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What Eldritch, Poofy Horror Is This?

Now this is both fuuny and very disturbing. Who knew the elder gods loved showtunes?

National Poetry Month

Like Hilzoy says it's National Poetry Month. So as to avoid doing any real blogging, here's a poem.

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

    -- Ezra Pound

Welcome

We'll see how this blogging thing goes. Below are some old posts from my Diaryland site.

My Weekend With Lulu

Wednesday was my date with Lulu. We had planned to meet around 2PM, have pizza, see a movie and then see what happens from there. This was the week I was going to attend football camp in Albany, so the side trip to CT fit right in.

I planned to take the noon ferry from Port Jeff to Bridgeport, but I arrived early, just in time to get the 11AM ferry instead, so I rolled up to the pizza place an hour early. I had tried to call her and let her know I was going to be early, but her only phone was a Vonage line and it wasn't working, so I waited around for an hour at the restaurant, taking the opportunity to have a glass of whiskey to take the edge off.

I was pretty nervous. Lulu and I seemed to have this intense connection online and over the phone and my experience tells me that this sort of thing often doesn't carry over into real life and I was trying not to invest too much emotional capital in what was to come and partially succeeding.

So, a little after 2PM, I see her come walking down the street. Now in her personal, Lulu said she was 5'10", 150lbs. Even at first glance it was obvious she had understated her weight by at least 30 or 40 pounds. I was a little cheesed, but she was still cute and I figured I'd eat pizza with her and if things didn't go well I'd just beg off the movie and continue on to Albany.

So we had pizza and she was still smart and funny and quirky and cute and it's not like I've ever had anything against big girls, so I figured I'd do the movie and see how things went after that.

I told her I needed to move my car because I was parked in a 2 hour zone. She suggested I leave the car by her house and we could check the movie times on her PC. Those of you in the advanced classes may already see where this is going.

So we get to her house, she introduces me to her dogs, she checks the movie times, we listen to some tunes and...we never actually get to the movie.

So afterwards, we go out and have chinese and then I continue towards Albany. Over dinner, I invited her to come visit me in Albany and she quickly agreed.

We lingered over our Chinese food and then went back to her house for a little cuddle on the couch. But, the hour grew late and I had to get on the road for Albany before I became too tired for the two hour drive.

Rolling into town at about 11PM, I checked into the hotel and carted my crap up to my room, which was on the fifth floor and about a mile and half from the elevator. After I got squared away, I found a few of my football website friends in the hotel bar. We closed it down and then proceeded next door to another bar where I got really hammered. Back to my room and then ffter a little drunken IRC, I set the alarm for 6:30 AM and fell asleep.

Thursday was a fun day for me, but probably is not of much interest to the Shindig crew. I ate breakfast with my football website buddies, then watched a morning football practice, followed by lunch and then a late afternoon football practice, then dinner, a couple drinks and an early bedtime to recover from the previous day's binge of driving, fucking and drinking.

Friday there was only a morning practice, so I went to lunch on my own -- passing up lunch at Hooters with the gang -- and got caught up on my e-mails. Friday night was a Pizza and beer fest with everyone from the football site. The hotel gave us a room and we ordered about 20 pizzas and bought a metric assload of beer. For those of yu who thought the philly shindig was a big gather, there were over 40 people jammed into that room, drinking beer, eating pizza and watching football tapes.

I got really, really drunk on Beer and Bushmills, ate a lot of pizza and passed out for a little while, only to awaken with a serious Dunkin' Donuts jones. Luckily (or unluckily) DD was right next door, so I stumbled over there, got a dozen box and brought it back to the party room. But that was about all she wrote for me and soon I was sleeping it off in my bed.

Saturday was the joint practices with the New York Jets. You actually had to buy tickets for this, so I got one for Lulu as well as myself, since she was supposed to be there around noon. I went to the morning practice and then back to my room to wait for her. She called me at about 12:15 to tell me that she had gotten a little turned around and taken I-87S instead of I-87N, which was partially the fault of my crappy directions.

At 12:45 I hear a knock at my door and there's a tall redhead with a big smile on the other side. Apparently her father made promise to call when she arrived, he being a little concerned about her meeting a strange man in a hotel room in a different town, so I lend her my cellphone and she makes the call and then...well, I'm sure you can figure out what comes next.

We finished up around three and then make our way to the football field for the afternoon practice. Now Lulu isn't a football fan, in fact she's an anti-football fan, but she made her way through a good part of the practice with a little help from my friend Hope who pointed out to her the players with the best butts. We left a little early so we could get a snack since we missed lunch.

Big spender that I am, I took Lulu to Boston Market for a pre-dinner snack. Actually, my motivation was more speed than cost, since I had skipped lunch to do...something else...and my head was pounding. She only wanted some mashed potatoes while I inhaled an entire chicken dinner.

After the snack, we walked back to the hotel to meet up with some of the other football crazies and take a group photo by the big fountain at SUNY Albany. The plan was to actually get into the fountain and take pictures of us standing on these pedestals peeking up out of the water, but the weather was more fall-like than summery and all but two fo us declined to get into the water. So we took a photo of everyone standing in front of the fountain, with Lulu doing the photographing.

The evening's plan was for the football crazies to have our annual dinner at Bugaboo Creek, a Canadian hunting lodge-themed steakhouse with more dead animals on the wall than the Museum of Natural History. It's always a great time, with much eating, drinking and busting on each other.

Now, I wan't quite sure if was ready to subject Lulu to the full brunt of the football website crowd. The football people are, in their own way, as weird, strange, funny, smart and opinionated at the Shindigger crew. Was Lulu ready to see just what a weirdo I really am? Not ot mention that the football peeps are a pretty conservative bunch and Lulu's politics are probably to the left of our own Snarky Liberal Catherine.

Well, I figured, if Lulu couldn't take it, best to find out sooner rather than later. In the end, my concern was misplaced. Everyone had a great time and the football peeps were friendly and polite to my new friend.

With dinner over, we all headed back to the hotel. My football pal Eeyore had taken a bunch of football pics over the last couple days with his new digicam, so I downloaded them on to my notebook and burned him a CD so he could erase his SD cards and take more pics the next day. Lulu was tired, so I gave her a room key and sent her upstairs while I did a slideshow of the pics on my notebook.

The slideshow was fun, but pretty soon we started to wind down. So I packed up my notebook and headed up to my room. She was already in bed, half-asleep and half-naked. We fooled around some, but it was late and it had been a busy day for both of us, so we drifted off to sleep.

My internal clock woke me at about 6AM and Lulu and I had some hot, just-woke-up, morning sex. One of my personal favorites and something I'd been missing for a long time. We went downstairs after and had breakfast with the football peeps, then Lulu wanted to get going back to CT to check on her doggies. So I walked her downstairs and kissed her goodbye.

I spent the rest of the day in a pleasant haze. I went to go see I Robot with some football peeps, then we lunched at Hooters (bah!) and slid back to the hotel where I burned some more CDs of football pics for various friends and such. I watched some TV and then napped until 2:30 AM, got on the road at about 4, hit the 6:30 ferry and was back on Long Island at about 7:45.

FRIDAY in Las Vegas: Monets and Jaguars

I woke up late...or vary late, depending on what time zone you choose, and shambled downstairs for coffee and breakfast. The line at the coffee shop was daunting so I decided to try that very staple of the Vegas hotel and casino, the all-you-can-eat buffet. For those of you who've never been, a Vegas Casino buffet is a site to behold. All imaginable types of dishes, nmost of it not very good, in industrial sized portions. I've never quite understood why the buffet is such a staple of the Las Vegas Casino. I guess the casinos figure either that you'll load up on food so you won't have to take a food break from the slots or tables for a good long time or if you've lost most of your money, you can still live on one meal a day.

After the buffet, I went back to my room for a shower and a change of clothes. Then it was off to The Bellagio for their Monet exhibit. Walking to the Bellagio, I passed some Vegas landmarks including Bally's, Paris, Ceasars Palace and Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville". Oddly enough, I think the walk once I got inside the Bellagio was longer than the walk to get there. I walked all the way down the Bellagio's "via Bellagio" shopping area and then all the way through the acres of casino floor then past the convention center and the pool to the "art gallery".

The Bellagio exhibit consisted of 21 Monets on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston spanning about 50 years or so of his painting career. It wasn't much of an "art gallery", more like a series of rooms with paintings on the walls and no place to sit and just gaze at the works. Still, the Monets were just spectacular. I'd never seen so many in one place at one time. The cumulative effect was so overwhelming that, when I exited the gallery and walked out to the pool area, I had a brief vision of Las Vegas as one giant Monet. Very cool.

After the brush with greatness, it was back to Harrahs and up to my room where I called The Bride and asked if The Groom's dad had arrived yet. Ah yes, I had been informed the night before that the Groom's dad was, like me, a Star Trek fan and that he's like to go to Star Trek: The Experience with me, if I was going.

So The Bride says her dad has arrived and that in about an hour, after they'd all had something to eat, she'd call me and let me know what they were doing. I settled down to read and about four hours later I realized there likely would be no call. Yes, she is The Bride...but still...

I called my Uncle and asked him what the pan was for the evening. He tells me, we're all meeting up 8:30 PM downstairs in the lobby. We'd have drinks in the bar until 10 and then a van would be sent to pick us up and take us to Jaguars for the bachelor party. Since I was on my own for dinner, I made my way down to The Strip and wandered around for a while until I found a place where I could have a nice steak. I read my book, ate my steak and flirted with the waitresses until it was time to meet up with the bachelor party party.

Down in the lobby at 8:30, things were already getting weird. My cousin, the Groom's brother-in-law to be, had bought our hapless guest of honor a "boobie collector" shirt, a shot glass necklace and a blow-up doll. Not to mention that Groom was already two and a half sheets to the wind and the night hadn't even gotten started yet. Slowly, the rest of the invited guests began to show up as the normal guests of the hotel would wander by and see the Groom's inebriated, boobie shirt-wearing, blow-up doll holding state and react with either amusment or alarm.

When all of us had arrived, we made our way to the hotel bar for a little pre-stripper drinking, Unfortunately, Harrah's doesn't actually have a hotel bar. There's a little club area where you can get drinks, but being Friday night it was all full-up. We all wandered outside to the little bar area they have there so we could at least get some beers and kill time before the stripper van arrived. Let me tell you, you haven't lived until you've hung around a Las Vegas, open air bar with a man wearing a boobie shirt an holding a weirdo-looking blow-up doll. We were like chick magnets.

As the 10 o'clock hour drew near, we all headed for the hotel lobby to meet the stripper van. After about ten minutes of "is that it? is that it?", the van of sin arrives, fifteen of us pile in and off we go to Jaguars.

Let me point out here, dear reader, that I am not a frequent habitue of strip clubs, although I have been known to visit them from time to time when I fall prey to a certain darkness of the soul that is best cured with generous amounts of liquor and boobies.

After a short drive from the Casino, we arrive at Jaguars and spill out of the van like a troupe of horny, circus clowns. The Groom, having been denied hard liquor for more than 90 minutes, is starting to sober up a bit and we just couldn't allow that. As we're escorted to the back of the club by the manager (Maitre D? Stripper Wrangler?) more drinks are arriving for the Groom.

We settle into the back of the club in big, comfy chairs and some of the Jaguar ladies come out to greet us. A pretty little asian girl sits down on my Uncle's lap and I warn her to be careful with him, because he's old. A big, blond, russian lady named "Ilsa" settles down on my lap and after a very short amount of chit-chat, she asks if I'd like a lap dance. I tell her no and she's up like a shot and I don't see her again for the rest of the night. Sad really, but you have to pace yourself. Meanwhile I look over at my little brother and he's up and off with his new ladyfriend to get the first lapdance of the night.

Meanwhile, my uncle starts giving strippers money to take care of our Groom. My Uncle, in case I didn't make it clear, is the Groom's prospective father-in-law. It seems a bit odd, but we're not a family to stand on convention.

A tiny girl with long dark hair and skin the color of coffee splashed with milk and tinged with cinnamon introduces herself as Michelle and asks if she can it on my lap. I readily agree and she sits there, on and off, for more than an hour while I amuse her with jokes and humorous comments on the bachelor party. It is some time before she offers me a lap dance and then she forgets to ask for the money afterwards. I eventually pay her, and get another lap dance later on, but I decline her request to join her in the Champagne Room. Because, like Chris Rock says, there's no sex in the Champagne Room. She reveals to me towards the end of the night that she's half Indian and half Thai.

The night wears on and I'm getting pretty lubricated and low on cash. Uncle is buying me a watery Irish Whiskey from time to time and I'm relaxing some and enjoying the view when a tall, dark-haired girl wearing thick-rimmed glasses and dressed in a Catholic schoolgirl motif wanders by. I point her out to my brother and she stops, turns around and gives me a big smile. She sits on my lap (oowf...big girl) and introduces herself as Tara (a like in car). Tara doesn't have the standard stripper body. She's a little bottom-heavy, not that I mind that at all.

Tara and I get to talking. I told her what I do for a living and she seems interested (no, really!) and that segues into a conversation about how much she likes...science fiction. It turns out Tara is an artist. She lives in Seattle and comes down to Vegas every once in a while to make some money dancing so she can pursue her interests and avoid a mundane. She apparently is a glassblower. She mostly does work for other artists, but she recently had a show of her work, glass-blown koi.

Eventually she asked me if I'd like a dance, so over we went to the couch off by the side of the club. Tara takes off her top and shows me her breasts. I think about how nice they are and about how I'd rather sit and talk with her some more. But I accede to her ministrations and thoroughly enjoy myself. Afterwards, we sit on the couch with her leg lazily thrown over mine and we talk some more. Then, she has to get up and work, so I let her go. I tell her how much I enjoyed her company and how I'd like to see her again. Her expression is hard to read in the darkened club, but she points out that I live in New York and she lives in Seattle, but I'm welcome to come and visit her again tomorrow night at the club.

Then it's time to go and we all pile back in the van, our numbers greatly reduced since the Groom had finally succumbed to multiple watery drinks and was ferryed back to the hotel early by his dad and a couple others in our crew.

We get back to the hotel and I make it up to my room. I take off my clothes and tumble into bed, my head feeling like it's stuffed with cotton. I turn of the light and stare out the window, thinking of Tara; happy to have met such an intersting person but a little melancholy to have met her in a Las Vegas strip club. I lie there wondering if I'll go on my own the next night and see her again. With that thought in my head, I give myself over to sleep.

Thursday - Arrival in Las Vegas

I arrived at Islip MacArthur airport about an hour and a half before my flight. It's a bit of overkill to arrive this early at ISP, since it's a small, regional airport, but it gave me time to have a snack and relax.

I took a 50 seat jet to Cincinatti and then a 757 to Las Vegas. I had a 90 minute layover in Cincinatti, so I was able to find a place to jack in, chack my e-mail and make a quick post or two. The pretty, blond, girl at "Laptop Lane" gave me a great big smile and let me have a Diet COke with lime for free. Sadly I have no plans to be in Cincinatti again any time soon.

I arrived in Vegas at 6PM PST, feeling more than a little jet-lagged, but happy and excited none the less. After the requisite interminable wait to get my bags, I bussed over to Dollar rent-a-car where I let the salesman talk me into a nine dollar a day upgrade for a PT Cruiser. Whereupon I loaded my bags into a sharp, sapphire, Plymouth and ventured forth to find Harrah's Hotel and Casino.

Harrah's, by the way, has a driveway designed by a ferret on LSD. You drive around and around in a cirle, following signs that promise "valet parking" and "check in" while surrounded by roadways that look like they lead only to hells own loading dock. Just as you are about to abandon all hope, hey look, it's a glittery, Vegas hotel traffic circle.

I checked in at the "platinum" VIP check in, thanks to my Uncle the high roller. The nice lady at the check in was sure to advise me, in no uncertain terms, that, should I even breathe on any of the items in the mini-bar, my hotel bill would be charged for those items and my wages would be garnished to pay for it. Upon reaching my room, the first thing I did was to seal up the mini-bar door with industrial strength epoxy, so as to prevent me from giving into temptation.

Then it was a quick change of clothes and back in the Cruiser to go pick up the ChuchMom and the Bride's aunt. ChuchMom was easily located, since I had wisely noted her flight number prior to the trip. ChuchMom, unfortunately, had not noted the Bride's Aunt's flight number, nor the city she was flying in from ("I think the city starts with a C" Thanks mom, big help there), nor the airline she was flying in on. Some tense moments ensued as we attempted to locate the wayward Auntie. Luckily Auntie had ChuchMom's cell phone number and so she was eventually found and all three of us were off to Harrah's (cue again, the story of Satan's driveway) where they both were checked in, of course not before ChuchMom had worn the poor check-in lady to a frazzle by demanding a room in a different part of the hotel and demanding that there must be at least two nights that should be comped (free).

"You know mom, with you there's always a problem"

"You know, you're not too old for me to give you a smack"

But then, the rooms were aquired. ChuchMom's bags were dutifuly lugged to her room, which she still wasn't happy with, and then we all went down to coffee shop for the post-11PM $7.99 steak and eggs special. Yes, there was much joy and eating of steak and eggs and then I toddled off to bed completely exhausted.