Quantifying Vegas

As I settled back into the real world, I knew I would be asked at least a dozen times, "How was Vegas?" That's an absurd question. Answering that kind of question requires a committed conversation, a storytelling session with a captive audience, or something of that ilk. You can't just be like, "Oh it was great, I lost a few hundred bucks but I nearly did coke off a stripper's ashya. See you at lunch!"

Needless to say I needed to come up with my stock answer that provided enough truth without explicity giving anything away. I settled on, "It was everything Vegas should be." And it was; it really was.

Of course, I can't keep it all to myself so I'm gonna throw my version of a recap into the Fegonomics pot. Since exposition is too hard, I'm also going to use a gimmick a la Mahktar.

We're of the empirical sort here at Fegonomics, so I'm going to use my recap to quantify our trip into a tidy number. Each of my memories will be plugged into my patented "Vegas Utility Metric" and will come out as a discrete positive or negative value. This is especially fitting because with Vegas there are few gray areas aside from the legality of available endeavors. Either something is decidedly awesome or it'll leave you some combination of bummed and creeped out. For instance: hot streak on the craps table - good. Getting badgered about club free passes by a worn out, over the hill Roller Girl - yuck. I haven't decided what that number will be used for, but I don't want to be like the major sports leagues and not record blocks and sacks just because it seems irrelevant now.

(note: I completely ripped this off of NY Mag's recaps of gossip girl. And yes, I realize I probably could have gotten away with not disclosing that information and come out looking less fegoscious, but as my 11th grade English teacher, Mr. Perry, would say...such is life.)

Our Digs: +7

The last time I was in Vegas with Mahktar, Dream, Oden, and Butters we stayed at the Las Vegas Club Casino. The moment you walked in you felt the second hand smoke. It was as if the oxygen systems used to pump life into the weariest of gamblers was replaced by a collection of chain-smoking, blue-haired grannies from Del Boca Vista pulled from the Wayne Newton ticket line. The clientele looked like the people in that first Vegas scene in Swingers. If I wasn't still in college, I would have felt old.

Moving to Planet Hollywood on the strip was just the right move for the karma of the trip. Newish casino, young crowd, plenty of ventilation. The right kind of environment that will lead you to look at your watch wondering it's time for dinner and seeing that it's approaching 4am. Instead of being next to the Girls of Glitter Gulch (Zounds!!!) it neighbored Paris and the Bellagio. We stayed in a basic room but it just felt sleeker. We had a plasma screen and some modern furniture. Minor stuff, but the room on a Vegas trip is really just used to set the mood for your day/night's adventures. And, of course, to provide the necessary venue for the token 6-way with a girl you get from one of those pamphlets the fine street salesmen hand out with numbers like 1-900-B-I-G-G-U-R-L on them. Which reminds me...

Street Urchins: -5

Walking down the strip during the day is a gauntlet of workers with questionable legality trying to hand you hooker brochures. We had the inevitable discussion about how much these people could possibly get paid for standing there and successfully handing out their pamphlet to one out of at least every 50 people. Guesses ranged from minimum wage to 1.50 an hour. Our favorite cab driver, previously mentioned by Mahktar, later settled it with the true answer: Nothing. (Unless you receive services from his girl) That's depressing. I informed my compatriots that they had the right to shoot me if my life devolved in such a way that resulted in me holding that occupation. Just a poor existence. I'd feel worse if they didn't all somehow have iPhones.

Blackjack Dealers: +25

I love blackjack dealers. They are one of my top 5 favorite vegas fixtures (Neither Sigfreid nor Roy occupies any of the other 4 spaces). It's hard to be lukewarm on a dealer. Either you love them or you hate them. Surprisingly enough, when I ran my regression analysis of the dealers I loved and hated, the correlation between money won or lost and my opinion of the dealer was not statsitically significant. My valiant, 150 dollar run on the last night of the trip that only left my grave 3 feet deep was made against a Spencer Pratt level twat. Some Eastern European guy who refused to smile and was called a "son of a bitch" by Dream. Then, the guy tried to pick a fight with Dream, attempting to escalate the exchange so that my man would be thrown out. F that noise. Luckily, Dream played it drunk by pretending not to hear the guy and the danger subsided for a moment there.

Just for fun let's run down the list of my top 3 favorite dealers.

3. Adam at Bill's gambling hall.

A Polish man with a never-subsiding smile. He even laughed at our lightweight babaayy outbursts and high-fived us when we got BJ. Bonus points awarded because I remembered him from the trip I made on my 21st birthday. Just the epitome of the good vibes dealer who wants you to win. The only dealer I tipped the whole trip.

2. Shui.

Shui came early on in our trip at another low-rent casino (we got jobs, but we ain't comp candidates yet). We were yapping it up with the guy and pronouncing his name like the reliable middle reliever in Major League 2. Of course, Mahktar is embarassed by us (he wasn't used to our role as casino jackasses yet), which is coupled with his need to defend every Asian guy from Saw. "Guys, it's "Shwee". First of all, who cares? Shooey is cooler and he doesn't seem to mind. Second, we asked him how it was pronounced and it was indeed the fun way. So, we got to laugh at Mahktar's expense while we all made some dough...good times.

1. Sophal.

I'm pretty sure I lost a considerable amount when Sophal was dealing. Feel free to correct me in the comments, but I think she was the starting pitcher in the Great Analyzation of 2009. Regardless, she was/is my Cambodian dream girl. It would take a far more eloquent man to adequately describe our fair Sophal but I'll put it this way. She was a combination of Ms. Swan, Tia Carrere, a bubbly anime character, and Vanessa Marcil (body type). Mahktar was enchanted enough to be drawn to Bill's Gambling Hall simply to wave hello to her (which we both wussed out on like giggling school girls. Not our finest moment.)

Laughing so hard I got a nose bleed, and there wasn't even any coke involved: +50

Not my story to tell.

Dexter: +15

Most notable celebrity sighting not involving the Olsen twins: -3