As a great lover of anything completely tacky, I was positively peeing my pants with excitement at arriving in Las Vegas. As I am also frequently found in my local casino after the bars have closed, drunk and shouting, 'Lucky Number 5, Come on! Baby needs new shoes!" so the prospect at playing Black Jack in the Bellagio was all too much. Las Vegas did not disappoint. It was a totally surreal place, like Blackpool on serious drugs.
We were there to play a MySpace Secret Show at the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel, which was downtown away from the main strip. It was less sparkly than the rest of Vegas but it was a cool venue and it had a costume store, YASS!! Needless to say the minute I got there I was right in there dressing up and laughing at myself in the mirror. I settled for a wee wedding ensemble which seemed fitting for the event. The show was great, really atmospheric and intimate. We had a great time and everyone there gave us a warm welcome, some waiting since the early afternoon for the show to begin.
Afterwards it was party time and I got stuck into the bubbly. As I smoked outside the bus, cars kept passing and tooting their horns, I must have looked like a trashy bride, drink in one hand and Marlboro Light in the other.
We then returned to the hotel to continue the debauchery. Around 3.30am I was in Casino mode, i.e. the drunkest girl in the world! I went downstairs and bumped into Dean, one of our managers, and we decided head to the Bellagio for free cocktails. We hammered the cosmos. I played the machines and the Dean played Black Jack. Five cosmos down the line I was $20 up, so I was ready to leave - Dean on the other hand was for going nowhere as he was $1300 up and had bumped into Alan Thompson (ex Celtic player). Alan was a star, really sweet guy and he encouraged me to keep gambling whilst Dean plied me with more cosmos. It was a riot! Alan and I kept pissing off the croupiers by smoking where we weren't supposed to and coming up with conspiracy theories as to how they were stealing our money. As we played and drank, the croupier of 25 years told us of how once she was faced with a gun at the table and the bullet had her name on it. Thankfully she escaped unhurt.......if anyone was going to take our money I'm glad it was her. Around 7am Dean had overtaken me in the drunken stakes and disappeared. When he returned he told me of how he'd beheaded a statue whilst making a phone call! Apparently the grandiose statue was as fake as the rest of Vegas and the weight of a drunken Glaswegian guy leaning on it was all too much - it had fallen over and lost its head in the process! At that point I knew it was time to leave before we were escorted out of the building. We left financially ruined but rich in memories!
Thank`s for sharing you`re story, it was great to read. I`ve been to the old Vegas with the smoking Cowboy and the fifties Hollywood atmosphere. I loved it. Bye sweeties
