Cole’S Law Blog

Pursuing an Eiffel Tower

I’m up at 7 a.m. for the third morning in a row. There’s a morning ritual to be maintained and Jammy and I leave the other two in their beds sucking their thumbs. By “their beds” I am really referring to “our beds” as the four of us are sharing two queens. When you’re 24 and jobless sleeping with another man is a risk you have to take. One person sleeps over the sheets and the other sleeps underneath to prevent any awkward breakfasts. This rarely happens. Almost no one goes to breakfast.

The recovery on Saturday morning involves three slices of breakfast pizza, two eggs benedicts, and our daily stop at the sportsbook. Since the games begin at 9, by the time I’m done stuffing my face, it’s time to start a new day of sitting on my ass and doing absolutely nothing. I’ve been doing a lot of sitting lately and I’ve noticed a strange twinge has emerged in my lower back. I shrug it off as the small price of being a lazy bastard and resume watching the Utah v. Arizona game. There’s a group of rowdy Arizona students on spring break sitting next to us.

Arizona’s Chase Budinger throws a successful alley-oop. They’re up by double-digits.

“Yeah!” says one of them.

“Yeah bitch! That’s what I’m talking about! Where you at Utah?! Where you at Utah?!”

“Obviously not in a sportsbook,” I say to Jammy.

Cousin Monkey meets up with us and we resume watching the games. JewJo is in the poker room at the Bellagio. Besides the waitresses scrounging for tips, the sportsbook is a Polish, Italian, and German sausage convention. This isn’t surprising.

March Madness is the ultimate male weekend in Vegas. When I boarded the flight I counted a total of 20 women on a plane of 110 passengers. It’s not that there’s a dearth of women though. In fact there are plenty here in Vegas. Just not in the sportsbook. After realizing that we’ve been sitting in hot dog heaven for ten hours, we amend to a change of venue.

When I was in Copenhagen, they said that walking around the main part of the city for an hour was the equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes. Putting that figure in Vegas terms, I’ve probably smoked the equivalent of four packs in the past two days. I’ve had a cough since Thursday afternoon and my fingers keep reaching for something that isn’t there. Monkey, a habitually trained smoker, has had three cigarettes in the past two days and can’t figure out why he still has a full pack.

The three of us take a timeout from the games and head over to the Bellagio.I pick up another daiquiri on the way to our destination. The container is a yard-long, plastic beaker that holds 96 ounces of liquid courage. (other daiquiri containers include the electric guitar and the Eiffel Tower).[1]

Call Me Israel

By the third day of our trip I’m down about 600 bucks, excluding expenses. As with any unfamiliar city you have to get your ass kicked a few times before you figure it out. In Vegas this takes several trips.

For instance, when someone tells you that they’re staying two hotels down it can easily translate into a ten minute walk. This makes cabs a viable alternative, which if you’re from any urban area on the east coast, you’ve been instinctively programmed to avoid. The cab drivers are awesome here, engaging, talkative, informative, and some of them can get you sweet deals on strip clubs and other shit for no additional charge (I assume).

Our cab driver’s name is Israel. I’m not sure he knows that he is currently transporting four people from his namesake.

“If you guys want here is my card, I can get you good deal on a strip club. Free drinks.” JewJo takes the card. “Good deal, good girls,” he insists.

“I’m not really interested in any honey, but you’re saying that there will be milk?” I ask.

The other three Jews in the car crack up. Despite his name, I’m not sure that Israel’s a regular at the Vegas JCC.

We slowly amble out of the cab and into our tenth casino since Thursday, meeting an old school friend who just moved out here as an engineer. We give Monkey a ride to the airport and somehow end up at a nightclub. Standing outside the velvet rope, we see a guy approach a bouncer and point to his gigantic jewel-encrusted wristwatch.  He doesn’t even have to say anything. The bouncer parts the red rope and the dude walks in with the rest of his crew.

We’re worried that they won’t let us in. JewJo looks and is dressed exactly like a twelve-year old tennis player. Fearing rejection, I take off my jacket and hand it to him, not caring that he’s got a frame three inches and sixty pounds lighter than my own. He puts it on and looks like fucking David Byrne.

After they admit all the hot people for free, they let the normals inside for just $30. All four of us have to pay $30. We look like the Beastie Boys, only gawkier and more Jewish. How’s that for a fucking crew?!

March Madness is not a valid insanity plea

I’ve done spring break, Oktoberfest, and Mardi Gras but what now transpires is indulgence and excess at an unprecedented level. Two weeks later, I can still barely comprehend the whole thing.

We enter a club that could easily double for a great rap video; girls dancing, strobe lights, songs with Autotune, and faint cues that would lead one to suspect the bathrooms aren’t just for applying eyeliner and taking a shit.

Ten minutes at the bar and I have a $9 Bud Light that’s half-finished by the time I find the rest of the group. They don’t acknowledge me and I can’t blame them when I see what they’re looking at: two girls in skintight dresses dancing up on each other while dangling from tension wires. These are not strippers, these are not dancers, these are regular patrons.

That isn’t even the crazy part about the ordeal. What’s absolutely mind-blowing is how everybody else in the club seems to be taking it; that it’s commonplace and completely normal for gorgeous women, who aren’t even being paid, to dance on poles, girders, and makeshift monkey bars for five blissful hours.

We don’t talk for about five minutes and I think JewJo says “Oh my G-d” about a hundred times. In terms of communication with the opposite sex, we all good-naturedly agree that it’s a futile endeavor. Talking to one of these girls would be as much of an otiose exercise as a unic reading the Kama Sutra.

Finally managing to move past guttural fragments and into coherent sentences, we all agree to move to the west coast (or at least I’m in).