With my memories of my extended Las Vegas trip growing more muted daily, I thought I would share with you some of my most and least favorite things about Sin City.

THINGS I MISS ABOUT LAS VEGAS:

Hotel living: It turns out that Janeen doesn’t automatically clean everything up when I leave dirty clothes and wet towels strewn across our apartment floor. As a matter of fact, it pisses her off. 😦

Soft poker games: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, there are idiots playing poker in Las Vegas. All you have to do is walk into any poker room and you’ll find guys having fun giving their money away. Being good at poker in Las Vegas is like selling timeshares. Except you don’t have to hunt down the morons, they come and sit with you.  And you feel less dirty.

Good service: Everywhere you go in Las Vegas, someone is bending over backwards for you. This isn’t restricted to the hotel industry. Waitstaff members are always thrilled about holding the tomatoes. Walk into any fast food joint and someone will ask you if you want fries with a shit-eating grin. Try finding this kind of service in New York, where low wage service industry employees are mildly annoyed at best and straight up nasty at worst.

THINGS I DO NOT MISS ABOUT LAS VEGAS:

The weather: This just in. Las Vegas is in the middle of the desert.

LV Cab drivers: This is going to seem inconsistent my prior statement about missing the generally good service out there, but I can’t stand cab rides in Las Vegas. This is because most of the cab drivers are jerkoffs. First they chat you up nonstop, forcing you to listen to their life stories. Invariably these stories have some kind of hard luck component, designed to make you feel sorry for them. Then they rip you off by intentionally taking you on a circuitous route to your destination, tacking a few bucks onto your fare. Finally, they bitch you out when you only tip them $2.00. After all that friendly banter about alimony! The nerve! Contrast this with a New York cabbie, who silently takes you where you’re going as fast as possible. Hey fucko, I’m from New York, so I know from cab rides. And I’m in Las Vegas five times a year, so I know you didn’t have to take the goddamned Strip to get here. Annoying!

“Ed Hardy” T-Shirts: Has a more accurate barometer of douchiness ever been invented? Half of Las Vegas is wearing one of these stupid shirts. I really doubt this is what Ed Hardy (whoever that is) envisioned. When “Remember the 00’s” airs on VH-1 in ten years, some C-list celeb will crack a joke about how these horrible shirts were popular in 2008.

Fat guys in motorized carts: Las Vegas’ poker rooms attract an unnatural number of people riding motorized carts. Some of them are elderly and/or infirm, which is an understandable reason to quit walking. But many of the cart riders are simply obese. How pathetic. The day a fatass buys one of these things strikes me as particularly tragic. “Well, the last time I swam was twenty years ago, and the last time I ran was around eleven years ago, and now this walking thing is getting to be pretty tough. I surrender. Put me in a lardmobile.” When one of these guys gets moved to your table, it’s the worst. First you notice the contraption approaching out on the horizon. When the picture comes into focus, you realize it’s your worst fear: a gigantic flab-bucket on wheels with a rack of chips in his lap. He manuevers his little cart until it’s adjacent to the empty seat next to you, then he stuggles and strains… and literally unloads himself into it. Repulsive.

See ya in October, Las Vegas!