Assholes, Leatherpants, and the World's Largest Birthday Cake

What a long strange weekend it has been! For those of you that don't know, I currently live in Las Vegas. Vegas is celebrating its 100th birthday today. One of my clients is the Las Vegas Centennial, and since there were a lot of events this week to celebrate the birthday I spent a lot of time at work this week trying to finalize all the different newspaper ads. In order to wind down from this crazy week, a few friends and I went to the Roadrunner bar down the street from my apartment. Lately it seems that the people who go to these bars are snotty and obnoxious (my friends and myself excluded). Well we had a few beers and were talking, just chilling out. So at about 12:30 we all decide that it is time to leave. Since the bar is packed, we are walking in single file through the "lounge area" with me pulling up the rear. There was this drunk asshole sitting in the lounge, and when he saw us walking by, he screamed out (or slurred loudly) "Yes, Yes, Yes, No" while pointing to each of us in turn. WTF? Why do people feel the need to make such mean and hurtful comments? Granted I know that I am not a knock out by any means (and all three of my friends are really good looking - bitches!), but I am certainly not a dog, quite frankly I think that I am cute in a non-traditional way. Anyway, having a few beers in me didn't help matters, as soon as I got in my car I started bawling and cried the entire way home. (No worries now - I am over it yet still slightly dumbfounded at the rudeness that people display with no qualms.)

Anyway, knowing that I need to be at one of the Centennial events on Sunday morning by 3 am, I was trying to relax on Saturday night, and I tried (unsuccessfully) to get to sleep by 10. That didn't happen so I resigned myself to not sleeping until the Sunday events were over. Well as I am flipping through the channels, desparate for some entertainment to while away the time, I get a phone call. At this point it is 1 am. All of my close friends know that I need to be to work by 3 and therefore know better than to call me. So all I could think is who the hell is calling me? Turns out it is this guy that I know that I call Leatherpants. (This is all based on the story he told a group of people when we first met him about jumping into the pool at the Hard Rock in his leather pants with Vince Neill(?)). Anyway, Leatherpants is known for going to extremes, be it drinking, gambling, partying, or spending money. Well it seems that he went out to a nightclub on Friday night with a group of 8 or 9 people, reserved a VIP table and picked up the check. (The tab was about $1600!!!!) He thinks he got home at about lunchtime at which time he ate some tacos (can we say vomit!!) and then promptly passed out. Well when he woke up hours later, he felt like complete and utter crap. The worst hangover of his life and he didn't know what to do about it. He was freaking out a little because he was getting the chills and then having hot flashes and heart palpitations. (Leatherpants had a bad heart scare about a year ago after which he quit drinking and smoking for a while). Anyway at this point he is trying to decide whether he is just having a panic attack, or if he should go to his parents house, stay home and deal with it, or go to the ER. I had to talk him out of going to his parents house (they would kick his mid-30 year old ass) since it was about half an hour away and he really wasn't in the shape to drive. I was on the phone with him for almost two hours. When we finally got off the phone he had driven himself to the ER where he puked a few times in the parking lot. Since he started to feel a little bit better he slept in his car for a while. (No he never went in to the hospital.)

After I got off the phone with him I headed downtown to the Birthday Cake event. Talk about absolute craziness. Watching volunteers work from Midnight until 2 pm to build the World's Largest Birthday Cake (pending Guiness approval) was insane. By the time I finished up at 6 am the lack of sleep was catching up to me, so I headed home to nap for an hour before meeting my friend for breakfast. (On my way home, I swung by the hospital to make sure that Leatherpants was still alive - he had already left the parking lot).

After breakfast I had to decide between sleeping before my next shift or just running all my errands first. Needless to say, I went to sleep and woke up with just enough time to shower before heading back to the event. It was insane. Word of caution for everyone - free events will bring out all the crazies - especially in Vegas. This cake that was built was available for anyone who wanted a free slice or even a large portion to take home (there was certainly enough cake for that.) People were walking out of there with piles of cake in boxes. Not slices! It looked like people just grabbed fistfuls of cake. It was a kind of gross. But I must say the place smelled great...