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I have to admit that this, and some upcoming articles were spawned after purchasing and reading, The Alphabet of Manliness, and I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. I’ve done some crazy things in my life, long before I started this website and I figured I would go back through my memories and write some of these down.

The are many moments in a young man’s life that become etched in stone as an indelible memory: First time sneaking out of the house, first beer, first time you drive a car, first blow job, first paying job (which for some of you man-whores may be the same day as your first blow job you filthy prostitutes) and the penultimate memory…the first time you go to Las Vegas. My first trip was nothing short of a drunken, hedonistic, self-serving sojourn through the highs, and lows, of Sin City.

In 2002 I was working at Banking Center in a very low level loan processing position. The mortgage business was booming because interest rates were extremely low and the bank had just hired a handful of young, inexperienced, twenty-somethings to spend hours a day pushing paper work. Being the youngest, and rowdiest, group in an office environment replete with aging women with Secretary Ass-Syndrome we bonded together and became very fast friends, mainly because most of the people in the loan center were scared of us.

Now when I say “scared” I don’t mean intimidated, I mean FEAR. Fear as in, “It’s always the quiet ones.” Fear as in, “Don’t say the wrong thing to him, he might try to tear your soul out through your ass.” For example I was almost fired because people thought I was going to get pissed off and come into the building with a gun and start laying the place to waste, probably with good reason. At that time in my life I was in an industrial band, my wardrobe consisted of almost entirely black clothing, I had seven piercings above my neck, and was ghostly white. Yeah I wanted attention, but I was and confused. It wasn’t until years later that I learned goths sucked.

Imagine working with that lunatic every day. Top it off with the fact that I drove a mini-van covered in band logo shit, and some stickers a friend made for me. The stickers weren’t that offensive, to me, but the uptight 9-5 crowd at the banking center didn’t think they were exactly, welcoming.

Here’s what the van looked like.

On the back windows it had these stickers:

SINNER

Mr. Fucking Minivan

No Satan, No Fun. Know Satan, Know Fun.

Yeah, every part of that screamed “PAY ATTENTION TO ME,” but that’s because I had yet to find my place in the world. Every part of me still screams pay attention to me, but I’m a bit more subtle about it now.

One of the people I quickly became friends with was a guy a named Bryan. His parents had worked at the bank for years and he and I quickly learned the ins and outs of getting away with any, and every, thing we could. For Bryan’s 21st birthday he wanted to go to Vegas and I was the only friend he had that was legal. He had an extremely hot girlfriend, who looked exactly like Claire Forlanie, but she had just turned 19 so she couldn’t go. By default, I was going to be the wingman on this adventure, which was made even better by the fact that Bryan’s parents had agreed to pay for our plane tickets and hotel room. Free trip to Vegas? Don’t mind if I do.

I was almost 22, single, having ended my year long rebound relationship, and in the prime of my drinking and doing dumb-shit days. I was kind of dating a girl at the time, but I called her, literally, an hour before I left on the trip and ended things. But to be honest, and actually kind of crass and mean, I was only “dating” her because I needed to get laid and I knew she put out. Yeah, back then I was a dickhead as well.

The day of the trip finally arrived, I left work, bought some beer, and drank my way through packing. Which if you’ve read my other vacation stories on here, you know that never bodes well. By the time Bryan and his chick showed up to take us to the airport, I was pretty buzzed. Not drunk, mind you, but intoxicated enough to be under the impression that I could do no wrong and the world revolved around me. The ride to the airport consisted of me talking an amazing amount of shit about how drunk I was going to get and how rich I would be after our adventure. Bryan thought it was funny, his girlfriend…not so much. Also, apparently not funny, is being visibly intoxicated in front of the ticketing agent.

“Sir, I suggest you calm down before you get to the gate.”

“But I’m going to Vegas!”

“Sir since the terrorists we have to make sure of the safety of other passengers.”

“BUT I AM GOING TO VEGAS.”

“Not unless you calm down, you’re not.”

“Looks like you win this round plane wench.”

We have Bryan’ girlfriend take a picture of us before we get on the plane, say our goodbyes, and off we go to the debaucherous land of Las Vegas. Cue the Elvis music.

Having never been outside of California since reaching legal drinking age I didn’t know a very basic fact: not every state has the same drinking rules as California. Sure, it’s a naïve statement, but I was naïve. We arrive in McCairen airport and hop a cab to our hotel. Since Bryan wasn’t “technically” turning 21 until midnight that night, I asked our cab driver to swing by a liquor store so I could pick up some booze. After checking into our hotel, and a few cocktails, we went downstairs at about 12:05 am. Bryan is now legal and it’s time for the fun to begin. I pay for the first round of drinks and ask the bar tender what time the bars in the hotel closed.

“Sweety, this is Vegas, we never close.”

JACKPOT MOTHERFUCKER!

The first night, while uneventful, was fun in an innocent, get your bearings and ogle women sort of way. For some reason we developed some sort of over-blown Asian dialect and kept saying that we were going to, “Go get rucky with shrots and shruts.” Why? I have no fucking idea, but it became our saying.

Before I go any further: We got into town on a Monday night, we were leaving on Friday, and Bryan’ dad was going to deposit our paychecks Wednesday night meaning we would have access to our cash Thursday morning. Collectively we had about $800 between us, which is a pittance in the grand scheme of Las Vegas. Facts clear enough? Good. On with our idiocy.

Our first day was an eye opener. We wandered from casino to casino, drinking and playing nickel shrots, always managing to win enough to buy the next round of drinks and a little extra. This kept us both with a reserve of cash we hoped would help us stretch our dollars until Thursday. After hitting a dinner buffet we decided that with our first real night in Vegas we were going to try to have a drink at every casino on the strip.

Now at the height of my rock-star era, when I drank I did it to get as drunk as possible, as quick as possible so the burgeoning idea played right into my strengths. But allow me to repeat the plan, with a few facts, for those not paying attention. There are 28 casinos on the Las Vegas strip. The goal was to have an extremely strong drink at each one. We decided on long island iced teas because they packed the most liquor into one frosted glass of happiness, or so I thought. So by the end of the night we were planning on consuming 28 long island iced teas.

Let’s base the following assumption on the fact that most bars, MOST bars, put strong mixed drinks like that in twelve ounce glasses. Here is the formula for a long island:

1 part vodka
1 part tequila
1 part rum
1 part gin
1 part triple sec
1 1/2 parts sweet and sour mix
1 splash Coca-Cola®

so by the end of the night the goal was to drink, basically, my weight in hard liquor. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, call your mothers and explain to them that I am a genius and that you wish to birth all of my unholy offspring.

On the way out of the hotel I bought a disposable camera at the gift shop which cost about $4,000 dollars. It seemed outrageous at the time, seeing as how we had an entire day and a half before money magically appeared in our accounts, but this would prove to be an investment well worth the cost. I took two pictures, out of 36, before we left, one of Bryan and I and one of an Elvis impersonator after that it was off to the New-York New-York.

Other than being the closest casino in proximity to ours it had something that I thought only existed in a shitty movie and pornos that are bad rip-offs of shitty movies: Coyote Ugly. Where else would be a better place to start our evening than at a bar that advertised its hot, shrutty, bar tenders? That is where I made yet another discovery.

My typical hangover snack is a coca-cola slurpee. The caffeine helps the body wake up and the ice kind of, sort of, helps to hydrate the system. I love slurpees. Love them more than air. Slurpees are fantastic and if you don’t like slurpees then I have no choice but to hate you and hope that your children are born with clubbed feet. The reason I explain this to you is A.) to drive away the anti-slurpee crowd and B.) to help you understand my fascination with what I found at the Coyote Ugly bar.

The Coyote Ugly inside the casino was a dance club, but they also had a small bar outside the club in order to attract attention. This small bar outside is also, apparently, where they put the B-squad coyote girls. They weren’t really hot, but they were overly flirtatious and dressed shrutty. I think they use this to entice men into the club. Click the picture to see the large version of this interaction.

And off wanders drunky. A fool and his money are soon parted. Fortunately Bryan and I were smarter than that. We leaned against the bar and explained to the semi-hot chick that it was his birthday and we were out to get drunk. She told Bryan to lean back against the bar and proceeded to dump cheap tequila down his throat as she straddled his head. I took a picture. Brian took a picture of me and the Coyote ugly whore as she pitied me. That’s four pictures out of a roll of 36. Keep count, it will be important.

I ask her if she would believe me if I told her it was my birthday too. She said no. Bitch. But she told us she had the perfect drink to help us in our quest for drunken buffoonery: Coyote Octane. She proceeded to explain that there is not a stronger drink, served in any bar, that won’t double as jet fuel. We’re instantly sold. The Coyote Octane is orange juice and ever-clear served out of a slurpee machine. If there is a better way to serve alcoholic drinks than to disguise them as a slurpee, I don’t want to know about it.

We take our concoctions to go, and head out on our adventure. 1 casino, 1 drink, the idea is so far working. We stop and take another picture in front of the Excalibur, that makes five, and down the rest of our drinks. We get a Long Island at the Excalibur but it pales in comparison to the slurpee and I want another one. So back to coyote ugly we go. Another glass of the orange nectar of the gods procured and we realize that we didn’t get a drink at our hotel before we left, this must be remedied. (aint drunk logic grand?) Even though we had just purchased drink number three, we were off in search of drink number four.

Slurpee 2 slammed.

Drink number four achieved. However, after two Coyote Octanes everything tasted like water and didn’t have enough punch for my taste. Sooooo back to the slurpee wench we went. And so it went. Buy strong drink from chick who gets more attractive each time, guzzle it as fast as possible, wander – but not too far, then back for another. All in all I had six slurpees and about five regular, non-slurpee – and thus inadequate, drinks. It was on octane #6 that Bryan demanded we go to the Luxor. And that is where my night ended.

I lost complete cognitive control on Octane six. Which was roughly around one in the morning. I woke up, still dressed, in my bed at about noon. I had remembered taking four pictures with my shitty camera and as I blindly groped for the lump in my pocket I was reminded of how drunk I got: I didn’t remember anything and the camera was used up. Hopefully I got pictures of the stupid shit I did.

Did I puke? Not according to Bryan.

Did I pass out? Not according to Bryan.

Did I do anything stupid – for me? Not according to Bryan.

He was a bit fuzzy on all of the details. He remembered the tram ride to the Luxor where I told jokes to anyone within ear shot and demanded that the two attractive* girls on the tram take a picture with me. His brain shut off in the Luxor.

The first full day in Vegas was, in our opinion, a success. We gambled enough to pay our bar tabs until the evening, we got blitzkrieg style hammered, and we both drank enough that we didn’t have a good recollection of the night’s events. It looked like we were off to a good start. The next night, however, we decided to go balls out. Literally.

*please note that “attractive” is a subjective term, because after that many drinks I’m pretty sure I would think that Jon Lovitz is an attractive woman.

For those of you who know me personally this article should come as no surprise. To those of you who don’t know me: I love Pro-Wrestling. I like Pro-Wrestling more than I like any other sport. Hell I’ve downloaded more wrestling on my computer than porno. But before we move on to the whys and hows I want to make on thing perfectly clear: the next person who tells me that wrestling is fake is going to get stabbed. I know it’s fake you fuckhole, I’m not six years old. But I’d like to reveal something to you as well. Every god damned TV show that you watch, obsessively, is also fake. Days of Our Lives is about fictional characters and you watch it because they’re all disgustingly rich, snotty, whores who bitch about how hard it is to be rich whores. I’m going to assume that you’re not a rich whore and, therefore, watch this program to pretend that you are. Jack Bauer is not a real person. He’s not keeping the world safe from terrorists. In reality it’s Keifer Sutherland and now that he’s not coked out of his mind people in Hollywood are willing to work with him again. Shit, just to rub salt in the wound I’m going to go out on a limb and say that American Idol and Survivor are also planned and plotted to give the perception of reality. Yet everyone still watches that shit like it’s the motherfucking gospel. Why? Because it’s entertaining. So is wrestling but most people can’t look past the fact that it’s scripted to enjoy the entertainment portion.

The second thing that you need to understand is that wrestling is not truly “fake”. Yes it’s scripted and the outcome is predetermined but it’s not fake, it’s controlled. Yeah the punches and kicks are fake but the big moves, the suplexes, the chair shots, being thrown through a table, those are controlled. That’s one of the reasons that the wrestlers are gym rats and hopped up on ‘roids, growth hormones, and elephant testosterone. You’ve got be in good shape in order to pull off the impressive moves that gets the crowds attention. Sure you can fake being punched but there’s no way to fake being thrown through a table that’s on fire. You make one mistake and you can royally fuck someone up. Here’s an animated picture of a guy being thrown through a flaming table correctly.

And here’s a picture of Spike Dudley being thrown through a table incorrectly.

The main difference is the fact that the guy being thrown through the flaming table came out FINE. Spike Dudley, on the opposite side of the coin, almost ended up with a broken neck. Fake that shit naysayers!

You also have to understand why wrestling is scripted, controlled, fake…whatever you want to call it. There’s a reason that big boxing matches and UFC bouts only happen once a month. You get the shit kicked out of you. Now imagine going through one of those types of fights once a week. It wouldn’t happen and you would last about a year… if you’re the luckiest son of a bitch on earth. Figure that the average career of a football player is ten to fifteen years, barring serious injuries. A boxer can have an extensive career, if you want to end up like Muhammad Ali, and by that I mean lacking the ability the tie your shoes. However wrestlers, even with the physically tasking career and being thrown around like a rag doll, can have lengthy careers. Hogan’s in his fifties and still wrestles; Ric Flair and Terry Funk are in their sixties and still do hardcore matches where they are thrown off of ladders onto thumbtacks and hit in the face with a board wrapped in barbed wire.

Wrestlers are stronger, more athletic and more entertaining than every other professional athlete. Pro-Sports players are a bunch of fucking pussies. Wrestlers go into a match expecting to get hurt. They know that it’s going to happen and hope that if they do get hurt it happens in an entertaining and big way. Hell, almost every match in which a wrestler bleeds is because they’ve actually cut themselves with a razor blade. One little knee injury will put a baseball or football player out for the rest of their career. Wrestlers, on the other hand, suffer seemingly career ending injuries semi-regularly yet continue to ply their craft. Here’s an animated picture of a botched spot; this resulted in Sabu breaking his neck. This one hurts just to watch.

Sabu, unlike the flock of sissies in the NFL is STILL on the active roster and wrestles every week. That’s right; this man broke his neck and is still wrestling. So have Kurt Angle, Edge, and Chris Benoit. Ric Flair was the sole survivor of a plane crash, and doctors said he would never even walk again, let alone wrestle. A year later he was back in the ring, and that was over a decade ago. Ric Flair, just like Sabu, still wrestles on the active roster. Ask any baseball player what the worst moment of their career is and they will mention a time that they got hurt. Ask Mick Foley what he’s most remembered for, or what the highlight of his career is and he’ll tell you about the time that he was thrown off of a twenty foot high cage and through the announcers table.

That move alone broke his nose and pushed two of his teeth through his upper lip…AND HE FINISHED THE FUCKING MATCH. Let’s see a hockey player pull that shit off.

Every game played in professional sports are exactly the same; the only thing that varies is the outcome. The rules never change, the variables never change and thusly it’s boring. If you want get my attention, National Basketball Association, let’s have a NBA playoff cage match. Change the rules up every now and then, make the games more interesting. I’m sure football can be a grueling game but how much more interesting and physically challenging would it be if the super bowl were to be contested with NO HOLDS BARRED. Sure, Jerry Rice was a great running back, but would he have been the same caliber of athlete if he had to dodge clotheslines and steel chairs? Fuck No. But you never know what to expect in pro-wrestling. Years ago the steel cage was the most daunting arena for a wrestling match but now we’ve got the Elimination Chamber, Punjabi Prison Matches, Ultimate X, and Lethal Lockdown. The possibilities for different ways for matches to be held is endless, but sadly the arena for other professional sports is stagnate. Shit could we even try mixing up some of the rules? Maybe a short stop who can tackle a base runner would liven up the MLB. The chances of seeing that are very unlikely.

While we’re on the subject of pro-sports being boring: why the fuck are they barring steroids from baseball? Part of the entertainment of baseball is someone who can hit the long-ball. Homerun competitions and players that can hit homeruns are what puts fans in the seats of baseball stadiums. Sure Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds were all on the juice but what the fuck do you care? You went to a baseball game to watch people hit balls with sticks. How is it you give two shits about what causes them to hit the ball farther? You’re watching grown men play a child’s game, and getting paid more money than they deserve. I not only expect most of the wrestlers I watch to be taking drugs, I practically encourage it. I don’t want to watch two guys who are my size wrestle because it’s not believable, nor is it interesting. If, in order for the wrestlers to do the big moves that entertain the shit out of, they need to take pain killers, steroids, monkey brain stems and the souls of little children…so be it. AJ Styles is one of the most entertaining wrestlers because he does some of the craziest, most acrobatic, high flying, risk taking moves in pro-wrestling today. He’s said, in interviews, that he’s in pain a lot of the time and that he has to take pain killers in order to function. Do I think that he shouldn’t be taking these pills because they may not be prescribed to him? Do I think that he should be forced out of the sport because he sometimes needs drugs to function? FUCK NO! I’m watching wrestling in order to see these guys do things that I can not. If pro-sports let their big players do drugs I think the games would be more entertaining. For those of you having trouble with this concept here’s a comedic strip to help you understand.

The other thing that wrestling has that pro-sports lacks is sex appeal. Sure football has their cheerleaders and basketball, baseball and hockey have…well Canseco’s wife (or ex-wife) would probably fuck me for a dollar, but other than that, there’s no sex appeal to professional sports. Wrestling, on the other hand, practically home brews whores. There used to be a divide in wrestling for women. You could be mildly attractive and have skill and be a female wrestler or you could be really attractive, vapid and be a valet (someone who escorts the wrestler to the ring and basically arm candy). These days however the WWE has gone completely the opposite direction and decided to fill their female locker room with whores, with no wrestling talent, but HUGE fake tits. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love The Whores and I’m a big fan of fake tits but I think it may have gone too far. Almost every female wrestler on the roster of any wrestling on TV has been in Playboy or done Cinemax soft-core porno. Not that its bad thing but sometimes, people who think the over use of whores is just too much, there’s a back lash. I’m a huge fan of the hot, vapid chicks who can’t wrestle like Candice Michelle and Christy Hemme, but I’ve grown really tired of how much TV time they get, which is why this picture is one of my recent favorite TV wrestling moments.

The Sandman, a veteran of the wrestling business, who is probably sick and fucking tired of the fact that whores like this get more time on television than actual wrestlers, canes Kelly Kelly. Her sole role in the new ECW is to be an exhibitionist. That’s right; she’s on a wrestling TV show because she likes taking her clothes off. Let’s see basketball do that.

Wrestling is a combination, a conglomerate, of every major form of entertainment. Granted they may be on the low end of the scale in things like acting ability but they provide a show in which almost every taste can be sated. I’ve already proven that they have athletic ability which makes other sports pale in comparison. They’ve got art, in the forms of the designs for the wrestlers, sets and logos, as well as all of the trappings of live theater. Obviously they’re not going to put on a rousing rendition of “The Sound of Music” but they perform live, with no editing, in front of a new audience every week. Eventually, in live theater, you know your lines and there’s no real risk of screwing up. But when you have to improvise every week and still manage to pull it off; that’s talent. Not to mention the fact that each and every wrestler has entrance music. While this may seem miniscule to some, you have to understand that where once there was one guy writing all of the wrestler’s themes, now major label bands write the songs. Stone Cold’s entrance was performed by Disturbed. Motorhead does two separate songs for Triple H. And each and every Pay Per View has at least one theme song, usually performed live by the band, like Limp Bizkit at Wrestlemania 19 or P.O.D at Wrestlemania 22. Live music, live theater, athleticism and art this is one of the only venues you will see all of these things at once.

Some of you are probably saying something to the effect of, “You’re a fuckin’ faggot dude. You like watching grown men in spandex wrestle around with each other. Why don’t you watch what real men watch: Ultimate Fighting?” Well fucko, I have a lot of respect for the UFC fighters but it’s not nearly as interesting as wrestling. The last UFC PPV that I watched had a match that had a huge build up and it lasted about 45 seconds and the main event on the card was five rounds of the fighters not hitting each other. What the fuck is that shit? In wrestling if the match has a lot of build up you’re going to get a match worth the wait. If it’s main event time you’re going to get what you bought the Pay Per View for (this conjecture is obviously based on the fact that Vince McMahon will eventually die and quit booking himself into high profile angles). And as far as calling me a faggot for watching wrestling instead of UFC you are obviously failing to see how much pro-wrestling has affected the UFC. They’ve taken a page out of the wrestling hand book because now they have entrance music, pyro, and video screens for their fighters. And one of UFC’s most treasured franchises, Ken Shamrock, the man who has been the UFC champ on more than one occasion…was a pro-wrestler. So go ahead and call me a fag while you waste your money on crappy Pay Per Views as you, also, watch half naked sweaty men grapple with each other.

I know that, after going back and re-reading this, it’s a miracle that I found a woman willing to marry me. I know that pro-wrestling is generally considered juvenile but it’s one of the only things I watch on TV because I know what I’m getting when I see the WWE or TNA logo. I don’t have to sift through shitty stories written by people who are looking for existentialism on a TV screen. Sometimes I am just looking for entertainment, and that’s what makes wrestling better than other sports, it’s just downright entertaining. It entertains me so much that at one point in time I was actually training to be a pro-wrestler.