Packin

I thought that the tour leaders on the Vegas Mob Tour were going to be actors dressed up like mobsters.  Boy was I wrong!  Our tour leaders, Frank Cullotta and Robert Allen are the real deal.  And we were in a van with these guys and 12 other people who had paid $100 each to see where mobsters ate, blew up cars in parking lots, murdered people and committed robberies.  Here is a video of Robert interviewing Frank.

These guys would answer any questions we asked with honesty and well, some crudeness.  In our group was someone from 97.1 CBS Radio Detroit who was on the tour as part of a piece he's doing.  The interviewer from Detroit never asked the question that I wanted to know.  So I blurted it out!

"What happened to Jimmy Hoffa?" I asked, and then worried about the answer I was going to get.  I was told that within 3 hours of being shot, Jimmy Hoffa was ground up like ground beef at a butcher near where he was shot and thrown in the dumpster with some old ground beef.  Geez.  I'm not sure if I should be sharing that.  Am I supposed to adhere to that "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" thing?

Anyway, Robert also confided to us that the mob knocked off both of the Kennedy's and Marilyn Monroe!   So when it was time for us to have a picture taken with Robert in front of the house where Casino was filmed, I asked Robert another question.  "Bobby, are you packin'?"  He said nah.  So I wasn't worried about squeezing his arm too hard. 

An interesting thing we learned about the movie "Casino" which is based on a true story, is that Frank was Martin Scorsese's advisor on set to make sure things were authentic in the film.  Towards the end of the movie is a scene where Ginger Rothstein is assassinated in Costa Rica.  And the hit man actually was Frank Cullotta in real life.  During the filming, the actor playing the hit man kept flubbing it up and not doing it right time after time.  Frank, who was sitting there next to Martin Scorsese, got pissed, took a prop gun, walked onto the set and re-enacted how he himself had shot the guy.   Then said to the actor, "That's how it's done!"  Scorsese kept that in the film. You can see Frank at 2:17 in the clip below shooting the guy in the back of the neck.

Meanwhile, we have 1 more day left in Vegas.  Consequently, we ARE packin!

Danke schoen, Mr. Newton!

Have to admit it.  I have always disliked Wayne Newton.  Every time he would be on TV, I'd scream and run from the room.  I laughed when he was in the movie Vegas Vacation, however.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2lekJ45lmE

 So when we realized there are only a few more days left in OUR Vegas vacation, we started listing the things we have not yet done.  Two things were left:  Go on the Mob Tour (to see where the Mafia ate, drank, and planned murders in Vegas) and visit Wayne Newton's home Casa de Shenandoah.

We arrived at the front gates of Wayne's estate and there was no guard in the guard house. Yippee!  So I hopped out of the car and directed hubby to take my picture with my hands in the air as if saying, "Here I am at Wayne Newton's house!"   There I stood with my arms up in the air.  And hubby couldn't get the camera to work.  So I stood there and stood there and stood there with my hands up in the air as if the police have directed me to put my hands up!  And I kept yelling to hubby in the car, "Did you get it??  Did you get it yet?"

After what seemed like forever, hubby got the picture and I decided to peek inside the gate.  There was a museum across the street with tours and things that if I paid an exorbitant amount of money, they would open the gates to Mr. Las Vegas' estate.  But I didn't like the guy THAT much.  So I simply knocked on the gate to see if Wayne Newton was home and yelled, "Is anybody home?"

Not sure why it didn't occur to me that in this age of high tech security, there would be a lot of cameras honed in on the crazy blond at Wayne Newton's front gate yelling and holding her hands up as if she's at gunpoint.   Apparently, there are cameras and sound.  That's why security came racing across the street to find out what the heck I was doing.  I ran to the car and hubby made a quick getaway down East Sunset.

Danke schoen, Mr. Newton!

Seeing Green!

After feeling so putridly ill for the past 2 weeks which generally affected my overall mood, St. Patrick's Day in Vegas couldn't have come at a better time. So we hit Fremont Street tonight in search of a little Erin go Brauch.  I found this little fellow sitting on the bar outside the D casino on Fremont Street!

I don't know if I was seeing things or not, but there were leprechauns everywhere!

Hubby took this photo. I don't think she's a leprechaun, but she made very good use of the color green.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Bronchitis the Musical

The adventures in Las Vegas continue as I spent the night in the Summerlin Hospital Emergency Room Resort and Casino.  As I noted on my FB page, there are no slot machines in this place.  This is not like the Heart Attack Grill which I blogged about earlier.  This is the actual ER.  Went there because I'm sick.  

Yes, Sin City has made me sick.  As we walked into the ER at 11 PM, the only signs we could see were PEDS, Pediatrics, and colorful pictures along with crying infants in the waiting room.  I glared at hubby and said, "Did you bring me to a CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL????"   But after speaking with the triage nurse, she assured me this was an adult hospital.  She also looked a little relieved that they had a grown up to work on.  But I still felt funny having to tell her my weight wasn't a childsize 13.2 pounds.

Long story short, 5.5 hours later they said I have bronchitis.  They gave me meds and more meds to take home with instructions to rest (I'm in VEGAS, are you kidding me??) and to take my temp and get back there immediately if I have a temp. 

Dutifully this morning, I took my temp with my newest Vegas souvenir (a Vegas Walgreen's thermometer) and announced to hubby that something is wrong with this digital temperature taker because it says L.L6.   What is THAT error code???  He laughed and reminded me that I was blond, left-handed, Polish and had the thermometer upside down.  By the way, I feel better already.

Windy!

Only 3 weeks left here in Vegas.  So now the question becomes do we want to snowbird again next year and if so . . .where?

That led us to our journey of the day to the planned community outside of Vegas called Summerlin.  We hit the GPS and off we went to see if Summerlin would be a great place to winter next year.  As I got in the car, I noticed that my hair stood straight up from a whirling gust of wind.  I guess in Ohio when we get 45 mph wind gusts, it's a tornado and we are cowering in the basement.  But it's Vegas!  It's just wind. 

The sky grew dark as we drove into Summerlin.   But it wasn't from rain, it was sand and debris flying through the air!  I thought about sticking my head out the window because I've heard that dermabrasion is good for the skin.  Thank goodness I didn't because just then a very large tree branch blew in front of our car and hit the front grill!  That was followed by countless plastic grocery bags smacking every car and minutes later, a wet mop came flying in front of us!  And down the road a bit, a refrigerator box flew on by.  I thoroughly expected to see Elvis Presley fly across the road next.  After all, it is Vegas.

 
We loved Summerlin.  We didn't, however, like our lunch on the way home at Dona Maria's Tamales which one would think would have excellent tamales, but alas. . . . their tamales were boring.

On the way home, we smelled something burning.  Thinking it might be a car near us, we didn't think much of it.  But it continued.  We stopped the car and sure enough it was our car that smelled like it was burning!   Not wanting to end our adventurous day exploding into flames, we pulled into a Goodyear Service Center where they put the car up on the lift, removed the remaining tree branches from the grill and pointed out to us that somehow a plastic grocery bag had gotten wrapped around the exhaust system.  No worries, the burning smell would be gone as soon as the plastic bag melted off.   I wondered what a melting mop would have smelled like if it had gotten caught on our exhaust system.

This one's for you, Bill!

It's been a shitty few weeks.  After returning from my Dad's funeral, we got the awful news that our best friend at home, Bill, died.  Not able to afford the whopping $$$$ to fly back to pay our respects, hubby and I decided to do our own thing to honor our friend.

If our recent losses have taught us anything, it has taught us to do things we want to do NOW.  Don't wait.   So with that mantra in mind here in Vegas, I gave hubby a list of things we wanted see/do in Vegas before we leave for home at the end of March.

So hubby (aka Mr. Ticketmaster) got online and started booking things for us to do.  I thought he might spread things out a bit, but at this point, we have gone to 3 shows in 3 nights with more to come!  Whew!

We saw "Jersey Boys" about the life of Frankie Valli.  It was great!  That was preceded by a romantic dinner at Martorano's in Paris Casino.

Next night, we saw Santa Fe and Fat City Horns.  This band is made up of the A List background musicians from the big shows that play in Vegas like Celine, Beyonce, Donnie and Marie.  And the shows are pretty much word of mouth advertising.  Their music is awesome.  If you are ever in Vegas, they are at the South Point Casino Showroom on Monday nights at 10 PM.  Only costs $5 to get in at the door.

Last night, we went to see Penn & Teller the famous magicians.   Once we got seated, we listened to a great jazz combo entertain and we were told that all of the audience was asked to come on stage and sign a manila envelope that was to later be used in the act.  Hubby and I went on stage to sign.  We were the only ones up there since we were early.  And the music coming from this combo was great.  So I grabbed my darling hubby who had had dance lessons 15 years ago so he could dance at our wedding and he gave me a twirl right there in the middle of the Penn & Teller Theater stage--just us.  We didn't get any applause--just in our hearts.  I couldn't understand why no one else would want to do that, too!

Here's the thing, though.  Every time we have done something fun like this, we have had our best friend, Bill, or my Dad in mind.  Before every show, we play blackjack and get the requisite free drinks.  We always order Tanqueray and tonic, a favorite drink of Bill's.  And we make a toast at the blackjack table TO BILL! or TO DAD! and have everyone else there join us.  We honor those we lost and loved by doing things they would have also enjoyed.  Hope some day someone will do the same for me.