The film, the Hangover.
The movie is a riot. It’s about four guys going to Vegas for a bachelor party. They black out and then piece together a crazy night of penthouse tigers and Mike Tyson right hooks and naked Chinese Mafia hit men. They wake up to abandoned baby’s, holocaust strippers, stolen police cars and photos so smutty you need a priest and a wet nap just to view them.
After I got done laughing, I mused to myself that I’ve lived this movie in real life. Well I never met Mike Tyson but….
While I was in college, Vegas was a constant. USC is only 4 hours away from Sin City. It’s a quick blast across the desert and suddenly you come over that horizon and BLAM. Bright Lights and neon colored crazy, igniting your brain like some sort of demented mouth wash for the senses.
Most people go to Vegas with a plan. They pack for the weekend. They have a place to stay, and a general idea of what they want to do. They charge it to their credit card and sign it to their room. I didn’t do either. One I didn’t have a credit card. Two; I didn’t have a room.
Back in the mid 80’s, I usually ended up in Vegas before I even knew I was in Vegas. It was like a covert military operation with no objective except to stay alive and stay out of jail.
I spent three days in Vegas one night. Unbelievably, I was wearing a pair of yellow sweat pants, high top sneakers and a ratty old t shirt. I looked like a white rapper without the BLING. (That’s me pictured to the left wearing yellow sweat pants and Nike High tops. I believe we are posing under a statue at Caesars Palace.)
Had I known I was going to Vegas, I am quite certain I would have worn jeans, maybe a collared shirt. YELLOW SWEAT PANTS? are you crazy, boy! Are you crazy!
But this adventure started without any thought of going to Las Vegas. In fact, it started as a midnight game of basketball just outside the USC campus. You wouldn’t wear cowboy boots and a dress shirt to play hoops on Hoover Blvd would you? Nope.
But somewhere, somehow, someone shouted ROAD TRIP!
That could have meant Mexico. That could have meant Joshua Tree National Park. That could have meant Palm Springs or Santa Barbara, but on this early morning, for whatever reason, it meant: VEGAS.
Why pack? Why plan? Why change clothes? We’d only been playing ball for 2 hours; who needs a shower right?
It was extemporaneous insanity set in motion by idiots with raw desire and few brain cells.
Four hours later, the bright lights of the most decadent city in all of America filled my pupils. There I was, young and dumb and full of crazy™ dressed in a baseball hat, tank top, high top sneakers and bright yellow sweat pants. I should have been arrested at the city limit for being fashionably incorrect.
I was barely old enough to vote. Ain’t America beautiful.
With little more than 20 dollars tucked into my sock, I lasted 3 straight days with no plan and no place to stay. Somehow I zombied my way through 3 straight days of 4 dollar shrimp dinners and free cocktails. Somehow, I seduced that 20 dollar sock money into lasting the weekend.
How is that possible? How is anything in Vegas possible?
I remember standing at the Caesars crap table. It was very early in the morning. The vampires had retired to their rooms and the zombies who had a bad habit were in the casinos nursing a fix. It’s scary to think they even let me stand at the table looking like I did, but in a town where money talks, what you look like is hardly an issue.
So I put 20 down on the pass line and threw the bones.
SEVEN
Pay the shooter.
And so it began. I’d win some, I’d lose some. But I’d win some. Apparently lady luck was inside those high tops because I was winning. Sure didn’t show up in my jump shot hours earlier.
The problem? It’s hard to make 20 dollars into a million. Craps is a game where you can win a lot of money, if you have the balls to stay in the game. The problem with craps is, you have to keep feeding the Field and the Come bets. You can win, but it takes so much money to keep a hot streak going, you only breathe a sigh of relief when you hit your point. If you have money scattered across the table, and then seven comes up, they take it all and you’re broke again.
Such it was with my hot streaks. I would win, but I never bank rolled the profits, always trying to maximize the ride on lady luck. Lady Lucky come, Lady Lucky go.
What I didn’t realize was that the guy at the end of the table with the mountain of chips was a movie star.
Remember that film in the 80’s the BREAKFAST CLUB. It starred Molly Ringwold and Emelio Estevez as high school kids in detention.
Remember that scene where the detention monitor, the assistant principal, comes out of the restroom with a long line of toilet paper stuck to his pants. That actor’s name is Paul Gleason, AKA Principal Richard Vernon. He was at the other end of the table. And while I was turning 20 dollars into a hundred dollars. He was turning 20,000 dollars into much more.
Maybe two hours into this lunacy, I remember almost falling asleep at the table. I had been up for two straight days, and had been on my feet for practically the entire time. Remember this all started on a basketball court in South Central L.A. a night or two earlier. The cushioned rail of the table was soft like a high thread count pillow. The drone of the dice and the chips and the stickman hollering “shooter coming out.” It was like warm milk to a guy who just wanted to engage in some REM sleep.
Down to my last 20 “sock” dollars, I began to push away. I didn’t have a plan. Maybe find the other guys. Maybe go to the IMAX theater at the top of the stairs at Caesars. That was a good place to fall asleep in the dark while learning about the origins of the solar system, I thought to myself.
That’s when principal Vernon, pushed a stack of chips in front of me.
“Where you going?” he says.
“I’m out.”
“You’re my good luck charm,” he says like a bad line from a bad movie.
“take these chips and keep rolling.”
I looked at him and could only picture the guy with toilet paper hanging out of his pants.
I smiled weakly.
I threw the dice till the last wiff of lady luck’s perfume was gone.
I might as well have been throwing meatballs onto the table, because as hot as i was, that’s how cold I was now.
“Done,” I said, pushing away from the rail like a beaten fighter.
The Breakfast Club actor came over and slapped me on the back. He had a rainbow of chips in his hands.
“How’d you do?”
I had a single chip left.
“Not as good as you,” I yawned through eyes so blood shot I needed a squeegee to see 3 feet in front of me.
Principal Vernon tossed me a $100 chip.
“Go get yourself something to eat kid. Thanks.”
And with that he was gone.
And so was I.
And that’s Vegas. 20 bucks in a pair of socks can last three days and generate more stories than most people can tell in a lifetime.
And that’s crazy!