Lost Wages, am I right people?
Me at the Riv.
I ran out of underpants on Friday. I called the front desk.
"Do you guys have a laundromat here?"
"No, just drycleaning."
"Oh. Is there a laundromat nearby?"
"Nope."
"No?"
"No ma'am."
"Well, how do people clean their clothes here?"
"I don't know."
Thanks, helpful! And people do wash their panties in Las Vegas, but not on the Strip. I found a laundromat near UNLV and on hot, blue Saturday afternoon, I put my dirty clothes in a suitcase and stepped on the bus known to Vegans as the Deuce. Air-conditioned, with comfortable cloth seats, the Deuce is a double-decker bus that travels up and down Las Vegas Blvd, dropping tourists off at various casinos. Three dollars one-way, or seven dollars for 24 hour access. The night before, I bought an unlimited pass to the Deuce, and sat in the front row on the upper deck, videotaping my ride to a midnight movie playing near the MGM Grand. A drunk blonde boarded the Deuce at the Wynn and announced that the Party was <i>here</i>. Right where she was standing. The party followed her as she wobbled down the aisle, until she collapsed into a comfy seat. Then the party fell asleep.
The Saturday afternoon Deuce was party-free, packed with sober, sticky, sunburned tourists. Standing skin to peeling skin. At each stop, twenty-five people got off, and twenty-five more got on. The Deuce covered 2 miles in an hour. At Flamingo, I transferred to a regular, east/west bus. The clientele changed dramatically. The fat, chatty tourists were replaced by the working poor, the DUIs and a few wheelchairs. The bus stops in Vegas are made of a metal scrim, which allow sun or shade to peek through holes. People avoided the sun by standing, ghostlike, behind the scrim, like black paper dolls. A bunch of Boo Radleys waiting for the #202.
Two transfers and an hour and forty five minutes later, I was pouring detergent in a wash machine.
On Friday, Babble.com published a piece I wrote about being a comic and raising a kid. I spent most of the day in the my hotel room, refreshing my browser to read comments. (That's not my torso, by the way.) It's stupidly exciting when someone leaves a comment, good or bad. While googling, I found this site of user reviews of my shows at the Punchline a few weeks ago. I got three 4 (out of 4) star reviews, and one 2 star review. That user, called "DeeDee," cruelly brought my average down to 3.7 stars. She thought my pacing was "strange" and postulated that I was "bored and didn't want to be there." In summation, DeeDee felt my show was, "entertaining, but I wouldn't see her again." Aw yeah, I think I've found a new pullquote for my promotional materials.
Delayed in Denver
Delayed at the Denver airport. I was in Aspen this weekend, performing at the Rooftop Comedy Festival. In one short walk, I saw mountains, some snow-capped, some not, a stream, a black and white butterfly and a crow. It's amazing how the trickle of a creek can pry open the pages of a joke book. Tomorrow I'm flying to Las Vegas, but I'm stopping in NYC to see my son for about three hours, if he stays up late. Or less, if this flight gets delayed again.
I stayed up late last night, hanging out with comics. Getting drunk, talking loud in a bar about GETTING REAL onstage and DROPPING THE FACADE and FUCKING FUCKHEADS, etc. Good times. Then our table shrunk to just female comics and we tore THE PATRIARCHY a new one.
In San Francisco a few weeks ago, I stopped by an open mic, next door to a bar which once was the Holy City Zoo. Much of the neighborhood has changed, but the Toy Boat ice cream store was there, and so was Green Apple Books. I bought some books for KilBaby ("Plankton," the story of a plankton, if that creature exists in the singular, and "Slug," the story of a slug. Both books are from the same publisher, and are very compelling to a two-year old.) I also bought a moleskin blank book for jokes. I have been a Meade Composition Book aficionado for many years, I have dozens of them, filled with political and/or anus jokes. My moleskin was preferred by F. Scott Fitzgerald, according to the insert. Also Hemingway. So there.