vegas Virgins - first time visitors making their pilgrimage and acting the part they've read about.  Of course, there are always a few who grow up to be actual professional whores, for which Vegas is the perfect home base.

Dirty Dave remarked, "Man, it's so crazy - it's like they are just learning to walk in those heels," and The Professor astutely responded, "Yeah - they teeter down the hallway toward the club like a pack of wobbly penguins,"  and thus the Vegas Theory of Evolution was born.

Penguin: Noun:  A young lady, barely of legal drinking age, who dresses up for a night out on the town in such a manner that the tightness of her skirt and the height of her heels, combined with her inexperience with such accoutrements results in her waddling/teetering like a penguin as she tries to strut confidently.

Although we chose the term "Penguins" (capitalized) to refer to this breed of coming-of-age-young-females, there are analogies to plenty of other young animal species.  The Penguins just happen to walk like penguins - on display, with people staring at them and smiling at them:

Note the zebras around the 30 second mark of the above video.  If the zebras staring at the penguins don't remind you of Vegas Douches staring at Vegas Penguins, well then, you need to go do some more research.

So, the Penguins make their pilgrimage to the club - teetering out of the cab and down the polished marble hotel floor past a row of douchebags waiting in line behind velvet ropes -  just like real penguins make their  pilgrimage to the frozen tundra to lay their eggs.  Both Penguins and penguins face many dangers.  Penguins must avoid alcohol poisoning, corrupt cabbies, predatory douches, and roofies, while penguins must avoid tainted herring, oil slicks, sea lions, orcas, and deadly cold temperatures.   I actually find the travails of the baby sea turtle to be a great analogy to the potential plight of the Penguin as well - very few will survive, but the few who do will return to the same beach to dominate their territory for many years to come - just like the few Penguins who realize they are naturals for the Vegas Skank lifestyle will return frequently to dominate the club of their choice. 

The Penguins also demonstrate protective traits seen in many animal species - taking care of the one member of the herd who inevitably finds herself too drunk to stagger home - and making sure that none of the weaker members get isolated, picked off from the herd, and taken up to strange hotel rooms by predatory douches.

We all know of young animals who have to learn how to properly kill and eat their prey, like this brown bear:

It wasn't until a day and a half after I saw two young Penguins in the lobby of the Venetian drinking Bud Light cans FROM A STRAW that I realized this was the same animal behavior - the poor things were still learning how to consume their alcohol!  Like the bear batting around a fish, unsure what to do next - awww - look how cute - beer from a can with a straw!  Sadly, they were sitting in a very vulnerable location, and almost certainly didn't survive the night without falling victim to some Kangol-cap-wearing-bedazzled-t-shirt-sporting-doucheball who told them he loved them in an effort to get into their skirts.

Sunday morning we actually saw a species rarer than the Mirage's White Tigers - a bona fide pack of late 30-something ladies eating brunch at the Grand Luxe at Palazzo, complete with two babies at the table!  In the land of Penguins, this was a truly rare sight - you'd have better luck hitting back to back snake eyes at the craps table than seeing a pack of white tigers WITH their cubs!  Clearly, this phenomenon was easily explained by the fact that their husbands had gone to Lagasse's Stadium to watch the Dallas-Minnesota football game - no group of women goes to Vegas for a girls weekend and brings the babies! Thus, my evolutionary theory was still intact, in fact, enhanced.

stay tuned for Part III, where we'll resume the weekend's recap, including real time electronic sports betting at the Venetian, dinner off strip, and a trip down town!

-KD