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Nothing Personal
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Nothing Personal
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On March 12 I turned 30, the same age as my dad when my parents had me. This might give another man pause, but I hate children, so I don't have to worry about feeling left behind. However, the unexamined life isn't worth living, and hitting this milestone meant it was time to stop and think. So I thought, Holy shit, I'm 30. I have to go to Vegas.

And now, back home Monday morning, haggard and unclean, I think: God, I wish I were still in Vegas. In fact, I'm thinking of scouting around for a book deal wherein the publishers fund an extraordinary number of trips to Vegas, in return for which I produce a slim volume of mostly useless information about the town. Because that's the real lesson, I think. No matter how honestly you write about these breathless moments -- like hitting a hardway at the craps table, or watching Cirque du Soleil's "O" for the first time or turning around to a tap on your shoulder at Cheetahs and hearing a dancer say, "How about a cocktail? You have the cock, I have the tail" -- you can never quite capture them fully for the reader. So why even bother?

On the other hand, it was my "magical birthday weekend," so I have to try:

Last week, I was working for Nancy, one of the "South Park" writers, on Comedy Central's "Win Ben Stein's Money." She had taken over co-hosting duties from Jimmy Kimmel. They were shooting roughly three shows a day for five weeks, which meant Nancy had to churn out fresh jokes at a very unfunny rate. Having watched the process firsthand, I am surprised she didn't bury a pencil in someone's eye, especially since she had three other projects running at the same time: She is in the revision stage on a screenplay she sold for $1 million, she has done something else really great writing-wise that I am not sure has been made public so I can't talk about specifically and she recently turned in a "South Park" script. Oh, and she's hot.

So if you ever want to feel you are doing nothing with your life, going nowhere fast and an ugly loser on top of it, hang out with Nancy. It's fun!

That's just how I'm feeling Friday afternoon, sitting in Nancy's dressing room, when I get a call from Trey suggesting we rent a van and drive out that night instead of flying to Vegas the next morning. "We think it will be fun," he says. "We" are Trey, Eric (aka Butters), Jun and our friends Tracie and Samantha. As to "fun," while I love my friends, I don't think driving will be fun. But I don't want to abuse my meager ration of birthday power (I'll need it at 4 on Sunday morning when Butters wants to leave the Spearmint Rhino and I want him to stay), so I agree.

One long, boring minivan ride later we're dropping anchor at Buffalo Bill's Hotel and Casino, just over the border in Nevada. The cheese factor is high. It's like Diet Vegas. The wood panel interior is actually wallpaper. The place is filled with teenagers who are hiding from their parents, smoking cigarettes by the pay phones. The pool is shaped like a buffalo head. I am in hell. To make things worse, Trey has warned Jun that if he snores there will be repercussions, which come in the form of Trey screaming "Jun!" at the top of his lungs at sporadic intervals throughout the night. Super!

We haven't pressed on into Vegas because we're heading up to Lake Mead first thing in the morning to launch Trey's new boat. This will make vessel No. 3 for Capt. Parker, who is actually something of a salt now, having survived his 16-foot Zodiac running out of gas in 20-foot swells along the Na Pali coast.

But Trey is also rich, which means while he'll work tirelessly to be a seaworthy and responsible boat captain, he doesn't want to work hard at loading, hauling, unloading and storing his boats if he doesn't have to. He's all about ease before and after the actual event of boating. And who can blame him? Part of what convinced him to buy the boat was the boat company's promise: They would haul the boat from L.A. to Lake Mead, their driver would guide us to the launch site, drop the boat in, then put us in contact with a certain local storage facility so we could arrange a time for them to pick up the boat.

Then, whenever Trey was returning to the lake, he could simply call and say, I am on such and such a flight into Vegas tomorrow. The company would then send a car for us to the airport, drive us to the lake and the boat would be ready to go.

Next page | What a picture-perfect magical birthday world!