Welcome to Lost Vegas. Check your good taste at the border.

For our fourth wedding anniversary (is that all?), we hopped down to Las Vegas, home of Elvis impersonators, the Rat pack and large, spectacularly overwrought mega-hotels. I've seen a lot of big buildings in my life, but nothing dwarfed the size and scale of the hotels on the Vegas strip.

The hotels are so big in fact, the scale is disorienting. We found out the hard way trying to get up the strip to the next hotel. What looks like a four block walk actually takes three and a half days. We missed quite a few dinner reservations because of it. Then we learned to take cabs everywhere. (Driving past the hotel next to ours to the third hotel cost ten dollars. No lie. That's how far it is.)

Outside, the hotel architects take huge metroplitan areas like Egypt, Venice, Paris and NYC and scale them down all of 10%. Or they take small things like lions and volcanos and blow them up 7 million percent. There seems to be no middle ground. Inside, they look like Liberace exploded. If there is ever a gold-leaf shortage, this place is the cause.

We got in Friday night and went to one of the newer eating establishments called Aerole, known for their impressive lucite-enclosed wine tower. When you order a bottle, a young lady, who obviously drew the shortest straw that night, hitches herself into a cable rig and, through a series of pulleys, Peter Pan's herself aloft up the backlit tower to bring down your wine in full view of the patrons. Needless to say, the women don't wear skirts.

Yeah, those are all bottles of wine stacked behind them. Like most things in Vegas, it's all show. Ooh, Ahh. ("Here's your bottle of Mad Dog 20/20, mon suer.")

To bolster their standing as a restaurant, Aerole has a number of bottles in the $450-$28,000 price range. That's right, I said $28,000. For a bottle of wine. One bottle. Not a barrel. One lousy 750ml bottle of hooch. How drunk do you have to be to order that one? Donald Trump would sweat doing the math for a tip on that bill.

Frankly, they should have put more effort into the food. Neither Amy nor I was particularly thrilled with our incredibly pricey meal (the place is rated, "Very Expensive" by Wine Spectator magazine, not merely "Expensive"). But when you gamble in Vegas, the odds are with the house. We were out $200 before we even hit the casinos.

Surprisingly, the casinos at the MGM Grand were less tacky than I expected. Certainly they were expansive, covering what seemed like acres of otherwise farmable real estate. There weren't really what you'd call hallways. Just wide, mall-width passages to other parts of the hotel crammed with slots, card tables and anything else they could think of to take your money (see story on Areole above). I expected to find them in the john.

We played the slots for awhile and were up $20 for one day, but the next day saw that money join countless other from the optimistic suckers that believe Lady Luck would look at their unshaven, sunburned faces.

Not being huge gamblers, we took our chances in the restaurants. And did pretty well. We had a nice meal at one of Wolfgang Puck's place. And Onda, an Italian place, wasn't bad nor too pricey. Our one regret was that we never got to try the $12.95 all-you-can-eat buffet as we wanted to eventually eat that night. The line for it snaked around the casino like a human, well, snake.

Like Palm Springs, Vegas is hot. Fortunately, it's the "dry heat" people always about to make you feel better about the blistering 100+ temperatures drying your bones and searing your flesh. My advice— Don't go out in the direct sunlight during the day or you will explode.

Unlike Palm Springs, there is actually stuff to do in Vegas besides sit at the pool and complain about the heat. We saw Mystere, which was fabulous. We even went retro and saw Folies Bergere, which I don't recommend despite the fact that there were lots of topless girls in it (late show only). Normally, topless girls is the sign of great entertainment, but I felt bad for these young women since they were obviously very talented dancers. The toplessness seemed very forced and artificial. Moreso even than in most Hollywood movies (I know, scary, huh?). The dance numbers were quaint and simple, reminiscent of a more innocent time. So it was like watching topless high school theater. Very unsettling.

Coverage.

In what can only be attributed to either Einstein-like genius or incredibly fortuitous timing, I finally got some ads in Communication Arts Magazine, the bible of the advertising industry. (Order the Sept. '99 issue from Amazon below.)

Search: Books Popular Music Classical Music Video	Enter keywords...

Order through this Amazon window and I'll get a check for five cents!

The magnitude of this achievement could only be overshadowed by an appearance in the One Show Award Book or British Art Director's Award Book based solely on the merits of my own work alone, not my place of employment. Of course, CA didn't have to pick my work, so it's still an honor. If anyone wants an autographed copy, send $69.95 plus $9.95 for S&H to: Mr. Big Head, 1300 In Your Face Avenue, Egoville, CA 94133.

Reunion.

As usual, Amy looked great, while I tried hard not to embarrass her.

Amy had a high school reunion recently that forced us to take a week off from work and fly to sunny Florida. We didn't lounge around much, but we got to see friends whom we now only contact via e-mail.

At the reunion, we learned valuable lessons about high school friendships. Namely, that if you haven't kept in touch with someone since high school, there's probably a damn good reason.

The Reunion committee geniuses made the egregious error of holding 3 different get-togethers—each more formal than the last— culminating in the dressy "official" reunion by which time everyone was sick and tired of talking to each other.

All the old cliques instantly reformed and the old pecking order of high school had been reestablished. Frankly, it shouldn't have surprised us. Nonetheless, we had hoped that some would evolve over the years and grow as individuals. And, to be honest, some had. But those people were now smart enough to avoid the reunion.

The majority of the attendees were people whose lives had peaked in high school. You know, the guys who were on the football team and now pump gas at the local Stop N' Go To Hell cuz they didn't have a fallback plan after they weren't drafted by the NFL. As well as the popular girls, who got married early because they had to (they were "popular" after all) and now have more kids than a herd of goats.

Still it wasn't a total waste. This experience will save Amy and I the expensive flight back to New York for my next reunion.

Wrestlers.

That's Sting with the face paint on the left.

John and Sally react as Goldberg crashes through window
and runs out to fight Sting.

I finally finished my TV spot for the new wrestling videogame "WCW Mayhem". (To see the actual TV commercial, go here and type in "Ask Betty") We got to work with Goldberg and Sting, two hot properties in the world of fake fighting. At 6' 5", 235lbs, Sting was a very nice guy. Goldberg, too, was nice. (Although coming off a bender the previous night, he was much cheerier in the afternoon). Their agents asked us to refer to them as Bill and Steve. Yeah, right. ("Hey, Steve, could you bodyslam Bill into the concrete and then pummel him a bit for us. Thanks, that'd be great.") We called them sir.

Eric Jungmann and me on the set, pretending we'll remember each other two weeks from now.

Our main talent—playing the geeky "John" who wants to ask the popular "Betty" to the prom—was a slim, 17-year old kid named Eric Jungmann from Texas. He's been in Hollywood for six months and has landed bit parts in Walker: Texas Ranger and the teen thriller, The Faculty. Look for him to lead in Not another Teen Movie and Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind. He's a funny guy.

Playing the attractive "Betty" role was a young blonde woman named Shana Orlando (aka Shana Wall). Recent credits included jumping up and down on a trampoline for the end credits of The Man Show on Comedy Central (some fine programming there).

The spot involved a physical stunt, namely a wrestler smashing through a plate glass window and taking out "Betty", so we had to hire two stunt people. One to play the wrestler, and one to play Betty. The stunt goes like this. The guy, dressed as Sting is inside the store and runs as fast as he can towards the window. Right before he gets there, he twists his body so he goes out back first (that way it looks like he got thrown out). The tempered glass (yes, it's not candy glass) is then shattered by small explosive charges the instant before he backs through it. The woman outside the store window must stand still in one place as this 235lb man crashes through the glass and clobbers her into a padded, glass-covered crash mat.

We had three panes of real glass waiting in the wings so we could do the stunt 3 times to get it right. Thankfully, it worked perfectly the first time. I say thankfully, because after the stunt there was more blood on our set than a Wes Craven movie. Real blood. Real stunt person blood. Both of them were lacerated head to toe. The guy had to have fourteen stitches in his back. The woman had gashes all over her. Paramedics were called in to make sure they were okay. Even though they said they'd do it again, no one among us had the guts to ask them. They got paid about $1500 to do it. Want to be a stuntman now?

Sightings.

While my partner Geordie and I were down basking in ther debauchery that is the LA Scene, we were able to spot a few celebrities. One of my favorite dining establishments in West Hollywood is Dan Tana's (If the name seems familiar, it's because that was Robert Urich's character name in the TV show, Vegas.) The food is old world Italian complete with red and white checked vinyl tableclothes. But the waiters all wear tuxes and the dark ambiance encourages celebrities to come out of their Malibu beach houses. I've been there about four times and have seen Sharon Lawrence from NYPD Blue, Peter Boyd from Everybody Loves Raymond, Arsenio Hall from well, obscurity, Micheal Richards from Seinfeld, Pete Sampras from Wimbledon, Vlademier Somebody from the LA Lakers. All very exciting. The last time we were down there, we sat next to Hugh Hefner and his triplet girlfriends.