Friday, December 21, 2007

Weekend of 12/15 report (Part 2)

All right, I'm going to cut to the chase here and get to it. I camped in my room at the Imperial Palace for about two hours watching Sportscenter and getting liquored up on some Citrus Vodka and 7-up before venturing onto the strip around 11pm. My destination was the MGM Grand and the club within its bowels--Studio 54.

Now, for anybody who has never been to vegas, it's a very curious thing--all the hotels look pretty close together. It looks like you could walk from Treasure Island to Mandalay Bay (South end of the new part of the strip to north end) in like twenty minutes. Well let me tell you, that is sheer fallacy. The MGM Grand looks close to the Imperial Palace much in the same way that it looks like you could reach up and pull the moon from the night sky. It looks close, but it aint.

In vintage non-thinking Solo Clubber fashion, I treked through the freezing cold with drink in hand (great thing about Vegas--public alcohol consumption) from the Imperial Palace to the MGM Grand. It was nearly midnight by the time my frostbitten ass rolled up to the MGM (to be fair, I stopped at O'Shea's for about 15 minutes, just long enough to lose $100). But hell, it's Vegas, people don't even start going to the clubs until 1am, right?

The nice thing about 54 is no massive line to wait in. It's one of the oldest super clubs in vegas--when i say "oldest" I mean it's been around for like 7 years. Which is an eternity in club years. It's like the Bea Arthur of Vegas Clubs, but it's nice not having to wait. Tao, Jet, LAX, Pure...the newer clubs all have much to recommend them but the lines are insurmountable at times.  Tao especially is tough...you are not getting in there without chicks in tow. 

In this case, I wanted instant gratification, I wanted to get into the club immediately. Studio 54 delivered on that. It was the only gratification -- instant or otherwise -- I would get all night.

A couple of $10 drinks later, I'm scanning the place and it's looking pretty grim. Ratio sucks, and the chicks that are there have already attracted several douchebags like flies to shit. Since it was only like 12:45, I was ready to cut out to Rum Jungle at Mandalay Bay. But I figured, "what the fuck, let's cut through the dancefloor and "troll for call-outs" (i.e. attention, hits, looks, etc.).

Now what happened next was a good thing.  But watch how quickly I shitfucked it.

I walk like ten feet onto the dance floor and all of a sudden I get laser locked by a blonde's eyeballs, and since eye contact is the whole point of the thing I approached her as nonchalantly and soberly as possible (I was already a little unsteady from the grog).

Now they say that a girl usually knows within 5 minutes of meeting a dude whether or not she'll fuck him.  I actually think that's wrong; they actually decide before they go out that night --maybe even subconciously--whether they'll fuck any guy that night.  If she decides yes, then all dudes she meets that night are essentially auditioning for the right to be that guy.  

So as you'll see at the end of this, once I invariably fumble the ball like usual, the question will be either whether i failed the audition or there was no role to audition for.  You be the judge.

So anyways, Solo Clubber is not a bad dancer--having been to dance clubs 600+ necessitates learning to move somewhat.  We dance for maybe 5 minutes before I make voice contact (always a tough move...gotta be something funny). Being the social genius I am, I think I said "Hi." Anyways we dance for awhile and things seem to be going pretty well. She's 23, she's in Vegas for the first time, she's from Kansas, she's with her friends, staying at the Tropicana, blah, blah, blah.

Now even though I didn't realize it, this was the key point of the night. Choose your own adventure; what should I do?

1) Tell her that I'm leaving
2) Dance with her some more
3) Tell her I'll see her later
4) Buy her a drink

Monday Morning QB says go with 3, but numbskull I am, I went with 4. In the history of time, buying a chick a drink after 10 minutes hardly ever closes any deal, unless you look like Tom Selleck circa 1982. It just gives her control and makes me look like a fucking puppy dog. But we went off the dance floor and got a drink.

But hold on, that is only the first of my litany of fuck-ups.

I did ask her if she wanted to go to the casino, which wasn't a horrible move on my part, especially since she said yes. And we sat outside in some casino lounge (can't remember name) and chatted a bit (another gaffe by me). She sat on my lap and we macked a little bit (some tongue) so of course I'm thinking there's something going on here.  But you'd think I would've kept going with that.  But no, I had this genius idea: "Hey let's go gamble!"

Now, I have pulled this maneuver several times in Vegas in many situations and very seldom does it ever lead to anything positive. Because what happens a lot is that usually the people gambling at 3am are dirtbag dudes that cant get inside the club because either a) they're dressed like shit and wearing sports gear, sandals, etc. or b) feel weird about solo clubbing (heh). So anyways, she's getting hit on by other guys at the table while I'm trying to teach her craps. I'm betting my cash while she watches.

Now, the reason why I really enjoy craps -- and the reason why I know chicks enjoy it -- is that you get to roll the dice. Control your own destiny, so to speak. Chicks love the action of that, they love the power, everybody's watching them, they're the center of attention. So naturally she wanted to roll.

Now as if my ship wasn't already sinking beneath the weigh of all my blunders, the following blunder was the U-Boat that torpedoed by destroyer:

I gave her chips to play with.

Now this is a blunder for several reasons, but the main one is I didn't need to do it. The dealers would have gladly let her roll in my stead even if she herself wasn't betting. So I am a complete and total dumbass for that and pretty much shot myself in the foot there.

And of course she goes on a hot streak and hits the point like 5 times (if you don't understand what the "point" is in craps, google it). Now she's the hit of the table. She hardly remembered I'm there anymore.

I'm getting depressed all over again just thinking about it. Suffice to say, I think she ended up winning close to $100 (off my $10). The only positive for me was that I recouped some of my O'Shea's losses, maybe like $70 of it (now I can get that surgery I always wanted).

The night ended at 5am when she said she had to go back to the room.  Seeing my night going down the drain, I asked her if she wanted to come back with me, assuming she'd probably say no.  She did. The reasoning made no sense, something about having to pack up even though her flight wasn't until the next evening.

Scoreboard says I'm down by 3 touchdowns and there's :02 on the clock.  All I could do at this point was try to be graceful and walk her to the hotel.  One thing I've learned about situations like these is that you can't change minds once they're made up.  Either I didn't make the cut or she wasn't looking for anything that night.

About the only smart thing I did was all night was hail a cab back to the Imperial Palace. I was too dejected to make that all-too-familiar walk back home in frigid weather.  Solo.

But such is the legacy of Solo Clubber.  Nights alone with just a bucket of lube and my online porn collection.

Weekend of 12/15 report (Part 1)

It's ironic that on this blog in which I am planning on chronicling all of my ridiculously pathetic solo club excursions which inevitably end up in failure, the first weekend I have to mention was not actually a complete crash-and-burn. More like crash-and-mildly-smoke-but-walk-away. Which is extremely rare, because usually you can set your watch on the crash-and-burn.

It's also ironic that I only went out on Saturday and actually stayed home on Friday. I know I said in my last post that I usually go out "every Friday and Saturday" and normally I do, but last weekend was an abnormal weekend. Allow me to explain.

My company X-mas party was on Thursday night. I work at a medium-sized media company in LA and we had a good year, so they rented out a swank Hollywood club for the occasion and seeing how I always like to check out the clubs, I was in like Flynn for that. Especially with the free booze.

Now, I don't want to go into this too much, because the whole dating-at-work thing is an entire 10-part blog by itself and I am steadfast against it. But suffice to say, when you get approximately 300 20/30-something people together with free firewater...well temptation can rear it's ugly head. Unfortunately for me, it reared it's ugly head in the form of drinking 2 gin-and-sodas, a screwdriver, 2 captain-diet cokes and probably about 4 shots. Fortunately, I was so lit from this I didn't really know Adam from Adam (I work with two Adams) and wasn't doing the Solo Clubber act. Unfortunately, this was Thursday night--I had to be at work the next morning.

And as anybody who has imbibed in bottomless liquor will tell you, the night's sleep that you get after is not very restful at all. Especially if you're a dumbass and forget to drink any H2O whatsoever. As a matter of fact, scientific studies performed on Cal State Chico freshman determined (not really) that drunken stupor sleep is only worth about half as much as real sleep. That is, you have to multiply however many hours you slept by 0.5. I'm no math major, but even I know that 6 hours X 0.5 equals 3 hours. Which I didn't need to calculate because that's how much sleep I felt like I got when I woke up Friday morning.

Anyways, following a full day of work on Friday I collapsed in bed within 5 minutes of getting home at 7pm. So my precious Friday night was shot just like that.

On the plus side, it was also a cheap night. Which is rare in a place like LA. But again, more on that in another blog.

The moral of the story is that it's not necessarily a bad thing to get restful non-drunken sleep on Friday night when you have a room at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas on Saturday night. And you have to drive to Las Vegas alone to get to said room.

Oh, and did I mention that I had my own room at IP? I figured I wouldn't have to spell that out, considering the nature of this blog and its title. Because clearly, if Solo Clubber is pathetic and weird enough to go out to dance clubs on Saturday night in Las Vegas, than I am easily pathetic and weird enough to segue to Solo Hotel Guest and get my own room, because that's only about 1/10th as weird, even if it is still a little weird.

So as you've probably guessed, the whole point of getting the solo room is to give me false hope that maybe somehow the room will no longer be solo once I get back to it after a night of shenanigans and debauchery at the LV clubs.

Well in this case, as is usually the case, I did come home empty-handed at 5am (so my hand could come in handy later) after a heady night at the MGM Grand and Studio 54.

Looking back on it, it's so obvious why that happened. Painfully obvious. So obvious that it's almost amazing that a guy that's been making a fool of himself as long as Solo Clubber could possibly bungle things so completely yet again. But it happened.

My only hope is that by detailing the sordid string of events through this newfangled internet thingy I can hopefully somehow prevent somebody else (if there is anybody else) from so thoroughly botching things up the way I so completely and so successfully did.

Details tomorrow...

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

WHO THE HELL CLUBS SOLO?!

Okay, so if this Diablo Cody chick can strip in Minnesota for a year, lap dance on some dirtbags, write a blog about it and get famous, anybody can do it, right?

I don't know what I'm going to do with "Confessions of a solo clubber." I don't think there is much of an audience for this, I mean, stripping is so much more glamorous than solo clubbing, which entails pretty much exactly what you would imagine.

Clubbing. Solo.

Clearly I am some kind of masochist to subject myself to such a thing. Yes, but once you start doing something you know you probably shouldn't be doing, and do it for a long time -- perhaps longer than anybody else in the history of that thing -- well, it still sucks. But in some ways it becomes much more than just that thing.

I would say since approximately 2002 I have been going out to dance clubs and bars (mostly clubs) pretty much every single friday and saturday night. That's about six years of going out 100+ times a year. And most of that has been alone, without wingmen, or wingwomen for that matter.

It's not quite as impressive as Cal Ripken's consecutive-game run, but it is a streak of sorts that probably maybe possibly is one of the top such streaks of all-time.

Now to be fair I do occasionally take respites from the drudgery of going out. Maybe one Friday or Saturday a month I'm tired or just want to watch TV so I say "fuck it" and stay home. Any maybe one other time that month I go out with friend(s), since even the king of loners has to venture out with compadres occasionally. But for the most part, every Friday and Saturday night, I'm hitting the dance clubs, loading up on the liquid courage, and trying to pick up on chicks by myself.

Though I have to confess that "pick up" is probably the wrong description. Because "pick up" is a verb that generally describes a guy or gal actively seeking to engage the opposite sex with the implicit goal of going home with them and having a sexual encounter. I'm not sure that is necessarily an accurate description for me though, at least all of the time. Because the truth is I go out some nights and though I might be in a mega dance club with 1500 people, I might go the whole night without conversing with anybody at all. I don't think linguists would necessarily call that picking up. Of course, other nights I might go out and engage several chicks in conversation to no avail. And then even other nights I might talk to a girl, dance with her all night long, go with her back to her apartment and then have her hand me $10 so I can hail a cab and leave (true story).

The failures are too frequent to count. As a matter of fact, if I were a baseball player, it would amount to the worst batting average of all time. Even worse than Luis Mendoza of the infamous sub-.200 batting average.

However, the difference is if Mendoza had played as many games as the aforementioned Ripken, no matter how shitty his average, he still would have gotten some hits with all of those at-bats. Bloop singles, seeing-eye grounders, weird bad-hop shots...even the worst hitters get their hits. And that's what happens to me. Yeah, 95% of the time a come home at 4am empty handed (correction: with dick in my hand). But when you go out approximately 100 times a year, that still means having sex with 5 girls annually. Not too good and average in baseball. But you know what, in life, guys that are not famous or cool will take 5 girls a year.

So I don't exactly know what this blog will become yet. It probably will start by being a blow-by-blow account of my weekly shenanigans of going out on Fridays and Saturdays. What works, what doesn't work, what should work but doesn't, what shouldn't work but does, and what happens sometimes without explanation regardless of whether you even trying to make something work.

This could be an interesting blog that I will look back at years from now in amusement. Or I might quit it in a week.