You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
Getting arrested in Vegas.
This is a city with an amazingly high tolerance for stupid.It’s easier to flunk kindergarten fingerpainting than it is to go to jail in Vegas. It’s easier for Edward Scissor Hands to birth a lion cub for Siegfried and Roy than it is to go to jail in Vegas.
You doubt what I say?
Pac Man Jones made it rain, incited a riot, and was linked to an episode where people were shot and paralyzed and it was only after a Congressional Tribunal that someone finally went to jail.
How idiotic do you have to behave to go to jail in a city where topless drunken debauchery is encouraged? How ridiculously dumb do you have to be in a city where prostitution and gambling and ruining your liver are protected under the state constitution?
You have to be a moron of monstrous proportions. This is a story of just such a moron.
His name: MACHINE GUN SCOTTY
Weeks ago I told you the story about Schultz eating glass to keep me at USC. I told you about Schultz dancing with someone’s great grandma like it was the high school prom. I told you about Schultz smashing his way into a Mexican Cantina with a sledge hammer.
Well, If Schultz had 2 brain cells, then Machine Gun Scotty, had none. Scotty was another in a long line of crazy roommates God saw fit to pair me with. Scotty’s brain was little more than marbles and fig newtons saturated with alcohol.
Machine Gun Scotty was an on again/off again student. I think he was majoring in business, but he mostly was a drunk.
Schultz & Machine Gun Scotty circa 1983 waiting for the beer dept to open at 6am.
When Scotty wasn’t drinking, he was polite and respectful of authority. He grew up in San Diego, not far from Camp Pendleton and he had a deep respect for the military, especially the Marines. Scotty’s problem was simple:
Booze = Poison!
In the 80’s, the military wasn’t exactly a bastion of high standards. It seemed like almost anyone trying to beat a prison rap could join the military and serve their country rather than serving time. But the Marines would have nothing to do with Machine Gun Scotty. They recognized that his alcohol problem was to severe to put an M-16 in his hands.
When he drank, which was often, he became a brain dead zombie who would put on a baseball hat that simply stated: F*** OFF!
He had chewing tobacco staining his lips, and a frequently blackened eye from the scrapes he routinely picked with anyone and everyone, including me on several occasions.
Scotty was always angry about life and the way it was treating him. How imbecilic was Machine Gun Scotty? I watched him drink a spittoon of chewing tobacco for 20 dollars, only to throw it up on himself 20 seconds later. Nice!
I watched him stand against the wall with his arms outstretched like an angry Jesus as his roommates threw Chinese fighting stars at him.They tried not to hit him with these razor sharp weapons, but you know how throwing Chinese stars can be? Ouch.
Each time he was hit, he would bite his chewing tobacco stained lip and suffer quietly. Even drunk, he was always the Marine.
Semper Fi.
As I’ve often said, Last call in L.A. is around 1:30 am, but that doesn’t mean you have to go home. Mexico is one bad option and Vegas is the other.
One random night, at 2 am, someone shouted out ROAD TRIP.
Next thing I know, we are in Sin City and the sun is coming up over the purple hued desert. It’s breakfast at Caesars Palace with two guys who shared one brain cell. Machine Gun Scotty and White Boy Schultz.
Vegas is the ultimate survival test. Are you as crazy as you think? Are you as cunning as you think? Can you drink as many free drinks as they can offer you and still keep your senses about you?
The answer for Machine Gun Scotty was NO.
I’ve been to Vegas so many times, I cannot count. Just once did a buddy go to jail.
“Hey you with the F*** OFF hat. Put your hands behind your back.”
I don’t remember what led to what, but it ended with me sitting next to Scotty at a black jack table. He was angry and delusional and saturated with booze.
He was doing stuff so stupid, I felt like hitting him myself. He was splitting tens and trying to hit on 20 against the dealer’s six. He was a card playing fool. I tried to coach him, but the more I tried to help him the more he grew angry.
His words were slurred. His demeanor at the table slouched. The cocktail lady came by and I signaled to her to walk away from him more than once.
I tried to get him to stand and leave, but that made him more defiant.
Finally, the hand that brought it all to a boil.
He has 17 and hits when 100 percent of the world would stand. He amazingly pulls a four and gets 21. Winner winner chicken dinner, right? Nope. He won’t signal that he’s good.
The dealer says “sir I need you to wave your hand over your bet so that the camera knows that you want to stand.”
That seems only reasonable to everyone that exists outside Machine Gun Scotty’s brain. But inside his demented, alcohol stained mind, he wants to hit a 21.
“Gimme another card assshoollleee”
His words are as slurred and his grip on his chips weak.
He drops a few chips on the ground. He barely notices. “Sir you have 21. You need to signal with your hand to stand.”
I see the pit boss alerting security to move to our section.
“Scotty, signal you’re good and let’s take a break.”
Like shoving a fork in an electrical socket, I watch my words spark this crazy young man.
“F you! Hit me.”
He is shouting and dropping his chips. He is suddenly standing and chairs flying backward. Games all over the casino stop to watch the unruly and unnecessary outburst.
“F this! F that!”
Suddenly casino security is all around Machine Gun Scotty. They ask him gruffly to calm down and lower his voice.
That works about as well telling a pit bull to stop wanting to eat your face.
Before I knew it, Machine Gun Scotty, the wanna be Marine, and full time drunk is throwing haymakers that land nowhere and throw him off balance like a wobbly lump of flesh.
Security rounded up as many of his chips as possible and put them in Scotty’s pockets. They walked him out the door and told him never to return.
I spent a few minutes looking for additional chips on the floor. I tipped the waitress and the dealer, trying to explain the obvious, that he was drunk.
I thanked the pit boss and his security team for being so cool.
Then I walk outside to a sight I will never forget.
Blue lights and squad cars parked at the fountain.
“What the ….”
And there he was, sopping wet, screaming at the moon like a wild wolf. Scotty was in the middle of the fountain in front of the casino and the Las Vegas police were ordering him to get out of the water.
Scotty splashed them and yelled at them defiantly.
I stood with the gathering crowd of onlookers and marveled at the stupidest man on Earth.
How unnecessary, I thought to myself watching this lunacy unfold. All the guy had to do was wave his hand over his cards and he would have won his bet. But he was too stupid, too poisoned by booze to realize that he was a winner. That’s because he was a loser.
Now he was in the fountains fighting demons that nobody else could see.
To make a long story short, Machine Gun Scotty went to jail that night and he stayed there a few days. It turns out that he had an outstanding warrant for something minor back in L.A.
Schultz is nuts, but he is bright enough to know that sleeping in the county lock up is a bad strategy.
We piled in the back of the pick up truck that brought us there and pulled off the highway. We laid down some sleeping bags and waited till morning.
Machine Gun Scotty had enough chips stuffed into his pockets to pay for bus fare back to L.A.
When he returned, he was angrier.
Going to jail for fighting windmills in the Caesars Palace fountains might be rock bottom for most of us, but for Machine Gun Scotty, that wasn’t even the ground floor on his down escalator of stupid.
I lost track of Scotty over time. Every now and then I catch a blip of him on the radar screen of crazy. He’s out there swirling around the bowl just making it, fighting demons and battling the apparitions that haunt a man who is consumed by the very poison he himself consumes.
and that is crazy.