Updates from the Office of the Mountain Man

Well, just a slathering of little updates for y'all today. 

I got my motorcycle license two weeks ago.  What a blast!  No cycle yet, I just have to make it official and go write the drivers test to get my license changed to Nevada, then start shopping.  Our two final days on course were very hot on small 250cc machines.  The afternoon we did our testing the temperature hit 118F (48C), while sitting atop of a motorcycle pumping out its own heat, in jeans and winter boots and a longsleeve shirt.  Wow.  That's a record heat for me so far.  That takes a lot out of ya.

I was up to my biking playground in MacDonald Ranch this morning.  The temperature was at 91F (33C) by 10am but the big difference is the humidity at 25%.  That's alot for here, and the air is like molasses, HOT molasses that you have to chew first.  It was probably too warm for me to be out biking in the desert, but I had a trail I wanted to try and... well, on a side note, I noticed my weight has been increasing slightly since I got here.  My body has pretty much stayed in the 152-158 zone my whole life, but I think all those cheep beers are beginning to tip the balance because now I've jumped to 169.  I see it, and I feel it, and I dont' like it.  So I'm in training as of now.

I played 2 games of ultimate frisbee last night which is another story I'll get into when the season is over.  So today, my legs were a little rubbery but I went on my biking adventure anyway.  5mins from home I was climbing the mountain into MacDonald Ranch, and 15mins in I was absolutely done.  But I never turned back, I never do.  Somewhere early in those hills my body just completely ran out of fuel and it became a very exhausting, long trek back home.  I had to walk my bike out of the valley, up a craggy knoll to get up on top of another hill.  It took me another 45minutes work to get home.  So I'll have to give the mountain this one:  Jones-3, MacDonald Ranch-1.

An old haunt revisited me last friday as I was trying to back up all our photos onto DVDs.  My machine has been getting a little twitchy so I decided to clean up some space.  I once had this nasty little habit my buddy Boris used to call 'The Delete Monkey'.  Y'see, computers have never been my strong suit, and sometimes bad things happen because I'm a little trigger happy.  And the Delete Monkey reared its ugly head once again.  I backed up all my photos up to 2012, but was going to wait til the 2012 folder was a little fatter before backing those ones up.  But then, in trying to remove all the backed up photos from the Mac, I deleted EVERYTHING!!  All our christmas pics from last year, the move, and all our Vegas pics to date, maybe 2000 photos in all, gone.  Tanya was supremely not impressed, and I was pretty hard on myself for being so stupid.

However, I found a program online, the 'Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery' program, and launched the scan of my hard drive.  It scanned for 32hrs and retrieved 195,000 jpgs and video!!!  So my weekend and monday were spent sifting through a ton of crap to recover those missing photos.  All of the video files were wrecked.  I had no idea that my computer got imprinted with all those little internet jpgs, facebook photos, internet sites, kijiji and craigslist pics, and every freakin' googlemap search we've done... it was all there.  And in an almost random, sectional order, not linear at all.  It took a really long time to sift through all that mess, at least 10hrs of work, but I got all of my missing photos back.

It was quite a trip back through all those pics, it made me a little homesick.  Our little green house in Riverview and its lush green backyard, our since-passed dog Cozmo, our families, the music guys and the times we had, the Mannstock parties on the Restigouche and all that beautiful water, all our vacation trips.  We had a great life back there in NB, and I wish it could have worked out a little differently to allow us the opportunity to stay and grow as individuals, but it wasn't in the cards.  We hit the end of the road and it was time to go.  We are looking forward to getting home for 2weeks in august and seeing everyone again. 

Thanks for reading.

TRJ

Celine Dion @ Caesar's Palace

Celine Dion will be finishing up an 8yr run at the Colosseum at Caesar's Palace in august to spend more time with her family to raise her 3 young boys.  She has her hands full, so it was now or never for us to go see her live in the theatre they renovated especially for her show.  It was a grande evening.

What can I say about this...  I'm not a huge Celine fan or anything, but we just couldn't pass up an opportunity to go and see her live before she is gone from Vegas.  She is a big ticket item and it was expensive, but it was well worth it.  I've learned through many regretful experiences that you have to catch these acts when they happen or else you miss out on the magic.  As a musician I've learned this lesson too many times, for hardly as much money.


I knew she was great, but I wasn't expecting to be struck so deeply by her performance.  All I can say is WOW!  It still chills me to think of it now, that voice... it echoes in my inner ear in such a sweet memory that fills my soul.  A thought passed through my mind as Celine gripped the audience and ripped the heart out of me, that every human being should get the opportunity to experience her talent live.  What a powerhouse!  Not just power, but such incredible control and such a wide range of vocal qualities that she was just an absolute pleasure to listen to.  The band was spot-on, and she soared, from her big theatrical numbers to jazz and rock, there isn't anything she can't sing.  And those numbers that we knew so well from so many of her hits and movies struck sooo much deeper in the live performance.  It was unreal!  Celine's ability is beyond human, and at 44yrs old she can still deliver a soul shaking performance that puts a lump in your throat and makes tears well up in your eyes.  And then she speaks...

Ohhh Celine.  That awkward, good natured, french-canadian accent with facial expressions that make her seem so very odd... quirky, and not very funny at all – but she tries, and in doing so reveals her very endearing human characteristics that you can't help but love.  Everything else is so professional and calculated, but when she speaks its as though you were sitting in her living room for tea.  You feel that you know her a bit because she gives you that and leaves it all out there on stage.  So on one hand you have the mega-talent which can just floor you, and then on the other, you have this ugly little smalltown girl from Quebec, who never ever forgot where she came from, and who is very humbled and is so appreciative that you would come to see her sing.  Such a potent combination of sweet and profound pummeling. Wow!


The Colosseum theatre was incredible.  Caesar's Palace renovated their Circus Maximus Showroom to host their new venture with Celine Dion at a cost of about 90 million dollars, a state of the art facility.  The theatre was designed to be an intimate setting, accommodating 4100 people with the furthest seat being only 120feet from the stage.  Every aspect of the show was extremely well done and Celine was the larger than life centerpiece, backed by a 32 piece orchestra and 180,000 watts of amplification.  She doesn't need it, but the venue was designed to douse and control the amplification of the sound of the theatre, and the sound was pristine.  Onstage, the orchestra sat upon risers which were sectional and could move completely off onto the wings of the stage and out of sight.  There were also stage-lifts and all kinds of movable sections to the stage itself, above and below.  The backdrop of the show was a $10million, 40x120foot LED screen, one of the largest in North America.  The show was incredibly visually stunning, and there were lots of things happening to draw your attention across the whole spectrum of the stage the entire night.  Her final number was especially tricky, the Titanic theme song in which Celine was raised on a column above the stage and a veil of water cascading from above... 2 veils of water actually, encircling her and rotating in opposite directions to form some really weird effects with the lighting...  I never figured that one out completely.


Celine also did a duet with a projected illusion Stevie Wonder which was filmed to be in perfect perspective from the crowd's angle so that it appeared as though he was sitting right there at the piano beside her onstage.  He wasn't there of course, but a less critical eye would never have known the difference.  It looked just ever-so-slightly skewed from our angle, but it was extremely well done.  Stevie's face appeared on the big screen beside the stage as though he were right there, sweating and playing live at the piano, singing with Celine to drive home the effect.  It was an all around flawless performance for the band, and Celine, and the whole show was quite spectacular.


I'm very happy to have gotten the opportunity to see one of Canada's most treasured artists live.  She is a truly amazing, beautiful woman and we are so much richer for having been there in her presence for an evening.


Thank you Celine, you were wonderful.


Thanks for reading.


TRJ

BurlesqueX... Carlos'n Charlies...

We bought some discounted tickets from TicketXpress for the BurlesqueX show at the Flamingo and set out to kickstart Tanya's extended long weekend.  There was a bit of a parking snafu when we tried to find parking at the packed lots of the Flamingo, but ended up finding a pretty damn'd good spot at Bills' Gamblin' Saloon.  Apparently, Bill's parking lot is a bit of a town secret, so lesson learned.  It takes us 20mins or so to get to the Strip, then about 35 minutes to find our way around to park. 

We had a lot of time to kill before the show so we decided to get some beers at the corner store and wander the strip til we found a place to eat.  I LOVE the fact that you can just buy a cornerstore beer and wander down the street with it.  Such freedom!  It brings out the maritimer in me.  The most notable street-freak of the night was a character dressed as Homer Simpson in his underwear... a very drunk looking Homer, with a satchel over his shoulder, a bottle in his hand and his other arm slung over the fence to hold himself up.  They'll do anything for money. 

After wandering a bit we decided to eat at 'Carlos'n Charlies', a pretty wild ride at this place.  The energy of the bar hit us in the face immediately so we decided to stay, the DJ was kickin' out the tunes and the staff were given to spontaneous outbursts of dancing, getting the patrons up out of their seats to join them.  Everyone was pretty happy to be there, and a couple long tables of parties kept the babble at a constant level above the music.  It was a great party atmosphere and great service.  The meal was moderately priced and quite good, but the liquor was expensive.  The food on the bill cost us $26, and the liquor on the tab for 2 drinks was $42!  I ordered a Dos Equis Amber, large of course, and Tanya ordered a Long Island Iced Tea, large, and they came out in these huge freakin' bowls of booze!!  It was more than we expected, especially at $15 and $26 respectively, but not unwelcomed by any means.  We were OK with having a good primer to see the hot dancin' girls of BurlesqueX.  Happy Friday to us!

We made it to the show just in time to get seated before the lights went down.  BurlesqueX is one of the shows I have wanted to see, and one of the cheaper shows you can see in Vegas.  This was Tanya's first experience at a 'strip' show, and I'll add the disclaimer for her benefit that we don't really do the stripclub scene, nor was this a strip show as the name burlesque implies.  This was a dance show with nearly naked women, set to kickass contemporary tunes that rocked the small theatre.  The hard edged music selection and the incredible sound in the room really drove home the show for me.  But I never really got the sense of 'the tease' like you would in a regular strip show.  They didn't strip, or tease, really.  They were pretty much nearly naked the entire time, and the girls danced choreographed numbers set to the tunes.  So the burlesqueness of the show was lost in this Vegassed-up rendition of burlesque and their time-honed recipe for success – dancing hotties to great music for mass-appeal.  It works every time.

There were only 6 performers and they were AMAZING women!  I think everyone can appreciate the pleasing nature of the finer creatures of this world, and you couldn't help but be moved by these fine ladies.  The theatre was small and intimate, maybe 200 people in attendance and a mixed crowd of young and old, male and female, which added up to be an absolutely toothless crowd!  I rocked in my seat to the music, I wanted to scream out to the dancers to let them know how amazing they were, but that would have been way out of line for this audience.  Nobody said much beyond polite clapping at the end of each number.  Most sat stone-faced on their hands or with their arms crossed, looking like they had gone to the wrong show, or uncomfortably not knowing what to do with themselves having nearly-naked women performing so close.  There was even a bachelor party there that sat still and quiet the whole time.  What the...!?  So it was a good, wholesome, nearly-naked dance show with a very respectable crowd.  For $30, it was a good night out with Tan to see some of Vegas' finest, and we both got a great charge out of it.

After the show we decided to spend some money on the machines.  'Research', as Tanya calls it.  She builds and designs the games for the video lottery machines and it is part of her job to know what is out there so she has to play and experience them.  I have gained a better appreciation for what Tanya does in doing her game research with her.  Its a game all on its own to design something appealing to the masses on a casino floor of hundreds of other options for a gambler to spend their money on.  Why would they choose YOUR game?  Its a combo of all things, the artwork and presentation, the math and physics of the game, the sounds and lights, and the slight trickery that makes the player 'think' they have a leg up on the game that make it appealing.  It also helps to have a recognized brand such as Spielo's 'Deal-or-No Deal' game with Howie Mandel as your spokesman.  The games are getting better and I can appreciate that much more now that I've spent some quality 'research' time with Tanya.  We lost some and won some and came out pretty much even on the evening.  And in the case of these VLT machines, if you come out even, then you've won.

We wandered the strip some more and ended up just sitting and watching the people.  Its still surreal for us to be here, to look down Las Vegas Blvd at all those lights, and the thousands of people still walking around after midnight.  Its a beautiful city at night, and it never sleeps.  The party continues 24-7 in every casino around the city.  Time does not exist in the casinos.  Its incredible to be here and have the time to sit and enjoy this time in our lives, with Tanya leaned in against my shoulder and the warm desert night all around us.  Its pretty cool that this is our new reality.

Thanks for reading.

TRJ