Posted 1:53 AM by MEATHEAD

Back from Vegas Baby! Let's start out with the whole reason I went out there, Motley Crue Concert at The Joint in the Hard Rock Hotel. Holy Shit! I wouldn't have missed that for the world! I strongly suggest catching them in Vegas. They're playing again this Sunday March 27th and again in October in Vegas. They had been playing in the big venues until The Joint which only holds about 1500 so as Vince said it was an intimate concert, Plus that's Vince's home base so he gave it his all. They played a little from almost all their albums. Did not play anything from their Self Titled album when Vince was not the lead singer and I can't completely remember but I don't recall anything from the New Tattoo or Generation Swine album, which is fine but would have liked to hear Bitter Pill or New Tattoo Live. Maybe they'll play one of them in Nashville or Knoxville (Definitely glad I already bought tickets for them shows). Anyway... 'On with the Show' :) They played a lot from their first album. Hearing "Livewire" and "Too Fast for Love" Live was incredible. What I love about Motley Crue is they don't pussyfoot around; they jump right into a song. No bullshit "When we wrote this song" or "This next song" crap other bands do to give the band a moment of rest. No, 2+ hours nonstop kickass fucking music. Really the only time they stopped was for Tommy to come out a speak just a little to egg on the girls to do what Crue Shows are famous for! The Gratuitous Flashing of breasts! And Tommy sure can bring the flashes out! The Joint is again a small venue and I settled on a spot in the middle section and had to look at the big screens for the flashes as Tommy Zoomed in cause somebody gave him the camera :) Of course, that was the perfect intro to "Girls, Girls, Girls", and when they BLASTED into "Kickstart My Heart" the place went wild! They also played the three new songs off their Red, White & Crue compilation album just released. If you haven't heard "If I Die Tomorrow" I strongly suggest finding a listening post. Amazon should have a snippet of it. One short interlude was to thank the crowd and to say that before starting this Reunion tour "We thought we hated each other" and went on to talk about how doing this tour so far has inspired them to record a new album with all new songs. We'll see how far that statement goes. They really do hate each other but when they write and play together it just works!. Ok, Go see em! They are coming to a town near you! Trust me, they've booked so many venues this summer it's ridiculous. www.motley.com

Earlier that day I got a nice surprise, before I tell you though you'll have to read through this dribble :) See, I like playing the slots, mainly cause I'm too scared to play table games. Anyway, specifically I like playing Red, White, and Blue 2 credit .25 slots. I was staying at Flamingo and I would say 80% of their slots were 3 credit slots. Meaning to get the biggest jackpot you play 3 credits at time, No thanks. So I took a walk down the strip enjoying a quick stop at the Water show at Bellagio and checking caesers and the Forum shops which were new since last year and headed on to Exalibur which is now favorite of mine. Why? Well, not 10 minutes into to it, One 5x pay symbol, two 5x pay symbols..... and a white 7. That equals 5000 credits, the buzzer was going off and waiting for attendant to come. I couldn't do math at the time cause I was in shock and when the attendant punched in some numbers the dollar amount was shown. $1250 !!! Jackpot Baby! It was so sweet having them lay that moolah into my hand counting 100, 200, 300, etc. Course the first person I called was mom. I kept playing on that machine for another 2 hours with the same 20 bucks I put in to start with :) I was up another 100 but got that whittled down to 45 and got out. So I got total of $1275 off that machine. Only two bad parts to this story.... I have to pay Uncle Sam on this one. Laws must have changed cause my dad said it used to be $1500 before you had to pay taxes? The other bad part? I had two more Full days in Vegas.... Put about $500 more into the slots but I ended the trip up with more than I came with so that's All good. Next time I probably will try some table games, they just seem so fast for me though.

This time around I wanted to catch a bunch of shows which I did. Monday evening was Blue Man Group at the Luxor. What a spectacular show. Pure Energy the entire time. It's really a show about science and using your brain with some of the things they do. I'm going to go into detail cause you just have to see it for yourself!! I had great seats! Row F seat 20 which was 1 row behind where plastic bags were gently sitting on the seats for other show goers :) Don't worry, not too much went into the crowd. They craziest part was the finally where they jumped into crowd went to the top of the theatre where they proceeded to drag MOUNDS and MOUNDS of toilet paper size streamers into the crowd. Started at the top and all guests kept dragging the streamers down the front of the stage. It was hilarious! It was like getting doused with water, a sea of white streamers.

Tuesday Evening was Jubliee. A classic staple of Vegas and well worth it. Another spectacular show. I had a PERFECT view ;) I was at one of the front tables in the middle of the stage. Of course, Usual Meathead's luck was in affect as I was accompanied by all men at my table, pervs ready to see the topless show. Not what you’re thinking though, it's a very classy show with extravagant costumes and headdresses that you wouldn't believe. Easily the best show on a stage I've ever seen. And unfortunately some acts of the show had the males in some skimpy items, that weren’t pretty sitting up front. Of course some of you reading this would have enjoyed that. The only negative thing I have to say is that they must use some first timers or not as experienced people during the week and the good ones on the weekends cause you could the choreography was off and you could tell on some of their face(Yes I took a moment to look at their faces, assholes!) that they were struggling.

As I checked the time after Jubliee I saw I had enough time to go grab a ticket for George Wallace who does Nightly acts at the Flamingo where I was staying. Man I needed a good laugh fest and George came through like a champ! He is so funny. He doesn't give anybody a break, white, black, handicapped, Spanish, old, anybody to make fun off he does it. He's very good and gives back to crowd. Picked about 6 people from the crowd and brought them on stage and did a quick joke session with each of them after asking where they're from and what not and then gave them a nice gift. I don't know if this was staged or just coincidence but he picked out somebody from the crowd with the name Lafiska (SP)? Yes.... He had fun with that shit all night long and in the end gave her a Diamond pendant for her trouble :) He didn't swear as much as I thought he would but there were some just Wrong ass jokes, just wrong! Of course those were the ones I laughed most at! Good Stuff George!

I spent the days just walking up and down the strip and checking out what's changed in the casinos and shops. I was just there last year and you wouldn't believe the change that occurs. New buildings or casino's like The Wynn which I didn't have a chance to check out is an Enormous Resort Casino shining in the sky with its' gold tinted glass windows, and Caesars just keeps getting bigger and bigger, I swear the have 3 city blocks now it seems like. Being my moody self, thanks mom, I did a get little depressed seeing all the couples or groups of friends there having fun up and down the strip. Wish I could have gotten some friends to join me or met somebody out there, of course in Vegas you can buy company an hour at a time :) I didn't drink too much but I loosened up from my conservative self after a grabbing a Yard long Margarita in an Eiffel tower shaped plastic device. That's a lot of liquor and it was damn heavy carrying too, but worth it. I wanted to put some money on my cubbies and Illinois to win the NCAA Tourney but every Race and sports book I ventured into had crappy odds. Cubs are 3/1 to win the World Series on 2/1 to win NL pennant? Yeah Right!!! Illinois was 9/5 odds to win the Tourney as of Monday or 5/2 at one place, still not really worth putting money on.