Travelin Monkey

Ok, it it 11 am on Saturday the 21st, I still don’t have my copy of “Deathly Hallows,” but I can live with that until I can pass out! Sako came to Las Vegas for a couple of days and had this friend (now my friend also) Tamar, who is Armenian from London, visiting Vegas also. She is a movie producer and travels the world talking to people to invest in movies that her company produces.

So, naturally, she was on the guest list at Tao and was staying in a pretty pimp suite in the private tower of the Venetian. They, apparently regardless of anything, are very strict on guy:girl ratio, no matter what list you are on. So, when we got there, it was a chaotic, to say the least. Whoever designed that was pretty stupid. We couldn’t get in, so we had to wait for Tamar’s friend, a group of really well off Saudi guys (11 total).

When they got there, they dropped $10,000 for table service. We all got escorted via private elevator to the tables, they had 5 bottles of champagne, and I think we went through about 15-18 bottles of Grey Goose Vodka. We stayed partying there like rock stars until around 3:30 am. We had our own waitress that would serve the drinks for us, we had about 3 bouncers that would guard our area and make sure only people we wanted to get in, got in. We also had a guy who came around and made sure the floors were clean all the time.

It was, to say the least, a very interesting night. The main Saudi guy was a great guy. I was lost in the VIP etiquette,  so I just stood around and did nothing. He invited me over, started chatting with me, and started the lady on my drink. The rest of the guys were pretty down to earth also. They were really mellow, really fun guys who just so happened to have a lot of money. Apparently the night before they dropped $500k gambling!

I had a couple of girls pick up on me, obviously because they wanted access to the VIP lounge, but the weird thing is, I also had 3 different girls pinch my ass! THAT NEVER HAPPENS! hehe, women will do ANYTHING to get what they want. There were 3 girls that got in and got crazy drunk and basically started having dry-hump lesbian sex next to us. They then decided to violate Tamar too! It was good times.

We went to gamble at Barbary Coast, which is now called Bills because they were bought out by Harrahs. We gambled with an armenian dealer until around 6 am, which is when we hit up the local Denny’s on the strip. At around 7:30 I dropped Tamar and Sako off … and now I’ve come to realize that I had one too many Redbull Vodkas and probably won’t be able to sleep for a while.

Total cost of the night for me: $50

Total money spent that night: $30,000-$40,000 minimum

Tao Rating: 4 Stars (the dancers & bathtub girls were hot, the women in general weren’t, and people there seem to go to get laid)

It has been a great 4 years for me and this series.

It all started in Brasil in 2003. I had an 8 hour lay-over in Sao Paolo, it was the only book in English and cost $35. I had watched the movie in 2000 or so and wasn’t too impressed, but man o man, when I picked up that book, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think, all I could do is read, and read, and read.

I landed in Los Angeles with blood shot eyes, in that one plane trip I was done with The Goblet of Fire. What next? BOOK 5! I had 24 hours in LA, the very next day I was to go on a flight to Frankfurt, connecting to Athens for my engagement. The first thing I did was drive to Price Club and pick up Order of the Phoenix for $15!!

I spent the ENTIRE trip to Europe reading that book also. I couldn’t sleep, all I could do is read, analyze, break everything apart, it was a GREAT book. JK does a fantastic job honing in on the innocence of childhood with the problems we face growing up… that mixed in with a fantastic imagination and great characters!

I had to wait 2 YEARS!! TWO!! Then in July, I skipped out of a class to go buy Book 6. Luckily I had some time off, or else I would have missed a lot of class time reading the book! It was so… amazing..

And since that day in July in Brasil, I have been eagerly waiting for the last book.. what really happens? How does it end? Will my theories play out the way I think they will?

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what happens. All that matters is that a woman who had left her husband had a magnificent idea and cared so much to share it with the rest of the world, that she provided people with an adventure outside of the internet, outside of television, and in our own minds. It has been about 10 years for some of the people that were on the band wagon early on, less for most of us.. but WHAT AN ADVENTURE!!

Tomorrow I will be really sad.. There are about 4-6 weeks of Harry Potter mayhem left. No more changeling theories, no more reading up on the vector physics of spells, or any other crazy rendition of who RAB is and who will die and where Snape’s loyalties lay… It will come to an end..

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes

“It isn’t neither the beginning nor the end of the road that matter, only the path taken”

Which brings me to the people at NY Times & Sun and the other American companies that just plain didn’t respect the embargo. THESE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN FOR US FANS, WE ARE THE ONES THAT BENEFIT FROM THEM! We took the journey, we engulfed our lives in the magic. We could care less about spoilers, we could care less about what really happens… it is the anticipation that matters, it is knowing that there are millions of people waiting .. EAGERLY WAITING for the clock to strike midnight tonight.. it is the fact that hardly anyone will sleep this Friday night and that as soon as they are done reading, we will all meet up on the internet .. some to cope, others to brag, most for company.

JK has brought the world together through the magic of her writing, she has crossed over into the realm of innocence and childhood and given children what they have been lacking, what our governments, parents, and schools couldn’t do. She has given people a passion for reading, she has opened imaginations world-wide and has grouped people from all aspects of life together.

Was it strange when I went in for happy hour at the local bar to hear adults talking about July 21, 2007? No, not at all. It brought a smile to my face..

Thank You JK…