Vegas Baby!

We're back from our Vegas trip. We went with Lillie (of LOL theater), her husband Scott, Sean (fellow improviser) and his wife Nissa. It was pretty much a perfect vacation.

Please enjoy the next few posts of our ridiculous times...

- Mo



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We started the trip by meeting up with Liz and her husband Doug (who live in Vegas) for dinner at an Italian restaurant. I don't remember the name of the restaurant (it was called Ventano. - corey), but I do remember that it sat up in the hills and looked out over the Vegas strip...

And that the French chef was extremely inappropriate.

We enjoyed lunch on the Bellagio patio at Todd English's "Olives" restaurant.
Lillie pretty much at 'tartare' all weekend. Screw cooked food!
And we gambled our asses away at night. I treated everyone to ninety-nine cent margaritas. Aren't I generous?
.

Guns! (sorry... look away Marcia)

Because we can. That's why. You can do anything in Vegas, including shoot semi-automatic rifles at the shooting range. This one specifically was called, "The Gun Store." They were very nice and extremely professional, so we always felt safe. Corey is such a bad ass with his AK-47.

The girls especially were a little nervous at first. But in the end, Nissa put it best when calling the experience, "Satisfying."
Sean and Corey both shot up Osama bin Laden. Thank goodness. I don't remember what Scott shot, but it was powerful. We were standing four feet behind him and could all feel the kick in it.
I shot a pink AR 15, semi-automatic rifle with a laser scope.
Shot that ninja right up!

Fremont Street

Getting away from the main strip, we all enjoyed the Fremont Street experience. It's especially great with such awesome people!

Ooooh, look at Lillie's sparkly eyelashes!Scott and Lillie dressed up for the occasion...
The ladies are enjoying the crazy light display on the ceiling.
Corey and Sean always bring the party!

Corey's personal cooler

I basically spent the last night on Fremont street on my own. Corey banned me from hanging out with him at the blackjack table. He kept calling me his personal cooler because he'd lose every time I came near him.

Instead I enjoyed a late dinner by myself. It's a pretty weird experience to stand in line for a hamburger with a beer. It was fun though. No really. I had a blast by myself.
All alone. Good times.
I'm having fun. Really, I promise
What? What just happened?

Nerd... I mean "Star Trek Experience"

Last day:

After a ridiculously huge meal at the Paris hotel, we headed to the "Star Trek Experience."

Corey and I left our cool at the door. We went on the deck of the Enterprise, were 'taken hostage' by some Klingons or something...really I don't know. We did however hang out with a Borg.

No one was excited as Nissa. Actually maybe Lillie was, too, as the two of them couldn't stop grinning and tearing up on the simulated ride.

Yes, this beautiful young lady used to be a Trekkie. She's been to conventions and even owns a couple of the suits. Here, she and her husband are enjoying a "James Tea Kirk" long island ice tea, complete with dry ice for effect. We came home tan and relaxed
Yay! Vegas! Good times! Exclamation marks!

- Mo

Denver trip

My turn to recap.... Besides the many wedding stylings as usual, I also spent last week in Denver. I went for my Aunt's wedding. My sister and I styled the bridal party's hair and then we just enjoyed our vacation.

It's been a long time since I've been able to just relax and for once I didn't plan a thing. I just went with the flow on whatever others wanted to do. As usual, Brie and I had a blast together. We always have at least one or more moments in our visits together that we end up in tears from laughter.
Here we are discovering that when we laugh to the point of tears, we both cry out of the right eye and the right eye only.
Besides visiting the yokles in the mountain, we also spent time with our family. My dad is the oldest of 10, so there are a lot of people to visit. We mostly spent time with my cousin Vanessa and her son Jalen because they were nice enough to let us stay with them. We also had time to watch movies and drink with the rest of her family, my cousin JoRae and my aunt and uncle. I never get to watch movies! By the way, 'The Bucket List' is not as bad as I expected.
And though I had a blast with my family, the best part of the trip was the food. My family owns a Mexican restaurant called Serranos. We ate there almost everyday. My grandmother's green chili is AMAZING. If you're ever in Denver, stop by. - Mo

Impressive, eh?

Just saw a commercial for some new film titled "Mongol". Something caught my eye, and I just had to pause and rewind. Thank you, DVR. Well, this is what just aired:

Either the PR folks at the studio don't have spellcheck, or they're calling out the critic at the Wall Street Journal. National commercials aren't cheap, as I understand it. Well done, dummies.

Confidential To A Certain Lurker Who Shall Remain Nameless

I have updated my resume. Just so you know.

- Corey

The Non-Chronological Recap (Part 1)

So much has been happening the past couple weeks since Mo blew all our money at the turtle races that we haven't been able to post new entries, but we'll try and catch things up to date. They won't be in chronological order, but you probably weren't there, so what do you care? The basic topics that we'll be covering in the next few posts include:

- Mo's trip to Denver

- the big Grand (Re-)Opening at the Laugh Out Loud Theater

- Corey's quick trip back to KC

- the impending Vegas trip

and maybe some other random odds and ends. We'll see. I'll try and make up for the time since the last post with long-windedness in these ones.

So I travelled to Kansas City this past weekend initially just to do a show. It became a weekend with 2 shows, and spending Father's Day with the family. The first show was Saturday afternoon. My friends Jay, Jim, Karen and I started a Jewish-themed improv group called Schticky Situation several years ago. We do a handful of shows each year, primarily in KC, but occasionally in Ohio for JCC's, Bar/Bat Mitzvah parties, Jewish singles groups, youth groups, Jewish arts festivals, etc. We do the typical short-form improv games, but we theme the suggestions to accentuate the Jewish content and cater to our particular audiences. While it's not groundbreaking work, the level of talent in the group is very high, and I feel that's what seperates us from other run-of-the-mill short form groups.

This show was for a Bar Mitzvah party and it was held at Screenland, a renovated movie theater in KC that was a very cool venue for a party. We performed in the theater in front of the screen, after the kids had played Rock Band on it. Pretty sweet. The crowd was a nice mix of adults and kids, and we rocked the joint. It was one of the best shows we've ever done, and we've done some good shows. The four of us have known each other for so long, it's nice having that familiarity to be able to jump into a show without having seen each other in months, and have it go so smoothly.

After that show, I went home, took a too-short nap, then grabbed some dinner at an old favorite that I've been craving for a while now. Ever since the Des Moines show a few weeks ago, in fact. Belly full, I jumped on I-435 and headed out to Bonner Springs to play a show at Roving Imp. The group there was so super nice and generous to let me, a perfect stranger, come in and play with them. I played the 9pm show which was a mix of short-form games in the first act, and a long-form piece after intermission. The cast was super cool, and I had a blast playing there with Nifer, Jessica, Julie, John (the owner), and Ryan. It was especially fun to play a long-form set because I haven't had a chance to stretch those muscles in a few months. My friends Trish, Pete and Tim came up to see the show, too. Here's a picture Trish snapped during the first half:

Me and Nifer are even more hilarious than this picture conveys. I don't know how Ryan kept it in. Overall, I thought we had a great show.

Ironically, I think the fact that I had never met these guys helped make the show go so well. We had no shared experience or practice together. We had to rely on hyper-awareness and intense listening, and really go back to improv basics, the only shared knowledge we had. Whatever, it worked because the audience left sore from laughing. Then we all went next door post-show to some diver bar and laughed at the rednecks getting drunk to the terrible cover band outside. All in all, a really fun day.

The next day was Father's Day, so I spent it at my father's house, hanging with my two brothers who are also fathers. We had a huge brunch with food my sisters-in-law made, I got to play with my nieces and nephew, visit my bubbe (grandmother, for the non-yiddish) and move a TV from my brother's house to my parents house. I think setting up the channels on the TV in the bedroom to automatically skip the channels he doesn't want was the best Father's Day present my dad could ask for.

- Corey

The Turtle and the Hair

The last couple weeks have been almost nonstop busy. Briette was in town to work on the Garnier hair tour. And though it was pretty hectic, we made sure to fit in time for turtle races at Big Joe's bar.

Everyone gets between one and seven tickets (we never quite figured out the system) every time you buy a beer. Then every fifteen minutes they pick six tickets and if your ticket is picked, you're assigned a turtle.

These little guys are a lot faster than you'd expect. Pretty hilarous too. And even though our ticket numbers never got called, we had fun with the side bets.

Go Lula Bell!