Like dat, but midnite blue.
The gang at ctyme.com put up a phony page with "Clinton"
inserted everywhere it should've said "Fatboy."
I told the GOFP I needed money and transportation to
St. Louis for the staff of BC-LNW to see the U2 concert.
(The concert was great.)
Anyway, they fell for it, and Archer-Daniels Midland sent
us a jet and a bag-o-cash and told us to have a good time.
We did.
I guess I got on the permanent ADM bribe list, somehow.
Every month since then, I've been getting bags of cash.
Different amounts, sporatic timing...
Then, in early April, I came home from work and found
another ADM money bag, this time with five grand and a note:
"Pepperdine - Saturday 2 PM."
So, Mrs. BartCop and I packed the Glock and hurried to the airport.
Let me say, I don't like a comedy airline.
We flew first class, of course, but after we boarded
I heard the stewardess call "for those in
steerage."
We don't need any Titanic jokes on MY airplane.
Remember what happened last time I flew? (Vol
94)
Clarence "Slappy" Thomas tried to kill us.
So, we got to LA, and we rented a nice Town Car.
As always, first order of business is loading the Glock.
You never know when you'll meet someone who needs dying.
After all, we were in Inglewood, and I saw Pulp Fiction, you
know?
So I reach back for the Glock in my luggage, I can't reach it.
The new Town Car has a too-high front seat.
You can't reach into the back.
Those new Town cars are the worst.
If you buy American, buy Cadillac.
I had to pull over to assemble and load "The Baby."
So, we drove north to Malibu and waited for something to happen.
After 15 minutes - nothing - so we did what anyone would do:
We said "Fuck it" and drove to Las Vegas.
We had almost $4000 in GOFP money and we went crazy.
How crazy were we?
I'm talking Bob Barr crazy.
I'm talking Dan Burton crazy.
We got a suite with a hottub at the Rio and partied
like Led Zeppelin after a gig in Hollywood.
Then, we took in the sights:
That new Star Trek ride at the Las Vegas Hilton is pretty good.
It's my guess they have the original bridge from ST-TNG.
As you board the Enterprize, the Klingons attack and you go
for this wild ride while strapped in like a rollercoaster.
It was killer - the best simulator ride I've ever been on.
The low-point of the trip was Death Valley.
(That's a joke.)
Due to the El Nino downpours that Rush says never happened,
Death Valley was covered in red and yellow and purple flowers.
(Damn, I should've brought a camera!)
We even drove through 20-mule team borax country, which reminded me
of Ronald Reagan.
Not because of his old "Death Valley Days" television show, ...no.
The barren wasteland reminded me of what that crazy, old fool almost
did to our economy.
Anyway, the Las Vegas party was pretty much what you'd expect from ol'
BartCop.
As we left, I could only mutter, "How weak the mortal frame."
So we headed back to Los Angeles to prepare for the return trip.
We spent Thursday in Los Angeles looking for movie stars.
We found Sasha Mitchell, JR's oldest son on Dallas,
and Huggy Bear, the pimp/stoolie from Starsky & Hutch.
I can really find the big stars, eh?
We went to Wolfgang Puck's restaurant, saw no stars.
This restaurant has decent food, tho - I had a steak -
but I've had just as good from my backyard grill.
Mrs. BartCop had crabcakes - said they were great,
but she was into the "presentation," too.
Someone suggested we go to the Viper Room, the place where River
Phoenix OD'd
on speedballs. It's owned by world-famous multi-millionaire movie star
Johnny Depp.
It's a fucking dump.
It's right on Sunset, but we drove past it a couple of times because
we expected a
decent-looking building. It's nothing but about 20 feet of front space
on Sunset with
a faded awning that reads "Viper Room" if you have the eyesight
of a pigeon.
Swear to Koresh,
I, personally, have owned TWO nightclubs that were nicer than Depp's
Viper
Room.
There's at least a dozen subscribers that have seen those clubs and
yes,
the Viper Room is a bigger dump than both of those.
The only way it could've been worse is if the floors were sticky from
spilled beer.
It's smaller than either of my clubs, too.
Trust me, a star wouldn't get out of his own puke to visit the
Viper Room.
And the band was a joke.
They were called Booty Quake.
From the name, I was hoping for an all-girl band in hot pants.
What we got was a gag band.
They had on afro-wigs and played disco music.
They opened with "Burn, Baby, Burn."
Here we are, in the most famous nightclub in the world,
shelling out $15 each to get in, watching a joke band play fucking
disco.
It was packed, wall-to-wall, maybe 150 people, that's how small this
dump was.
We had a drink and left.
The next day we went to the NBC studios in Burbank.
Back in 1983, we were in LA and saw Johnny Carson do the Tonight
Show.
After the show, we went to the north side of the property and waited
for Johnny to leave.
Sure enough, he drove out in his charcoal Mercedes and we chased him
halfway home.
This time, we didn't go to the taping, but we thought we'd try the same
trick on Jay Leno.
Sure enough, about 5 PM local time, he pulled out of the NBC lot in
a blue, late 40's Bugatti.
Like
dat, but midnite blue.
(I didn't know, either. It's an antique Italian car, $100K at least.)
So, we chased Jay a while, this time with a camcorder.
He was nice - he even waved to us and smiled for the camera.
We spent the last night at a motel near Universal Studios, but we didn't
go.
The flight home was uneventful, thank Koresh.
All in all, a nice vacation.