A Scoop Dat guide to Vegas.

Know Before You Go

Going to Las Vegas requires arduous preparation in advance. It’s really no different than endurance training for an Olympic event. Or, if you prefer, think of it as foreplay.

You will need the following items:

A paper shredder
A pack of cigarettes and an ashtray
A 12-pack of beer
Rock salt
A stack of twenty dollar bills

Start around midnight. In a closed, poorly ventilated, dimly lit room, light all the cigarettes at once and let them burn, or, if you are a smoker, start smoking. Drink the beer as fast as you can while running cash through the shredder. Do not sleep. In the morning, pour rock salt into your eyes and lick the ashtray clean. Repeat this process every night for a couple of weeks, gradually building up your stamina.

Learn the cliches.

Dealers and players use all kinds of cliches to describe various blackjack situations. I can’t tell you how many times we heard “acey-deucy” for the Ace/2 combo, “Crazy eights” for a pair of 8s, or “Upside-down?” for a 6 when you wanted a 9 or vice versa. There’s also the old “Double?” on a blackjack, and several of our dealers pretended they were going to flip a house blackjack just to freak out the players. Even better, one dealer pulled a 7-7-8 and called out “Twenty-one!”, causing everyone at the table to groan in collective misery. We were so used to being shafted by the house, we actually forgot how to add.

Some people dislike banter with the dealers, but not me. If I’m going to hemorrhage money, I figure I should at least get a little fun out of it. Though I can see why a dealer would want to remain impassive after dealing with countless drunks and fools, I’d rather be laughing as the house drains my bank account.

Another cliche we heard over and over: “Vegas is the adult version of Disneyland“. I don’t think so. At least, I never saw Minnie out hawking her wares in a G-string, or Mickey smoking a cigar with a hooker on each arm. Nope, if Disney had a vision for Vegas, it would be “Pleasure Island”, the carnival of sin in “Pinocchio” that turned little boys into asses by letting them smoke, drink, and gamble their way into servitude.

Vegas is no place for kids.

Sure, there are lazy river pools and blow-dried lions and other activities for the non-gambling and under-21 crowd. But do you really want your 5 year old daughter picking up photos of naked hookers off the sidewalk, or your 14 year old son watching a truck go by that promises “Hot Girls Delivered To Your Door In 20 Minutes!” (1-888-696-9696)?

Winning is limited, losing is infinite.

We discovered that the road to bankruptcy is paved with blackjack tables. I play $5 tables if I can find one, and I’m happy just to play for hours and walk away even, or even take a bit of a loss. Usually, playing basic strategy, the money pattern is like a sine wave – you go up and down, up and down. If you’re lucky, you might go on a little hot streak. But as we learned on this trip, it’s possible to lose, and lose, and lose, and never make a comeback. Between four of us, not one person came out ahead. It makes a day job look easy, and yet I’d go back again today. Let that be a lesson to you.

The beat goes on.

On Wednesday night, the mid-Strip area actually closed down when the Bellagio was mysteriously evacuated. The hotel emptied out quietly, without all the hoopla you might expect. For an evening, there were no cars in that area, and people milled about, watching curiously as the police directed road and foot traffic away from the perimeter of the hotel. There was no panic, no mass stampedes, not even a news camera as far as we could see.

We had no idea what was going on until the next day, when local news reported that a “suspicious package” had been found in the lobby. We speculated wildly, of course: bomb threat, casino heist, homicide? I half-expected to see Brad Pitt and George Clooney sprinting madly down the street.

I had just been thinking about security on the Strip that afternoon. If there’s anywhere you could be anonymous, surely it has to be in Las Vegas. Nothing is too bizarre or outlandish in the City of Sin. Who’s watching? But my husband reminded me that there are cameras everywhere, and somehow someone spotted an unattended suitcase in the lobby of one of the largest hotels in the casino.

Meanwhile, out on the streets, the touts still flicked their porn ads at hapless passers-by. Because if we let prostitution fall by the wayside because of a silly old bomb threat, then the terrorists have already won.

Viva Las Vegas.