Vegas, Baby

Last weekend marked my first visit to The Entertainment Capital of the World, Sin City itself: Las Vegas. For years I’d rejected the idea. For one, I am not much of a gambler. It’s hard for someone so calculated and logical to get excited about gambling. Besides that, I just envisioned this over-hyped, long-lined, unfulfilled fantasy where people think they’re going to have the time of their lives but end up waiting in line at a club for an hour because they don’t have women with them. I shuttered at the idea that slipping people 20s made you important. The politics and bullshit appealed to me as much as the club scene does in Chicago. It doesn’t. So for 5 legal years of drinking, I was never enticed to visit the most famous party destination in the country.

I’d love to say that after this weekend, my views and opinions and judgments have completely changed and I’ve embraced the bright lights of the strip for what they’re worth. Truth is, I was pretty spot on in my assessment, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have the best weekend of my life, because I’m pretty sure I did. Here’s why:

Six guys met a plane ride away on a Friday night in March to celebrate the lucky friend’s end of bachelorhood. From the moment we got on the train in Chicago, it was already positioned to be one of the greatest weekends in memory. It just so happens that we chose a place that catered to and facilitates that mindset. Our nights and days and everything in between were filled with the classic and sensational shenanigans and camaraderie that you would expect. From sunrise to sundown and through to the next sunrise, we glimpsed the life of those we’ve all aspired to be. For a weekend, I felt like I was brushing shoulders with, stepping in footsteps with, and chasing the ghosts of the biggest and the brightest, the most untouchable, unreachable, unattainable, the magazine pages and the behind the scenes. It was a vacation on steroids, a weekend injected with more adrenaline than a city of tweakers. It was less sleep in an entire weekend than I get in a normal night. It was more fun in an entire weekend than I get in a normal month. Forgive me for vagaries, but you know what they say.

So how does all of that reaffirm my preconceived notions? Because it was exactly how I described. I’m not much of a gambler, and I proved why. I lost a tiny chunk of change at a video poker game the first night. The next day, I doubled my cash-on-hand in 10 minutes, reversing my luck to be ‘up’ for the weekend. I had planned on gambling with my earnings and putting the rest on bets for the Bulls and the Bears to win it all. Well, another 30 minutes at the blackjack table and that wish was sailing faster than Dread Pirate Robert’s ship. That turned me off to the scene, and I cut my losses before I let it affect my mood. So like I said, gambling isn’t my thing.

The rest of it, the politics? It’s all there. We didn’t make it into a club the first night because we were 6 guys and no girls. We reserved a table at a club and had to meet the minimal just to sit there, which, if you scan the price tags at a liquor store, there’s a slight up-charge to get the same bottle at a table in a club in Vegas on a Saturday night. I’ll spare the details. And we still had to wait in a short line. Luckily, we didn’t pick a peak weekend for crowds, so the pools and the streets weren’t just overrun with ridiculousness.

But I guess the reason why I was so easily able to overlook so many details that would have killed me in Chicago is, well, it’s Vegas. Vegas is much less a location and much more a mindset. It’s why the phrase ‘Vegas, baby’ caught on. For those who know, just hearing that can flip a mood in a flash. Where we were wasn’t so overly impressive that it’s impossible to have a bad time. Yes, the casinos are crazy impressive and beautiful and yes, the people watching is a full-time event and yes, at some point, it seems like Vegas has everything, but everything comes at a cost. A serious cost. So you balance. You balance the expenses with the rest because at some point, it’s a battle you can’t win. So you give in and try to soak it up for everything it has. If I spent every transaction pondering how it will look on my bank account when I got back, I would have missed the point. Can I do a Vegas weekend every month? Absolutely not, I’d be broke by fall.

But when the time is right, when the event is right, when the reason is right, when the people are right, there isn’t a better playground for adults. Every memory I have (all of them), every person I met, every story I’ll not tell, every place we visited, street we walked on, picture we took, vehicle we were driven in, vehicle we drove in, drink we cheersed, song we danced to, every hand that was dealt, roulette ball spun, ace flipped over, every moment that we were awake made it the most memorable weekend in my life. I can’t think of one thing I would have done differently, one regret, one mistake. We knocked Vegas over and took it for everything we could. We squeezed more into 64 hours than seems humanly possible, and we’re all still alive, with our pride, dignity, and organs. We accomplished everything we sought out to, and will have a catalog of memories and stories to share for a lifetime to come. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but that jaded, cynical viewpoint I had a week ago? Long gone. Now it’s just looking for the next reason I’ll have in my life to get there. Vegas, baby.

Heeee's Baaaaack

There's a song by Little Big Town called 'I'm With the Band.' Why is that such a cool concept? Well it doesn't take much to figure that part out, considering most of us dreamed of one day being a music superstar but the reality is the closest most could ever possibly get is to be a roadie or a tour manager or a water bottle fetcher, so even while the position is relatively low on the totem pole, doesn't matter because, sing it with me, 'I'm with the band.' But besides clasping onto the fragments of diluted childhood dreams, there has to be something else about that feeling of being back stage during a show, or wearing the big yellow lanyard with the gigantic plastic VIP pass, or carrying some equipment in through the back door, that makes us vibrate with a combination of elitism, overall excitement, and the idea that everybody wants to be me; see also: envy. It feels great to be envied. Even the most humble and masochistic human will feel a sense of we'll say accomplishment or pride when they find out they're being envied. 

But it's not just being with the band, it's any time, as Dobie Gray sang, 'I'm in with the in crowd' (also, that song was made in 1965, proving that this is no recent phenomenon). Any time you are part of the group that gets the inside jokes, that holds a little power, that has stuff the average person doesn't have access to, it's fun.

The first memory I have of this feeling was in 6th grade. In our elementary school, 5th and 6th grade were combined, and typically you repeated teachers, so by the time we were rolling to the first day of school in 6th grade, there were no surprises. I had my little crew: Justin, Lauren, and Kate. We were all sitting together, and when our teacher, Mrs. Kravitz, was going through her spiel on rules, regulations, expectations, policies, restrictions, schedules, and general taking care of business type syllabus chatter, we thought we were so above everything. Cracking jokes, mocking the teacher, not paying attention, thinking we were better than everyone in class, that these rules didn't apply to us, or that these rules would never be enforced anyway. C'mon, we were 6th graders, what was there to be scared of? I even remember going home that day and telling my mom about it. The conversation is as vivid as 1080P. 

Looking back, we were just a quartet of kids who didn't know shit about shit, but for that day, we felt like we were running the class. 

In more recent years, the examples are just as few and far between. You have a certain level of elitism wearing your baseball jersey to high school, there was a sense of leadership and power and camaraderie among C.A.R.E. facilitators senior year of college, and it was definitely a position of envy to host bar crawls and be a sticker monger. Is this really just one more in the face of redemption? Years of envy built up, all set to be released because I wasn't hanging out with Randall Floyd and Fred O'Bannion? A rebuttal, a I'm going to take what's mine because I spent so many years on the outside looking in? A turning of the tables? Maybe. But I don't think it goes to that extreme. 

I just see it as it's cool to be included. Call me vain. These days, I could employ some of the same tactics (athleticism, education), but really it starts to come down to who you know. Which leads me to, well, a lot... We're three days into spring, and I'm turning a new leaf. With considerably more free time these days, now begins my commitment to get myself, my name, my words, and my art out there. I want to be exposed. I want to be connected. I want @SeeLazz to gain momentum because I'm saying clever and witty things (follow me, and stuff, if you want). I want to be visible. I want to be more than just another guy. I want people to know when they've read something by me or seen something I've created. It's lofty, but these days, what do I have to lose?

So this will begin my first invitation to come see the 'new' me. On April 17th, I'll be featured at an art show hosted by Rebel Bar and Grill (3462 N. Clark St.). The show starts at 6pm. I will have about two dozen pieces up for sale, ranging between $15-75 dollars. All the items are pictures I've taken and gotten printed on canvas. Some are stretched and stapled to a wooden frame, others are sprayed to a foam board and tacked to an open back frame. I invite you all, and everyone you know to come support me in my endeavors, buy some sweet art, and join me in this era of connectivity, openness, exposure, visibility, transparency, and most of all, fun. Here's to being 'in with the in crowd.'