Day Three...

We slept until 12:30 in the afternoon. Man, do I ever like thick curtains that block out that evil, evil sunlight. Jimmie had a hangover. He had a bath and I started to write. We *really* have to pick up an AOL CD soon so that we can get online.
What luck! On our way out the door of the hotel, there was an AOL CD sitting on the table beside all the local weekly papers. Into the backpack it went for later.
The first thing we did today was walk through the El Cortez in search of Eric. I have no idea where he's going to be, or even if he gambles in that casino. We did find out his room number though (290), although getting ahold of him is going to be tricky. He doesn't come back much to his room (from what I remember), except to sleep, shower and change. While coming back through the back entrance of the casino, I noticed that an old man playing slots was at the same machine he was on this morning. That's an eight & half hour shift so far and who knows how long he'd been there before Mark and I passed though at four am. I made a comment under my breath ~ Mark heard and responded with his observation of the two guys sitting in the staged lounge. They'd been in the same spot as well. Both folding their arms and taking long blinks; statues. Afterwards, in one of our many many elevator trips, we laughed when the subject was brought up again. "They are the decor of El Cortez..." I wonder if they're still sitting there, right now?
After the fruitless search, we drove to the Hotel San Remo where we were going to buy tickets for a cabaret show called "The Showgirls of Magic." The ticket seller had just gone on break and wouldn't be back for over an hour, so we decided to take a walk over to the Excalibur casino so I could get rid of my extra dollar coins from there. We pass a roulette table and I decided to place a bet with the coins instead of cashing them in. Allice wanted me to bet on 15 black, so I did that... and black... and odd, and a range. If it would have come up, it would have paid off nicely. If. :) Unfortunately, it was red, even and in the wrong range. Oh well. We were both getting a little peckish, and there was a dinner show at Excalibur called "The Tournament of Kings." It was a bit pricey, but that's why we came - to be entertained. The show started almost immediately, so we headed off to find our seats. Fairly good spot, almost in line with dead center of the arena, second row up. Our section was cheering for the King of Russia, who didn't quite live up to the standards of nobility and honor that he was supposed to have as a knight in Arthur's court, but he sure could work the crowd. Our dinner companions were a little less than wanted too. On Jimmie's right were an older couple. The man insisted Jimmie was in his seat at first until he read the numbers on the chair arms. The woman that sat directly beside him had a slight problem with personal hygiene. I'll have to explain something first... the meal is to be eaten with just your hands - no forks, knives or spoons. The woman wiped her nose repeatedly and with bits of stuck to her fingers, dug into her cornish game hen. Nummy! I had a family of four sitting on my left. The wife was the stereotypical rude American. She goes off on the guy serving the drinks when he says that he doesn't take the drink orders, but that the guy from the bar would be there shortly. After he leaves, in a loud voice, she expresses her displeasure over the service she's getting and that she wants a new waiter, like the guy over there that's getting his drinks served to him. Within a few minutes, I was ready to throttle her. Bah. The drink guy eventually came to our section and she got her drink. I tried to ignore her after that, but noticed that pretty much her entire family barely touched any of their food. Too good to use their fingers to eat? Who knows. Jimmie and I did a really good job on our birds... nothing but bones and cartilage left when we were done.
The show itself was fairly good. Jimmie wanted it to be a bit darker, with blood and dismemberment, but it was a family show. Bah. I'm with Jimmie on that. The hand to hand combat and jousting were good. They looked like if they were off by a second or two, they would have gotten seriously hurt. There were sparks flying from the swords as they struck each other. Fairly well choreographed. The acrobat/tumblers were pretty damn good. One of the "maidens" was super hot too. By the end of the show, I had to go to the washroom something fierce. I don't know what it is about this trip, but I've been dropping bombs and had more gas than any other single time in my life. Hehehe... I know you wanted to know.
We walked back to the San Remo and were just in time to catch the "Showgirls of Magic." The ticket printing machine wasn't working, so the guy walked us in. Just as we took our seats in this dark, close little room, the girls came out on stage and introduced themselves. Very, very nice. They were all dressed in skimpy little outfits and worked the crowd very well. The diner number they did was fantastic. I didn't care that I saw through half of the magic tricks... they were barely dressed and topless about half the time. There was an intermission with a huge drag queen that pretended to be Cher. Of course, there was a midget playing Sonny Bono and they sang "I got you babe." The comedian that was on during the half-time show was awesome. My face hurt from laughing so much. He pulled four guys from the audience and sat them down onstage. He put masks on them and asked them to do certain things whenever he tapped them on the shoulder. It doesn't sound like much, but it was very, very funny. There were some levitation tricks, the swords into a basket trick, the cutting a girl into little bits trick and lots of boobies. Mmmmm... boobies. After the show, both Jimmie and I got our pictures taken with the showgirls. It cost 5 bucks, but it was well worth it. :)
We left the San Remo after sitting in the parking lot for about 15 minutes, trying to figure out what else to do. We decided to catch the free show at Caesar's Palace (some battle for Atlantis or something), then go over to the Mirage for the volcano eruption. That was the plan anyhow. We turned down the street where Caesar's parking *should* have been, only there was some construction and that area was blocked off. We ended up crossing an overpass and went to the Rio instead. What a nice casino. Very party-like with an open concept main area. You could walk along a balcony and look out over the slots area of the casino. There was also a large round bar there where the bartenders did tricks with the bottles and drinks. Lots of hot chicks walking around the casino too. Jimmie watched some people playing roulette for a little while and some of them were winning big.
We went back to the Mandalay Bay to end our night listening to the awesome live music of Joy Ride. We found a table fairly quickly and well-placed. It pays to go every night because they added a few different songs to their sets. That and the lead singer (the beautiful Inez) remembered us. She came over to our table after the set they were doing and Jimmie got a picture with her. When she had to leave, she took my hands and made little kissy motions in my general direction. Nice. :) When the band started their set again, she thanked us for coming back again. Yay. They just seem to get better each time we see them. Solid playing all around. The bass player had a solo in one of the funky songs and it was fantastic. After we closed the lounge again (the Coral Reef), we headed back to the car. We found a much better place to park that didn't involve about a kilometer of walking. We shared the elevator up to the garage with the guitar player. Very cool guy. I got my picture with him in the elevator. I don't know what it'll look like full-sized, but in the little display screen of my camera I look like a dork. :P
On the drive back to the hotel to get some sleep, we were stopped right in the front of a line of cars by the Mirage. Earlier in the day, we had seen a flatbed truck drive by with a movie/tv show shooting the SUV that was on the back of the flatbed "driving" down the Strip. At three in the morning, they had blocked off both directions of Las Vegas Boulevard and were setting up a shot for what looked like a movie. We eventually got to see a mini come speeding out of the driveway with a showgirl either driving it or in it, with her long feathered headdress streaming out the sunroof. Because of how the shot was being done, the mini sped out, then had to stop dead because of all the "traffic" blocking its way. They were setting up the shot again when they decided to let the real traffic through and we didn't get to see it. Don't know if the pictures of that turned out. We'll have to see when we get home.
When we got back to the room, Jimmie fell asleep fairly quickly and I tried to install AOL on my laptop. It gave me too many problems though, so I ended up going to bed myself within an hour of Jimmie.