Viva Las Vegas

I just felt like fucking up Jamies self-portrait, no, I don't do crack.

We started driving from Oklahoma at about 8 pm at night, Shawn was going to drive only for an hour to Oklahoma City where yours truly was going to take over. Somehow I fell asleep and woke up a few hours later somewhere in New Mexico, after we had already passed through all of Texas. It's just something about riding in a car at night that makes me sleepy. I do remember waking up outside Oklahoma City to a pretty badass thunderstorm, the whole sky just lit up 360 degrees around us when we were in the middle of it all, and it was pouring down rain. Shawn had to drive like 40mph and most of the 18-wheelers on the road were pulled over to the side of the road, it was wild. It took about an hour and a half I would guess to get through the bad storm and make it out. We stopped somewhere along the road at Wal-Mart and ran in to buy a wire for Jamies Playstation Portable so he could play games in the car. We were walking around the electronics department when I said, man, I want to get a portable DVD player so I can watch some movies in the car. I bought my, well, ex I guess you could call it a portable DVD player for her birthday and it seemed pretty cool so I wanted one too. I was just basically talking out loud saying I'd like to have one when Jamie goes "Well, buy one then."

How am I supposed to respond to that? I said "Ok, deal." and the woman working at Wal-Mart started laughing and told Jamie he's hired, that was the fastest sales-pitch speech that worked that she had heard. So incase this doesn't work out, or his underwear-model gig doesn't make it he can always work at Wal-Mart in Oklahoma. I bought the DVD-player, the cheapo version and the movie Boondock Saints. Somehow neither Shawn or Jamie have seen it, and I absolutely love the movie. It's cool as hell, but Shawn seems to refuse to want to watch it out of principle. I'll make him watch it before it's over, no doubt.

The DVD player in action

I took over driving somewhere in New Mexico and drove through Albuquerque and to somewhere in Arizona where we stopped at a place called the Petrified Forest National Park. It was apparently a forest... that was petrified. Cool. It was cool enough that I went into their souvenir store and bought a whole bunch of stuff, as I did at every souvenir store that we ran into! After we got through there Jamie eventually took over, he drove for about an hour and forty-five until we were almost in Nevada and Shawn took over the last bit over the Hoover Dam. The funny part is that I've always wanted to travel cross-country in a car in the United States ever since I was little, I very much remember being eight years old in school making these crayondrawings of a desert, with a road going straight up towards a mountain and cacti on the side of the road and it was very bizarre when I saw that exact scenario for real. It's tough to explain and probably sounds strange for most people but it was like I had finally gotten to do what I wanted to do since I was a kid. I had a ton of fun riding in the car, and seeing some different states. I'm all about travelling anyway.

Petrified Forest


Very tired travelers outside of the Hoover Dam
That also marks the state-line between Arizona and Nevada

I just woke up and I'm still pretty tired so I keep forgetting all the funny anecdotes that happened in the car but I swear I wish we could have a hidden camera in the car or the apartment we live in at any given time, the spin-offs on eachothers jokes and quick wit is sometimes priceless. I spend 75% of my day just laughing my ass off, I love these guys. Now while I reach for my Kleenex after my Oprah's Emotional Moment of the Day (tm) and go back to being the macho manly-man that you all know me as I'll tell you what I've seen of Vegas so far. They introduced me to some of their buddies here in Vegas they've known for a while, some very interesting and compelling characters I'll tell you that much. The stories they had to tell and things like that is very fascinating, Vegas is such a cool town anyway. I have yet to go to a casino, we ate at an AMAZING buffet at the Rio but that's about it. Me and Shawn rode down the Strip early morning too so I could see all the casinos up-close and it was just awesome. The Luxor, New York-New York, Bellagio, Monte Carlo, Mandalay Bay... hell all of them, the architecture is just unreal. If just lazy-boy (Jamie) will get out of the fucking shower already we can go and I'm going to put in my first few hours at the tables. We had to rent a new car today and it was supposed to be $130 a week. Because I'm under 25 and because I have no insurance in my own name they bumped it a measly 400% up to $550 a week instead. That together with the place we're staying at, makes it around a grand a week just for living expenses. I better do good at the tables. We're staying in some extended stay apartment-ish hotel called Siena Suites, and it's quite nice. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen and a livingroom. Wireless internet, gym and a pool is all included, not a bad place at all. It was about $1500 a month but we only got it for a week to start things off.

More updates to come later.