“I wish I could.”

“Sorry Mr. Hughes, I’ve gotten so used to you riding shotgun that sometimes I forget that you’re…well you know…”

“Dead,” he said finishing my thought as he often does. “Don’t feel bad, I had a good run…It’s amazing how this place keeps growing—slow down for a second.”

I tapped the breaks gently. Howard always asks me to slow down when we’re about to pass City Center—it seems to fascinate him for some reason, but he never says why. I was hoping that he might utter something on this occasion, but just as it seemed like it might happen—the phone rang.

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“What are you doing?” asked Isaac.

“Cruising the strip with Howard.”

“Listen I’ve been living in this town for a year and still haven’t made it to First Friday, you want to go?” he asked.

“Sure, I’ll pick you up in ten.” I hung up and turned to face the ghost of Howard Hughes. “Sorry Mr. Hughes…”

First Friday is a combo art walk and rave in the Downtown Art District of Las Vegas. And as a Los Angeles Downtownster I know something about art walks, as Downtown LA plays host to the biggest art walk in the country on the second Thursday of every month. When the weather is nice a good Downtown LA Art Walk can attract close to thirty thousand revelers. I had no such expectation of such an event in Las Vegas, but I had heard some good things about the up and coming art scene in Sin City so I was more than up for checking it out…And of course when dating a girl that suffers from Zombism there’s not a whole lot of places you can go out as a couple and fit in.

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I picked Isaac up at the swanky Panorama Towers and headed Downtown exiting Charleston and finding a nice dirt lot to park the SL 500 in, just on the other side of Main Street.

“Nice, I just had them shined,” said I, looking down at my dust covered Gucci loafers.

“Car washes and shoe shines don’t last in this town,” commented Isaac who was wearing tennis shoes—he’s thirty. “What the hell is that noise?” asked my freaked out friend at the slamming sound emanating from the trunk.

“Oh that. Better step back—I brought my girlfriend along.” I approached the back of the car with caution.

“You make your girlfriend ride in the trunk. You f*cking guys from Cali really know how to treat women.” His New York accent was heavier than usual as he leveled this damning, yet envious comment.

“Trust me this chick likes it…Now the choker chain, is taking her some getting used to…”

“Choker chain???”

But before I could elaborate for my confused friend the Zombie Chick was out of the trunk and the fight was on. She scratched and bit wildly at me as I defended and went for the chain. Alas, chain in hand I gave it a thunderous tug, which reeled her around so that her back was now exposed and then with full choke on we slammed against the trunk. With possibly the best zombie ass in the world bent over the trunk of my car, her Catholic, schoolgirl mini-skirt akimbo, and no underwear anywhere in sight I decided that First Friday could wait a few minutes—and took the zombie vagina ice plunge. (Refer to Vegas Grand Slam blog for more information regarding cold zombie vagina.)

“Should I leave while you finish raping your girlfriend?” asked Isaac.

“Don’t be silly…And technically it’s necrophilia not rape,” I answered, causing her to growl with pleasure and claw the paint off of my trunk. “Thank goodness I paid my insurance bill.” I laughed. “I’ll tell them I ran into a bear up in Yellow Stone.”

“That’s the zombie chick you f*cked in the bathroom while you were on a date with someone else at Mickie Finns?”

“This is a sexual assault asshole, not a deposition, shut the fu…”screamed my chick at my buddy.

I yanked the choker another notch. “What did I tell you about being rude to my friends!” Our bodies slammed together so hard that her knee broke my right tail light somehow.

And then came the final climax, which sent us both rolling down into the dirt, thankfully just as a Vegas Metro squad car cruised by—a few seconds earlier and I would of have had some explaining to do.

With Zombie Chick on a short leash the three of us ventured into First Friday…Art and bands everywhere and seriously thousands of people walking around—I was blown away.

“So where do you keep her when she’s not in the trunk?”

She spit on Isaac. I kicked her as hard as I could in the ass. She turned and smiled.

“Fat Andy’s house has a nice dark basement—I’ve been letting her stay there.”

“Thanks a lot for that f*cker,” snarled Zombie Chick.

I turned to Isaac. “Don’t get me wrong, it would be great if she could sleep in bed with me, rather than a dark, dank basement, but left to her own device she’d rip out my throat with her teeth while I’m sleeping.”

“Well you guys make a nice couple,” said Isaac, with more than a hint of sarcasm in his tone.

“Look it’s not perfect but…”

“He’s with me because he can’t get enough of my cold pussy.”

“Thank you sweetie. I was just about to say that.” I shrugged. “She is right. Once you’ve gone zombie it’s hard to go back. Other than the married midget I’m now forced to have an affair with as an antidote to those pesky little love bites.”

“I’m just into older chicks these days,” said Isaac, slowly adapting to our unusual dynamic as a couple.

“You know there is colder,” said Zombie Chick, snatching at an unattended child in a stroller—thus the short leash.

“Really.” She always knows just the right things to say to keep me interested.

“Yeah, not too far from here.”

So we spent another hour perusing the art scene, grabbed a quick bite to eat at Casa Don Juan’s, some of the best Mexican food in Las Vegas and moved on. I should add here that Isaac and I ate the restaurant food. And unfortunately Zombie Chick did manage to get her hands on someone’s lost Maltese. Of course I feel bad about this, but if I can keep my bitch on a leash—so can everyone else.

Now I’ve been to some wild warehouse parties before, actually they were my parties come to think of it…Anyway, this party was out of control even by my non existent standards. And the prospects for a vagina even colder than Zombie Chick’s were everywhere. I focused in on a brunette and made my way toward her, dragging along my date. But before I could get close enough to start chatting I felt the powerful grip on my shoulder of a blond fellow about twenty-eight—so handsome I might add that if I were a chick…

“A human with a zombie on a leash at my Coven—Interesting.”

I turned to Zombie Chick. “You brought me to a Vampire Coven?”

She began to laugh hysterically. “You’re so f*cked…”

I turned to the handsome Vampire Lord. “Sorry, but when she said there was something colder than her ice box, I must have started thinking with the wrong head.”

“So human of you,” he said with a sinister smile, similar to my own.

“Well we best be on our way,” I said, noticing that Isaac was sitting on a couch with four vampiresses that were looking at him like Thanksgiving dinner was served.

“I don’t think so.” His grip tightened on my shoulder. “I think we’re destined to be friends. I see you want to penetrate my sister, perhaps we can arrange a trade.”

I pulled out a bag of white powder from my pocket. “Maybe a little something like this?”

His blood red eyes almost popped out of his head. “You know how to make Blast?”

“I wrote the book, literally,” I answered, making a shameless reference to my bestselling Kindle ebook “Blast” available at the Amazon Kindle Store. There’s a link on the sidebar dear readers and this is how I pay for all of this craziness, so buy away! And if you can’t find the link just go to Amazon and search for me by name.

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“You’re Stan Lerner!” The whole party came to a dead stop as eight hundred or so vampires hung on their lord’s every word. “I knew you looked familiar. “Blast” is my favorite book of all time. And I’m nine-hundred-years-old!” He grabbed the bag of Blast out of my hand. “You know humans have invented some cool stuff over the years, but Blast, well it’s the coup de grace. You can have my sister and oh so much more.”

Zombie Chick growled and got another swift kick in the ass by both of us this time. We laughed.

I chatted up Berlin’s sister. That’s his name by the way. And she introduced me to her best vampiress friend who had a tongue at least two inches longer than Gene Simmons of the rock band Kiss fame.

“So it’s a vampire custom that whoever brings the “Blast” takes the first hit,” said Berlin the Vampire Lord.

I pulled out a hundred dollar bill. “Pass the mirror my boy.”

They all laughed. Berlin’s sister Sade whispered into my ear as she tugged at my pants. “That’s not the way we do Blast.”  And then with pants around my knees and several vampiresses holding me face down I came to understand that there’s no need for hundred dollar bills when there’s a vampiress with a tongue longer than those rectal thermometers we generation Xers all remember from childhood.

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Let me make this perfectly clear, I do not advocate the rectal use of Blast or any other drug…But WOW!!! BANG!!!KPOW!!! I’ve never been so high in my life. I think I actually scared a room full of vamps and even Zombie Chick was cowering under the coffee table—the top of which I broke just to get a grip on her hair. And so on…

As I chilled with Berlin on the couch, after an orgy of epoch proportions, I couldn’t help but to feel bad for my new pack of soulless friends—not because they’re one step above the devil on the damnation chain, but because they were forced to party in such a second class way in a city that has some of the best nightclubs in the world.

“You’re one crazy f*cking human,” said Berlin, giving my juggler some sex eyes.

“You’re not so bad yourself…You know after watching those crappy “Twilight” movies I was beginning to think vampires were a bunch of sexually repressed faggots, but you know how to party, my boy. And your sister…I’ll give you a pound of Blast a month to keep tapping that…”

Berlin extended his hand. “Deal!!!” He looked deep, deep, deep, into my eyes. “Okay, what else?”

“Bro, if you and the gang are going to start partying with the Stan, you’ve got to let me hook up the venue—I feel like I’m a teenager in this place. And even though I like sleeping with them, I don’t want to be them, if you know what I mean?”

His throat rumbled like a tiger on the loose at a Siegfried & Roy show back in the day. “I really like you…From now on you’re in charge of the drugs and the venue…”

“And DJ,” I added.

He patted me lovingly on the head then pointed at Isaac. “What about him?”

“He’s an executive at The Venetian…Tell the girls to unchain him…He knows all of the club owners in town…”

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I once went to Vegas for a weekend and stayed for a year—that would be 2003 to 2004 the year of  “Stan Lerner’s Night Tribe” at the Rio, oh what a year.

My most recent 30 straight days of partying and blogging in Sin City, well a teaser by my own standards. And while I was in LV I heard some news from LA that REGAL 14 OPENED AT LA LIVE!!!

“Not far from Rock ‘N Fish,” I thought to myself. “Not far at all. Oh, and FIDM is having a little “New Moon” party on Friday at the restaurant before the sucking kicks off. And there’s also my much older sister’s birthday to consider—Saturday night.” And then there was one more thought. “I should probably spend some time with my girlfriend who is less than thrilled…”

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So I resolved to head back to the City Of Angels, although I’d been up to debauchery that would have embarrassed Heidi Fleiss back in the day—when I was dating her roommate Dianna.

Down the 15 to the 210, cut through Pasadena, down the 110, off on 9th, right on Flower, cheap parking lot—pick up girlfriend— head straight to Rock ‘N Fish meet with seriously up an coming producer, collect $150,000.00 down payment on three new projects, say goodbye to seriously up an coming producer—order Spicy Tuna Roll and Ahi Tuna with Spinach and Mac ‘n Cheese.

“Edward…Edward…Edward…Do you like Jake or Edward?” the girlfriend ranted on in a “Twilight” frenzy that alleviated all guilt for the things I had just done in Vegas.

“I’m going to head into the party. Why don’t you hang at the bar? Maybe Edward will show his glowing little face that I’d like to punch in.”

“You wouldn’t…”

I walked into the party and looked for Sarah Maxwell—who was responsible for putting together the little soirée.

I ran into Chris first. I actually met Chris and Sarah together some time ago, when Chris spotted me carrying a couple of boxes of Hygee Danishes. If you don’t know what Hygee Danish is, go to the dining section and read my blog “Let’s Hygee”, suffice it to say giving one box of this pastry crack to Chris and Sarah made us friends and business associates for life. Anyway, I was chatting with Chris about a hotel in Vegas he and his partners had just taken over when Sarah walked up.

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I gave her a big hug—tempted to let my hands wander down a little bit, but noticed the girlfriend spying on me from the bar. “Where’s F’n Edward when you need him?” I mumbled.

“Wow you’re really excited about this movie,” commented Sarah, having no conception of my dilemma. “Come on you guys come mingle.”

We let Sarah go first into the sea of attractive young FIDM students. I thought about what it would be like to be in bed with all of them at the same time—then turned to Chris who nodded toward the bar area. “Drinks?”

“Good idea,” I concurred, and headed down the steps toward the much safer environment.

Amusingly, Chris decided to pull up to a spot at the bar right next to my girlfriend—whom he did not even know existed.

And in my “Rock ‘N Fish Rocks”  blog I predicted that the bar at Rock ‘N Fish would be the place to hang out at LA Live—SURPRISE I WAS RIGHT!!! The bar was hopping and so was the restaurant for that matter, much more so than Katsuya or Wolfgang Puck. And I can eat and or blog anywhere I want. By the way, no offence to the original Katsuya on Ventura Blvd. which really is one of my favorite restaurants in the valley. When I was working out of Universal, I had many a good meal there.

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“Drinks gentlemen?” asked Michael, the always, friendly neighborhood bartender.

“The usual,” I answered.

He set a bottle of Jack down in-between our two very large glasses partially filled with Diet Coke.

Chris did the honors and the party was on.

“You see Chris what makes blogging so powerful is the emotional connection between the writer and the reader…And the reason larger companies are having so much trouble monetizing social networks is that they don’t understand that you have to marry the right social networks to the right blogs—content is always king…” And of course I couldn’t help but to be distracted by my snooping girlfriend eleven inches south of Chris. “And Chris if you just turn around for a second I’ll introduce you to my girlfriend.”

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Disclaimer: my girlfriend is young and hot, but she’s the only girl in my blogs that I’m not having sex with—something to do with her being mad about my promiscuity.

Off to the movie theatres, all 14 of them, big building, lots of people, architecture has nothing to do with the rest of LA Live, which is inexplicable, cool regional manager although not overwhelmed by the presence of world’s greatest blogger. NOTE: I’m ecstatic that there are nice movie theatres FINALLY in Downtown, but the surfaces are disappointing. Hopefully Regal will do something spectacular with the floors, walls, and lighting in the common areas of the theatre in the near future. The Grove still sets the standard for what a theatre lobby should look like and this shouldn’t be acceptable to LA Live. The movie experience once seated, however is state of the art.

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“New Moon”, well it’s like watching, what when I was growing up we called an after school special. The amazingly predictable story about a 109-year-old vampire who has a thing for teenage girls…Okay, I can’t fault him for that…Bottom line is the girlfriend loved it and couldn’t wait to go home and fantasize about Edward the rest of the night.

The Next Day

Picked up the girlfriend, went to see “2012”, which is an Academy Award contender in comparison to “New Moon”. After close to three hours of watching the world come to an end I was hungry and ready to throw a nice little birthday bash for my much older sister—at Rock ‘N Fish, of course. I know I eat there a lot, but after thirty days in Vegas and another thirty on the way after Thanksgiving, I’m intent on getting my fill. For the sister and girlfriend I ordered everything on the menu…I usually get the Ahi, but I ventured into the Blackened Halibut…To really change things up I skipped on the bottle of whiskey and ordered a bottle of Conundrum—the girls loved this wine. For desert, bread pudding and lava cake, both off the hook.

I love the anything goes wildness of Las Vegas but…

Dinner and a movie…Really Rock ‘N Fish and a movie, it’s still a magical night out…Los Angeles is a movie town and I’m a movie maker (sometimes). What else can I say, this born and raised Angelino / 15 year downtownster is happy to come home and eat a great meal with friends and family, walk a few hundred feet and see a movie. It took a long time for this experience to come back to Downtown and while downtownsters need no encouragement to go try this night out—I urge the rest of my fellow Angelinos to join in. Holiday season is here, take a trip Downtown to the fashion district and do some shopping, maybe take the kids to Pershing Square for some ice skating, go to Rock ‘N Fish or some of the other great Downtown restaurants and have a dinner you’ll never forget—and then go see a movie. It’s been a challenging year, so we all deserve a night out Downtown.

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So why not a travel blog? This qualifies as work. But what to blog about? I called the Wynn PR department, no spa reviews on such short notice, I was notified. Too bad because I could have used a day at the spa to go along with not writing. Of course I jest! Somewhere around Barstow, James decided we’d be staying at Palazzo. And I’ve never written about this still new hotel…UNTIL NOW!

Now my regular readers know that the style of my writing varies upon my mood, the full moon, cash or lack there of, and on and on….Admittedly, I’m in peculiar mood today, so let’s call this, yet another innovation to the craft of writing, my fast and loose style. Frankly, this could be dangerous to anyone or anything that falls or in this case, past tense, fell into my bull’s eye…So watch out Palazzo!

Actually, I’ve strolled through the Palazzo a few times since it first opened and to be fair, I held off writing about the new addition to The Venetian because it opened its retail in phases and in general I garnered that it opened a bit sooner than optimum—and in a terrible economy. But there’s been plenty of time to get it together so…

Next Day—Tired In A Good Way From Vegas

I liked the Palazzo. I’m not going to do a complete analysis at this point as I was just there overnight to keep James company in some meetings, but here are some highlights: check in was easy. The room was the identical layout as the rooms I’ve stayed in at The Venetian many times—and I like this mini-suite layout, in this case the view was also great. I can’t be sure if it was just the change of scenery or the lighter color scheme and different furniture, but I think I like the Palazzo room more than I like The Venetian room. However, some of my best times in Vegas have happened in The Venetian rooms, if you catch my drift, so no disrespect intended.

Tao at the Palazzo / Venetian remains one of my favorite spots for both dinner and nightlife. The club wasn’t open Wednesday night, but the restaurant was, and dinner was as good or better than the last twenty times I’ve dined there—they’ve never had an off night and our waiter this particular night was a Rock Star. After dinner I chose to smoke a cigar with my old buddy Fat Andy at the bar in the middle of the Palazzo casino floor. The crowd was light, welcome to the recession, but the spot itself has a good open vibe—cute waitresses always help. It would be better if they dimmed the lights…This is not as easy as it sound because the Palazzo is a light and airy casino floor with very high ceilings, but it could be done and it would be transformative—a new place to hangout would emerge in the middle of the casino.

Bellagio still has market cornered when it comes to holiday decorations, but Palazzo’s Thanksgiving decorations are spectacular in both of the large atrium areas. Because Palazzo by design is a little on the austere side the decorations warm it up—having a greater impact than they would at most hotels. On this, my advice is to keep up the good work. Palazzo would be well served to be decorated for every season / occasion throughout the year.

As can happen in Vegas, my gamble of tagging along with James led to a meeting of my own the next day. This was an early lunch at First café in a section of The Venetian that I had not strolled previously. I’ll save the review for later, but the café’s windows provide for a very enjoyable view of the strip. Sometimes it’s great to not feel like you’re inside of a casino—this place does the trick. Oh, and that chef with the ponytail and orange Crocs was sitting two tables over, a sign that the food would be good. It was…Make sure you start with the pretzels! Good company, good atmosphere, good food—GOOD TRIP.

As we rolled down the highway back to Los Angeles I thought about my long and most enjoyable history with Las Vegas. I also thought about the effects of the recession on Sin City and in some ways what’s gone on in Vegas is a sin. The “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” era of success made Sin City lazy—not in terms of construction, but in terms of marketing and customer service. As things went bad the attitude changed some and the customer experience factor went up, but not enough—yet. Because my beloved Sin City is oh so much about making money, I’m betting that my brothers and sisters there will see the neon light soon. IT’S ABOUT GIVING GUESTS A BETTER TIME THAN THEY COULD POSSIBLY HAVE ANYWHERE ELSE…AND FOR LESS MONEY.

You know now that I’ve committed these thoughts to writing, I have one more—I think I’ll head back to Vegas next week and stay the weekend. If you feel like hanging out and getting into trouble I’ll let you know my plans in a few days. Trouble Baby…

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