Things I've Learned on the Las Vegas Strip

This knowledge wasn't gained from just one trip to the world famous Las Vegas Strip, but collected piece by piece in the two and a half years I've been in town.

If you're a big guy like me, you'll want to buy a foot-long hot dog for $1.50, but for the love of the souls of your unborn children, don't. I ate one of these culinary gang-rapes almost two years ago and I haven't been the same since. I think the one I had was made of Fiberglas insulation, cigarette butts, and the remains of tourists who couldn't pay their tab.

A smut peddler will try to hand you an escort pamphlet no matter who you are or what you're doing. You could be fucking someone right in the middle of the sidewalk and an s.p. would still try to give you a "Naked Women to Your Room" card.

Elvis impersonators who work at t-shirt shops don't even try to look like Elvis. Come on, guys, show a little pride. Elvis never had a Fu Manchu moustache nor wore a sombrero. When does an impersonator stop being Elvis and start being Mop Boy at the Disco?

The larger the drink, the smaller the brain. Tourists love the giant margaritas, but most of the people attached to these alcoholic man-made lakes are a little south of 'tarded. You won't see a guy giving a dissertation on "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man" while struggling with a five gallon melonball daiquri.

There's always one girl in a Bachelorette Party who's the voice of reason. Ten drunk girls are walking down the Strip just waiting to flash their juggynauts or engage in the kind of recreational lesbianism that would make Dick Cheney proud of his daughter, and one stone faced prig always gives a calm, well-reasoned argument for why letting strangers take pictures of the Bride-to-be licking a statue's cock in front of Caesar's Palace isn't such a great idea. Meddlin' bitch.

If your name is on the V.I.P. list, you will get in ahead of everyone else. One night this past February a friend of mine got us on the list for the Foundation Room at Mandalay Bay. To get in this place, you either have to be a member of the club (which costs five grand a year), a celebrity, a female hottie, or on the list. I was on the list and I nudged my way past a group of the best looking women I've ever seen in person. Seriously, there were eight of them and they are numbers one through eight of the hottest girlies I've seen in my entire life, and because I was on the list and they weren't, I got to go in ahead of them. I said something like, "Excuse me, ladies. V.I.P. comin' thru. I'll see if I can pull some strings and get you in. Pardon, middle-aged fat guy getting in before you. Make room, I'm a wide load."

If your first drink is watered down, tip well and the second one will knock you on your ass. Even female bartenders who look like they were just flown in from the Playboy Mansion like three dollars more than they like one dollar. She will remember you and your second drink will have the alcohol equivalent of two or three drinks had you not tipped well. You're welcome, I do what I can.

If a lounge act has the word "groove", "rockin'" or "soul" in their title, they will suck. If you ever come across an act called The Rockin' Groove Daddies Soul Revue, run for your lives.

If a woman starts talking to you at a casino bar and she is beautiful, she is a prostitute. The first time I was in Vegas, as a tourist about a year and a half before I moved here, I was at a casino bar and a woman asked me where I was from. I looked at her and my first thought was "This girl wouldn't fuck me if her pussy was aflame and my dick looked like a fire extinguisher." I thought she just wanted some sucker to buy her a few drinks. Then she started naming her price. For me, poverty has always been my moral compass, so my broke ass turned her down.