Tami, Marc and I got up at a stupid-early hour with a 4 in it. She picked me up at 5:10 and we headed to Marc's, wondering if he'd be awake or if we'd have to storm the castle. Marc was awake and ready to go. We hit the Turnpike. Our overbooked flight was scheduled for 7:20 a.m. The airport was already ridiculously crowded and lines were long. We pondered taking the later flight and whatever compensation the airline offered. Briefly. Nah. Screw that. We've got a drunken timetable! The plane was freezing. Tami was too warm. Slot machines and bars with To Go cups in the Vegas airport!

In the hotel, we left messages for Beavis & Gonz, and Leaf & Jaz, and flopped on the beds in awkward geometric patterns. We came across the continent to watch "Star Trek." I'm hazy on Friday events: some napping, some "General Hospital," some waiting for housekeeping to bring us a cot, some primping. There's always primping. Then we marched down to Gonz's and Beavis' room, and I leapt the oft-promised flying leap at a reclining Beavis.

Chorus: We went to the bar, drank a great deal. Sometimes we got drunk.

So there was Trigger, with whom Tami and I felt immediately comfortable, and we met Jaz and Leaf. Tami had just complained that she was going to take pictures with my camera. Leaf's first words to me, "So why can't you take your own bloody pictures, then?"

"Because I'm a moron?" And DemonJohn, whom I'd met in Wisconsin last May, and Cruise, and Heath, whom I didn't assault until Saturday night. (He took it like a man, I'll give him that.) Anyway, met a whole bunch of my drunken playmates at once, so I forget who was where. Sorry. Point is: we got on a bus. At the first bar, Beavis and I put 2 tables together and I swiped chairs from all over the floor for Beerina Luena and Glen and Don Guido and his girlfriend Christina and Rich and Madeline and Shizoor, etc. We encountered a too-cheerful balloon-twisting bar employee, who made the inflated balloon animal hat I'm wearing in one of Cruise's pictures. Later, I killed it with a fork just to watch it die.

I forget the order of the bars; by the time we got to the bar with the signs "DRUGS" and "LIQUOR" we'd become a drunken invasion force. Which was a good thing when we found on the door another sign: "Have some class - leave the glass." It was everything you'd imagine. I imagined filthy, and it was! At Champagne Charlie's, we found velvet wallpaper, Marilyn Monroe prints, macaroni & cheese for all and a woman who told everyone about the bar in excruciating detail. Beavis wouldn't let go of the champagne bottle, so we bought more.

The pubcrawl sped along steadily until three bars in a row went south on us, by which time I was not the nicest little Diva. One bar wouldn't admit Jaz without his passport. One wasn't where we thought it was. One had a $40 cover because Steve Winwood was hawking French fries. I think that was why. Anyway, at the final stop on the tour, Holy Cow, I was ready to turn in and start over Saturday. Already making friends and peddling influence, Marc reluctantly agreed when Tami and I decided to head out.

Saturday. The Sequel.

Around 9 A. M.Vegas time: Tami was reading, Marc climbed up off the floor where he'd passed out at the end of my bed. We watched cartoons. On Saturday morning, you must. Some sort of International Geek Law. Tami's sinus headache prevented her from joining us as Marc and I stumbled around the Circus Circus amusement park, then to breakfast at the Pink Pony. The restaurant's décor was so ghastly we swore we wouldn't tell anyone we'd eaten there. I mean, who could believe you'd keep anything down, staring into the eyes of freaking GIGANTIC sad clown? Marc won stuffed animals on the Midway - I wore them as headgear. Beavis summoned us.

Repeat chorus: We went to the bar, drank a great deal. Sometimes we got drunk.

Later, the Circus Circus contingent descended on Battista's like a swarm of angry bees. Battista's doesn't have a smoking section - please note for next year that at any given time during dinner, about a third of us were in the bar, smoking. So when the airport-booze-bottle-and-soggy-napkin war broke out, and the warriors pegged me with something liquidy, and the smoking Bastards were out smoking, nothing stood between me and Heath's glasses. Annoyed, I licked them inside and out, and handed them back.

After dinner, and I don't know how this happened - I didn't see it - the drunken crowd spilled over into the bar, then thinned. Badart spilled a glass of water over DemonJohn's head. Marc carried Jaz across the bar to Leaf. The bartender swore allegiance to ADB. A random drunken Brit, not one of OUR drunken Brits, approached a kneeling DemonJohn and asked, "Who ya proposing to?" DemonJohn checked his package. Jaz fluffed Tami's hair. The airport booze bottles flew everywhere. We stayed a few hours, annoying everyone in the whole place, before calling cabs. Outside, we realized we were in Las Vegas when the air felt more like a convection oven than an outdoor environment. Tami held up a pillar. We said goodbye to the non-Circus Circus Bastards.

Repeat chorus: We went to the bar, drank a great deal. Sometimes we got drunk.

We avoided the hotel's sports bar, where earlier I'd asked the bartender if sometime he could put some booze in the drinks. Gonz, Tami, Jaz, Trigger, Kelli, Leaf, Beavis, Marc and I sat down. Leaf got back up and went to bed. Later, she got up a third time and won a thousand bucks playing blackjack, but not until after most of us were counting sheep and Captain Morgan's bottles. Some of us wandered off to gamble. Some of us were confused by the arrival and subsequent humiliation of Mark Matthews. Who was NOT Mark Mathu. Who is a great guy. But, you haven't lived dangerously till a nearly comatose asshole makes an anti-Semitic remark to Tami, then annoys Jaz, and you're sitting in the middle, wondering if it'd be worth getting kicked out of the hotel to watch them tear him limb from limb. Much as I love a justified beating, I was tired, so I went to bed. Since I didn't see this guy the next day, I suppose I should be denying having seen him in the first place. Maybe.