P-Boi Vacation: Las Vegas
Whoa it's gonna be whacky
written by Nick on September 27th, 2005

Hey there, faithful. You sure are in luck this week, as I've decided to post my personal records of a trip that the Progressive Boink gang took to Las Vegas a few weeks ago. As for you forum members wondering why you didn't hear anything about this, it's probably because we banned you for not being interesting.

We all woke up early that Saturday morning to pack up Mike's van, since he was the only person willing to lend his vehicle for the trip. Yeah, and by willing I mean Justin revved a chainsaw while I pinned him on the ground until he gave us his keys.

Then off we were! We had a long trip ahead of us, so I planned accordingly. I brought my Etch A Sketch to play “Guess What I Drew” with. B opted to go first and drew a perfect depiction of a Red Sox player falling off a cliff, which Jon correctly guessed, making it his turn. He drew a damn good picture of a clown, which I got first. Actually, I guessed “clown” before he had actually drawn anything and he just handed me the Etch A Sketch. It was now my turn and I had the perfect idea! I was going to draw a picture of B drawing a picture of a Red Sox player winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but he threw the Etch A Sketch out the window as soon as I started outlining a baseball uniform.

Bill suggested we listen to one of his CDs to keep us entertained. Mike informed us that his van didn't have a CD player, which disheartened Bill quiet a bit. Seeing Bill upset was not a sight I was willing to accept, so I pulled out one of my handy cassette tapes to throw in Mike's piece of shit van.

“Just a small-town girl. Livin' in a lonely world. She took the midnight train goin' an- y- where,” I sang along, expecting the rest of the crew to join in.

“Strangers! Waitin'!” I coerced them.

Everyone seemed disinterested, though I refused to believe that these guys were really going to let the greatest song ever recorded go unsung.

“Don't stop! Be-lee-ven!”

“That is enough and I am going to kill this song” Jon informed me. He proceeded to kick the tape deck in on Mike's van.

“Jon, what's your favorite song?” I asked him.

“'Fat Lip' by Sum 41, why?”

“Oh, that's weird. That was the very next song on that tape. Too bad you mashed half of it into your Timlins, huh?”

Jon spent the next hour and a half trying to piece together the remains of the cassette tape.

“Maybe it'll come on the radio or something. Give it a rest, Jon,” Kyle urged. Sure enough, about half an hour later it was on Texas ' mix station WXGB 97.4.

“It's not the same,” Jon contested.

“How is it not the same?” Emily inquired.

“They bleep out the word ‘shit'. That's the best part of the whole song when that guy says ‘and I don't give a shit about nothing.' It's sweet. Sweeter than any word any of your stupid songs have in them.”

Not wanting to see the group get into a fight this early on in the trip I tried to remind Emily and Jon of the friendship they enjoyed.

“Hey, Jon, Emily just called you a twat-burger,” I quickly informed him as I stealthily handed him a gym bag filled with miscellaneous wrenches and knives. He didn't bite, though. He sort of just blinked a few times, let his head slowly drift to one of his shoulders, shut his eyes, and fell asleep.

Then finally we arrived! We hadn't really planned ahead all too much, so we had Pholby pick us out a motel to stay in.

“What about this one?” he suggested.

“'The Cauterized Orifice'”, B read aloud, trailing off into a string of obscenities and pebble-kicking.

“Uuuhhh, I don't know, bud,” Lindy pleaded, “It sounds a little unsanitary. Why don't we try The Taj or The Sahara, you know? Come on, I think I know the way.”

Our weary heads eager to find a place to rest we followed with little protest. We ended up in an unlit alley behind “Busty Baby Babies” where we were soon stripped of all our earthly possessions and a few beyond this realm by a group of young scruffians.

“Great! Now what do we do? We're a ba-trillion miles from home with no money and have nowhere to stay! We're doomed!” Justin cried out, drifting into a fit of muffled sobs.

“Hey, I think you guys are forgetting something here. This is Las Vegas ! The land of opportunity and wealth! We can sell Mike's van and use the money to gamble. We'll just have to spend all night at the tables until we have enough money for a decent vacation.”

“That sounds good to me,” said Bill, “I can play Blackjack.”

“Wait, sell what?” Mike asked.

“I was planning on playing some Craps,” Emily chirped in.

“I saw a sign for a Literati tournament tonight. Me and B could try to take that down,” Jon added.

“What the hell are you guys talking about? I don't want to sell my van. It's on a lease; it's technically not even mine. If you want a place to stay I have a friend who”

“Awesome, this could really work, you guys. What about you, Pholby? Do you want to try out the Hold ‘Em tables with me?” I continued.

Pholby was sprawled on the ground with a busted piece of PVC piping to his right.

“Oh, that's right. They hit him with that, huh? Well, I guess he can just play slots or something. Let's go team!”

And we were off. We collected a cool four-hundred dollars for Mike's van while he was using the bathroom at Stardust. We moseyed over to The Mirage to start our fortune. Mike tagged along with Emily to the Craps table and Lindy came with me to play Texas Hold ‘Em. Kyle and Justin, not being avid gamblers, decided to roam the concourse and take full advantage of all the floor drinks being provided to them. The last time I saw them they were playing leapfrog up and down the escalators.

Mike actually turned out to be quite the high-roller! In his first hour at the table he doubled his stake. It's too bad Emily kept throwing their chips into a nearby fountain in an attempt to “wish for lots of money” or they would have cleaned up. Fortunately enough Kyle and Justin came through for us.

Wouldn't you know it? Lindy actually ended up qualifying for the World Series of Poker's Main Event! She ended up battling it out with famous players like Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, and Phil Hellmuth.

“Wow, Lindy! That's incredible!” we all told her, “How'd you do it?”

“Well, fellahs, I've been getting some pretty solid reads on the players at my table. Seems like every time they have a good hand they bet a lot of money.”

She didn't end up winning anything, mostly because Justin and Kyle were wrestling on the third floor, fell off, and crashed through her table, exposing her bluff. She did end up taking back a decent hunk of change off of Phil Hellmuth in a cash game afterwards, all thanks to a little trick I showed her.

We were getting closer and closer to having the dream vacation we had planned.

We decided to take a break and go for a walk around the city since we were all doing so well when we found Bill, beaten and tattered, on the steps of the hotel.

“Bill! What happened?”

“They caught me counting cards. They beat me up and made me swallow a poker chip. It was terrible!”

“How'd they catch you?” Mike asked.

“I lost count a few times and had to add up the numbers on my fingers. I think that sorta tipped them off.”

We collected our fallen brother and carried him to his hotel bed. Without Bill's Blackjack skills this scheme was going to be a lot harder to pull off than expected, especially since both B and Jon were disqualified from the Literati tournament earlier.

“What are you talking about?! ‘Gayrod' is perfectly acceptable!” Jon pleaded.

“I'm sorry, sir, but we're going to have to ask you to leave. People have been offended.”

“Who's been offended?”

homosexual_rod : CHOLO JOO BEDER LEE

A little disheartened we went back into the casino to see how Pholby was doing on his slots.

“Any luck, bro?” I asked him. He had been playing the dime slots for about 3 hours and it didn't look like he was having a great time.

“I'm down to my last dime. I'm going to call it quits after this. Here goes nothing.” He slipped the dime into the one-armed bandit with all the confidence of a broken watch. He pulled the arm, stood up, and began to walk away with his head down.

ZZZZ-ZZZZ-ZZZZ-ZZZZ*CLUNK*

“Hey, look guys. It's Mike's old van.”

“Shut up, Nick.”

ZZZZ-ZZZZ-ZZZZ-ZZZZ*CLUNK*

“Hey that looks like two of”

“I SAID SHUT THE HELL UP.”

ZZZZ-ZZZZ-ZZZZ-ZZZZ*CLUNK*

BING-DIGA-BING-DIGA-BINGBINGBINGBINGBINGBING

“Holy shit! Look at all the money pouring out of that thing!” Jon exclaimed, and rightfully so. After we counted it all up he had won nearly $300. Along with the other money we had won it was more than enough to make sure we had a great time!

Me and Jon wanted to see this boxing match that was happening at the hotel across the street, so we dragged the whole gang over to see. It was a welterweight bout between the WBC champion and some shmuck I'm sure they pulled out of last week's Tough Enough bill. The tickets were a little pricey, but we figured this would be a great way to kick off a Vegas vacation.

“Hope you guys don't mind, but I put some cash on the underdog,” I informed them.

“…how much cash?” Emily asked.

“Psh, relax. Fifty beans.”

“I dunno, Nick. We really don't have enough money to be making bets like that. What were the odds?”

“750:1”

DING DING DING

CRACK

THUD

DING DING DING

“Well, let's go get dinner.”

After dinner we all got some sleep. The next day was a big one. We were going to head over to the University of Las Vegas to walk around campus.

When we arrived we found our way into one of the largest lecture halls on campus, which seated about 200 students. It was a course in Philosophy, dealing with the fabrication of knowledge and the understanding of a personal reality. Lindy didn't hesitate to jump in:

“Yeah, but couldn't we all just be in The Matrix?”

“Good point, you get an A,” the professor said.

We continued to a second, smaller lecture hall where a Multi-Variable Calculus course was being taught. Jealous of Lindy's recent success, Kyle wanted to answer a question correctly, too:

“The answer is thirteen.”

“Incorrect.”

“Yeah, but couldn't we all just be in The Matrix?”

“Hmm, you're right. Here's your degree.”

After the class ended we headed back to our hotel, not knowing what to do on our last day in Las Vegas . Pholby and B got in an argument over what to watch on TV.

“CNN!” screamed Pholby.

“FOX News!” followed up B.

“C! N! N!”

“FOX! News!”

“Boys, boys,” Emily interjected, “There's no reason to fight. We can do something besides watch TV.”

“Yeah, like what?” they both said hissingly.

“We could color,” I proposed, pulling out a plastic baggy filled with 8 crayons, 4 of which were the same color blue. Mike ignored my comment and stepped on the baggy, mashing the crayons into the carpet.

“This place sucks, let's go somewhere fun.”

“I know!” I exclaimed. “We could all go downstairs to the lobby and sit on those big couches for a while. I don't know about you guys, but I've been eyein' those bad boys all night.” B didn't think this was such a great idea, so he took a handful of my now destroyed crayons and rubbed them into my hair.

“We could go see a show or something. I heard Blue Man Group was around,” Jon informed us.

“I don't know about these blue guys, but I could go for some old fashioned Elvis. How ‘bout it, friends?” I said emphatically. The gang stood up, gathered all their stuff, walked out of the hotel without saying a word and locked me inside. A few moments later a Molotov cocktail crashed through the window, setting the floor, curtains, and beds aflame. I managed to escape out the window, but couldn't find the other guys anywhere and was forced to hitchhike my way home.