Champion of the Day: Great Clips for Hair Lady

So I was getting a haircut at the usual place when some blonde lady walked in and asked, "Where are your clips?"

The vietnamese lady cutting my hair stopped and said, "...what do you mean? Hair clippers? You want clippers?"

The blonde lady answered, "Hair clips," and pointed to a sign --you could feel the embarassment fill her body as she realized GREAT CLIPS FOR HAIR was the NAME OF THE SHOP and you couldn't buy hair clips there.

Shangri-La? At least the next best thing.

I've left the comfortable confines of the music-technology magazines to venture into the world of video games as the new Assistant Art Director on a big-name video game magazine.

It wasn't easy saying goodbye to my familiar job of magazine layout, illustration, and the occasional special project, but the chance to influence the look of a major magazine (especially one so entrenched in pop culture) was too good to pass up.

Even better is the chance to work in downtown SF. My offices are RIGHT THERE. The area during the day is very bustling and you feel a lot of energy just walking around. It makes you want to throw your hat...


Finally, the new work environment isn't your typical corporate office, either. Every writer in the bullpen has their own flat screen and different consoles to test/play games. What is this place??? I kindly backed down from a challenge on Soul Caliber 3 so as not to be virtually emasculated on my first day.

The evil that men do.

You don't really expect me to divulge that information in a blog, do you? Vegas secrets are "to the grave." But don't worry, after I die, my tombstone will come equipped with speakers and my secrets will play in an endless loop.

So the reason Son of Gigan and I hopped an America West flight to Las Vegas? To catch the rematch between Manny Pacquiao and Erik Morales. But that's another story. This one's about the awesome Aladdin Hotel we stayed at and the hundreds of miles we walked.

The first hundred or so miles were after we touched down at McCarran International. Going on foot from the gate to the baggage claim/transportation area is almost enough to wear away the excitement of being in Sin City. Almost, but not quite.

When we were checking out the taxi area, some dude came up to us and asked, "Towncar? Take a towncar to where you need to go." He then told us it would be $35 to take us to the Aladdin. Sorry gypsy-cab, we don't roll that way. We're much cheaper. SoG and I headed to the shuttle bus area, plopped down our $6 and we were on our way to the strip.

At the hotel registration area we were told some bad news. We caught a late flight, so it was about 11:30 when we tried to check-in and the clerk told us that there were no more rooms with two beds. So he'd HAVE to upgrade us to a two-bed suite at no additional charge. How lucky is that? We should have dropped our bags right there and ran for the casino. The reason why the regular rooms filled up? The MISS AMERICA pageant was going on at the hotel that weekend. Surreal.

After checking out our giant suite -- seriously, the bathroom was as big as my bedroom. We made our way downstairs to grab some grub. At the restaurant we noticed that there was a special Planet Hollywood menu as part of the regular menu--that's when we figured out that the Aladdin was eventually going to change into the Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino. Which made sense of the Basic Instinct ice pick on display in our suite (no joke). SO surreal.

I'll mention here that every few seconds, mine and SoG's heads were on heavy swivel because of all the hot women flittering around. So as you read this, please realize that, yes, we were checkin' out the ladies--but since they were EVERYWHERE, this story would be much longer if I called out every instance of maximum-bettys.

I will say that we did share an elevator with Miss Hawaii. She's about this tall (holding hand to chest level) and cute as hell. All the Miss America contestants just looked like regular cuties when they weren't all glammed out.


Anyway, we also took advantage of the free spa time we were allowed. Like a couple of meatheads we hit the gym (on vacation), but checked out the rest of the awesome spa. We also visited some of the other casinos on the strip -- this is where we logged all our frequent pavement miles. Only in Vegas can you walk towards a casino but actually have it move farther away from you.

So that's a little of the Vegas adventure - to read about the Pacquiao/Morales fight, check out my entry at Your Opinion Doesn't Count.