I'm cheating again and I'm going to backdate this blog. I used to just say sorry I am so late getting around to it, but these days I use my blog like a Time Hop, so I'd rather have a semi-accurate date on it depending on the story I'm telling. But I digress. We just got back from a long weekend in NYC.

We've struggled to find our place there. Different hotels, different neighborhoods, nothing ever really felt right. Well, folks, you'll be as thrilled to hear as I am thrilled to announce - we finally found our home away from home in New York. The Chelsea Hotel. It's this super old building with a rich and storied history of being a haven for artists and musicians. But it's been bought out and turned mostly into a high end hotel. I say mostly because some people still live there, so walking down the hall to our hotel room, we passed two residents' doors. I assume that is occasionally annoying but it probably also basically saved the building so take what you can get. There were three restaurants, and we tried two. Both were fab. And we'd go to the bar at night for courvoisier and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

I'd never been to a Broadway show so Daniel got us tickets to two shows while we were there. One was Oh Mary! starring Meg Stalter. I love her to death and she did an amazing job, but ... eh. It was like bawdy and irreverent for the sake of it. I didn't really think it was that CLEVER or anything. Funny enough and we had a great time watching. But ... nothing like our second show Titanique - the telling of the story of the Titanic from Celine Dion's perspective. It was continuously riotously funny throughout with the best music and dancing. Loved it. Loved it.

What else? We went to the Met. Daniel had tried to gaslight me into believing I'd been to the Met before, but I definitely hadn't. Then we walked through Central Park and later on through Hudson River Park, and yowzah the eye candy. I definitely need to step it up or start taking peptides or something. We also saw Davbart and he and Colin took us out to a more traditional Chinese brunch that was completely chaos and then to the Tenement Museum which was super cool and I would def go back to that.

I don't know if New York changed, or if I changed, but I really enjoy it more now than when I was younger. I was even commenting that like nobody was rude the whole time. To us or otherwise. People on the subway said, "Pardon me," when it was their stop. Staff everywhere just super welcoming and friendly. Idk, it is just so enjoyable now where I didn't feel like that 20 years ago. The only thing I didn't like was that EVERY FUCKING ONE was playing Alicia Key's "New York" on repeat. Every store, every pedicab, everywhere you went, you'd sometimes even hear 2 or 3 renditions going on out of sync simultaneously. PEOPLE! There are SO MANY songs about New York. Mix it up!

Then whoosh, we were back home. A super fun little trip for no particular reason. And one we'll hopefully start to do with more regularity.

Well, I happened to notice that today marks exactly one year since my glorious return to SideshoViD.com. I just did a quick inventory and I made 38 posts in that year. That's actually a lot more than I was expecting. Though I have to say the addition of Instagram-like and Twitter-esque formats really helps boost those numbers. I wish I had thought of that back in 2002.

I came back from Spain, felt fine, went to work for a week, etc. Then Saturday afternoon I started to feel kind of shitty. I was sick right before Spain, so given how quickly I was feeling sick again, I decided to do what I never do and go straight to a doctor to get tested and find out what is ailing me. The doctor just called and said my test results were unusual, so it would be easier to explain over the phone (ALWAYS a good sign). I tested positive concurrently for 3 infections - a coronavirus (not COVID), an influenza bacteria (not the flu), and whooping cough? Fuck me. But the good news is a zpack will wipe out both bacteria at the same time, so I guess it's a good thing I went to the doctor straight away instead of waiting 3 weeks to see if it resolved on its own. Maybe I should do that every time I get sick. Is that what doctors are for?

In other news, I've been making minimal efforts to drink marginally less. One way I have done that occasionally is zebra striping. That's where you alternate one alcoholic drink, then one non alcoholic drink. The problem is, every non alcoholic drink sucks ass. They're just juice. Like, don't serve me a glass of juice and call it a MOCKTAIL. That is infuriating. So I went on a quest of my own to make a zero proof cocktail at home. Problem is, fake "liquors" are even worse. They're not even juice, they're just tea. Like literally a weak brewed spicy tea and they call it a whiskey replacement. It's insulting.

Well, folks, I am pleased to report I finally found a good one. I was talking through it with AI, because obviously, and I told it I wanted the bite, the flavor, the viscosity, the burn, the aroma, like everything. And it came up with 3 suggestions. We happened to be at Total Wine this weekend so I bought one of them. I told Daniel, "If this sucks, I'm giving up entirely." But it didn't suck. It's awesome. It's St. Agrestis Phony Negroni. And it pretty much tastes exactly like a real Negroni. Very satisfying and very reassuring that I should check out the other two AI suggestions and maybe get a repertoire going. We'll see, but I'll keep you all posted if I don't die first.

The last destination on our whistle stop tour of Spain was Madrid. Barcelona was big. Granada was cute. Seville was medieval. And Madrid was hip and sexy. It immediately had a different feel from the other cities. There were also rainbow flags ev-er-y-where. I dunno if it was just the neighborhood we were in, but it seemed like every bit of the city that we saw was the same. There was even a sex club next to our fancy hotel. We got brave one night and went in to check it out. It seemed like the more raunchy activities were all downstairs and we could just sit upstairs, fully clothed, in the tiki lounge and just have a drink. But the guy at the door didn't speak English and we couldn't really ask and then we got scared and ran away.

The first night we had reservations at the oldest continuously operational restaurant in the world, Botin. We got a set down in the basement which seemed more desirable than sitting upstairs. Daniel had eaten there many years ago and wanted to see if the grilled prawns were still the best thing ever, but after we ordered they came back and said no prawns tonight. Boo. So we both got the suckling pig that I read online was the most famous dish. And it was really good. As we were leaving the host guy said, "Did you see the wine cellar?" And we said no and he said oh you can't leave without seeing it. So back downstairs we went, and then down another level into a dark cramped brick covered tunnel filled with dusty wine bottles. And he kind of gestured, "Over here, there's more." And as he did he rubbed his hand on my crotch, and I thought, oh no! Don't acknowledge it, he'll get embarrassed! It's so cramped in here! And then it happened again. And again. And again. And then he put his hand on the small of my back and then ran his hands down and grabbed my butt. Haha. At that point, I looked at him and said, "Ohohokay, buddy. I think that's enough." I was SO excited to tell Daniel that I got groped. As we walked up the stairs from the cellar, I turned back to him and we both said at the same time, 'I just got molested!" This dude was doing it to him too! Like WHAT did he think was going to happen, best case scenario in a crowded tourist trap restaurant. So funny. We've both STILL GOT IT!

We did yet another tour in Madrid and our tour guide was awesome. He's even written books on Spain and gave us each a copy I look really forward to reading. We learned a bit more about the flip side of Spanish history after the Moors with the Spanish monarchy. This one is of note because they inbred SO fucking much that the later sovereigns were like deformed and sterile and it was a whole thing. We went through the Prado and our guide knew just about everything there was to know about just about every painting in there. It was really impressive and we had a wonderful day of learning. My fav.

The next dinner was at a Michelin star restaurant. We weren't sure we'd be up for it after so many nights of eating out in a row, but it ended up being a great idea. My dick didn't get groped, but my palate did get challenged. So many dishes I had ZERO idea what it even was that I was eating. And we paired it with a bottle of Krug, a nasty little habit we've developed, so that made it even more fun.

The Reina Sofia museum is full of modern art. It was sorta more inspiring than the Prado because I felt like I could do all of it. In fact, I might try. Instead of finding art for our house, what if I just made forgeries of existing pieces. It would be fun to try anyway. Our final dinner of the trip we just could not stomach more tapas, so we made a few aperol spritzes in the "red level" lounge at the hotel, then walked over to Popeye's and had a very disappointing chicken sandwich. The day we didn't fly home until 4pm, which was kind of sweet. Slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, took our time getting to the airport, and when we finally got home it was already time for bed. Win win win. All in all a great trip!

Our driver took us about an hour and a half directly to our Seville hotel. We did the Hotel Colon Check in, and then headed out a little, but again we were a little limited by the temperatures. Just so damn hot in the middle of the day. And the Spanish don't really subscribe to the religion of air conditioning. Our room was just slightly air conditioned. We actually spent the first night sleeping with no covers. But then we cranked the air down to 60 and left it running with the curtains closed nonstop the remainder of our stay and got it down to serviceable temperatures. I'm sure the maids were absolutely horrified at the waste, but the building just wasn't built to withstand such high temperatures ... and neither was I.

I told Daniel there damn well better be some feliz compleaños balloon in the room when we arrived, because the next day was my 45th birthday. And he delivered! Haha. There were some balloons (most of them inflated), a little tart, and a bottle of Freixenet! I mean, I didn't drink it, but it was a nice decoration. Freixenet, freixenet, ooh lah lahhhhh.

Naturally we had another guide who showed us all the times the muslims built something and then the xristians took it over. The food in Seville was pretty legit. Our first night we had tapas (obvi) but they were like elevated and delicious. One was a shrimp toast that we couldn't stop talking about. Then my birthday dinner was a tasting menu overlooking the river and I think that was maybe the best meal of the entire trip.

The next day is what we call a "David Day." A David Day consists of absolutely nothing scheduled. It allows for a day of rest and doing absolutely nothing, maybe sleeping. Or it allows for more spontaneous plans to be pursued. This time, we saw a modern market building called Las Setas (the mushrooms) on our tour and saw that they had a "modern" Flamenco show and went online and got tickets. The setting certainly was modern with lots of projectors and color changing LEDs, but the Flamenco was just Flamenco. So I felt like the light show kind of detracted more than helped, but it was still really good. And our tickets came with a free drink - bonus!

Where to begin? I guess, first, I should mention that I'm reaching out to you all from a two-story Starbucks in Seattle, WA. Not three days after I returned home from my DC/NYC vacation, I boarded a plane for a four-hour flight to the great northwest.

When I was sitting in the terminal waiting for my flight, I noticed a particularly ill-behaved toddler screaming his head off. I just knew he would be sitting near me. And I was right. This little fucker was directly across the aisle from me ... and he did not shut the fuck up the entire flight. He was screaming for the sake of screaming. Now here's what really bothers me. His mother catches my glare, smiles, chuckles, shakes her head ... like she's expecting me to be the same, like, "Eh! What'reyagonnado?!" and ruffle the kid's hair. I'll tell you what you should do. You should smack that kid so fucking hard that the next time he ever thinks about screaming on a crowded airplane, the resulting Pavlovian headache is crippling enough to quell that impulse. Good lord, people, it's bad enough you decided to breed, then decided to do a poor job in raising your children, but at least have the foresight not to bring them in public. No one thinks your kid is cute but you.

Except my nieces. They're all adorable.

So Seattle kinda sucks. The weather is pretty kickass, but I'm bored out of my gourd. I don't know anyone here and my room doesn't have internet access until I move hotels on Thursday. I really just want to be home, but that won't happen until September 1. Somebody call the whambulance.

My trip to DC was spectacular. Daniel and I got along famously, something that had mildly concerned me before our departure. While we spend nearly every hour outside of school and work together, that doesn't always give you a good indication of how you'll handle 24/7 with a person. But it was not even an issue. We spent every night in DC gay bar hopping. We got to meet up with Mr. K■■■■■■ and my dear friend JonS■■■. DC is a pretty cool city, but it's missing that essential pretentious attitude that makes going out really fun. Nobody dresses up. They wear flip-flops and camo shorts and sleeveless Ts out the bar. What's the fun in that? Daniel and I had to get all fancied up and go out with our sunglasses on to show em how we do. Daniel's dad had a nice apartment in Dupont Circle with a huge terrace. The terrace was surrounded on three sides by a tall brick wall, and the fourth side was a rod iron fence. So every night when we were smashed and getting home, we'd climb the rod iron fence to sit on top of the brick wall and smoke cigarettes. Every single night one of us got hurt. Daniel tore his foot open. I have a puncture wound on each knee. You'd think we would learn our lesson after a few nights, but we managed to avoid any lessons learned.

New York was a b-last. I still don't like the city, but I definitely like the time I had there. We stayed with Daniel's friend David (so bear with me during this story, I'm not speaking in the third person). David showed us as much as he could in the short weekend we were there. We went to some good bars, but they were all so fucking packed. I can't imagine paying 8 times as much for an apartment 1/4 the size just to spend every night packed into bars so tightly that it's hard to even drink. And if you go to New York, make sure you take a lot of cash. IF places even took credit cards, they all had minimums. 5 dollars at most stores, 50 at some bars, and one bar even said they wouldn't swipe my card more than once when I told them to just run it. I suppose if you're marking up alcohol 800% customer service isn't at the forefront of your concerns. But like I said, we still managed to have a blast. One day we went on a Project Runway tour of the city. We went to Bryant Park, and Parsons New School for Design, and the Red Lobster that Santino made fun of Tim Gunn and Andre about. We went to Mood, the fabric store they always shop at and had a fabric scavenger hunt. We managed to find 3 of the fabrics that they've used on the show this season. Too exciting. We also went to the flagship Macy's and they had a window display with all of the winning outfits so far this season. It was fun to look at them up close. By far one of my favorite parts of the vacation. The other day we just kind of strolled around Central Park. Thank you thank you thank you to our most gracious host and newest Sidesho-Viewer, David. Can't wait to see you again soon!

We did so much walking on our trip. I really felt like my legs got a good workout, since they haven't had any recently. We also took a train from DC to NYC. That was a first for me. I like the train. The train is kind of like what I assume airplanes would be like if there weren't assholes trying to blow them up all the time. You just kind of get on where you need to get on and then get off when you need to get off. It just made a lot of sense to me.

I have to apologize for the length of this blog. I had a lot to say and nothing else to do in this fucking city. I'm bored. If anybody knows somebody who lives in Seattle, or knows somebody who knows somebody PLEASE get in contact with me. I would kill for some company. Alright, I'll update more when I have internet in my room. Later, bitches.

Hello again, dear friends. I have returned unscathed from Sin City. My wallet, however, did not escape the inevitable. All said I lost exactly $300. The same amount that I went there with in my wallet intending to lose, so you could say I did alright. I didn't lose anymore than I wanted to, like I thought I might be tempted to do. In actuality, I won a lot of money over the course of the trip, I was even ahead at one point, but whats the fun in being in Vegas if you aren't going to gamble? Hence, I lost it back to the casinos. Dirty Vegas. So my apologies to everyone who commented on the last blog. None of you get the $100 I promised.

Recap -- The long story.

Sunday: 1:40am, Me, Ryan, Todd and David all pile into Ryan's car to drive to Austin where our flight departs from. We all did our best to nap a little before that, but it didn't ever really happen. We arrive at Ryan's sister's house in Austin about 2 hours later and she drives us to the airport. We got there plenty early since our flight didn't leave until 6am. We first flew to luxurious DFW airport ... which was kind of a bummer since we've all been there countless times, but we weren't there for long. We actually had like this 4 mile trek to get to our next gate, but luckily were able to flag down one of those motorized carts.
We arrived in Vegas around 8 in the morning due to the time difference and took a cab to our hotel. We stayed at the Aladdin. Our rooms weren't ready yet cause it wasn't 11, so we checked our bags and went to gamble. The first thing I did was put some money into a dollar slot and win 40 bucks. That was pretty exciting. I then proceeded to hop from slot machine to slot machine to find my favorite. And boy did I. Turns out I'm not only good at Wheel of Fortune in real life, but also dominate the slot machine version. That was probably my best game. We hit up a few casinos that day, one of which being the Golden Nugget. There we had the coolest dealer named Graham at the $5 blackjack. He taught us how to play better ... when to hit when to stay and he was fun to talk to. I ended up being at that table for a good 3 hours off of the same 40 bucks. At one point I was up another 40 on top of that, but ended up leaving the table dead even. At that point, I was even on the trip.
We then went back to the hotel, got all cleaned up, ate at PF Changs (our first meal in about 24 hours) and got ready for our limo ride. I was wearing a shirt I had purchased earlier in the evening, so in actuality I didn't leave Vegas completely empty handed. Our limo took us up and down the strip ... and then a tour of all the seedy strip establishments in Vegas, but we didn't actually go inside any of them. Our final destination was the Hard Rock. That place was pretty damn sweet. However, the smallest tables they had were $10. So I start off all confident and play $50 worth of blackjack and lose it very quickly. I was kind of upset about that since I didn't even get to play more than 10 minutes, so I went and found Wheel of Fortune. It wasn't as nice to me at Hard Rock, so I lost 40 bucks. I did however get to see Chris Kattan walk right by me. That made my damn night.
Since you only get free alcohol when you're gambling in a casino, I essentially spent 90 bucks for 2 beers, which was ridiculous. Todd was also way down on the day, so we decided that instead of paying 45 bucks for a beer, we might as well sit at the bar and pay 4 bucks per beer, which we did for a while. It was a much better time than throwing away your money for nothing. So that was the first day.

Monday: Discouraged by our loses the day before, me and Todd decided to hit up the pool the next day when we woke up, so as to delay our inevitable next loss. David joined us and we sun bathed for a while. The air in Vegas is so dry though that it'll sap your eyes of any moisture they have ever had. My eyes were almost completely colored in blood red. Scared me pretty good, so I bought some Clear Eyes and they returned to normal. I had to rewet them several times a day though. Then we went to a couple of casinos. I don't really need to name them all, if you're really that curious, just let me know. One I will talk about is Excalibur, cause we robbed that place blind. All of us came out of there ahead ... something that only happened at Excalibur.
We first hit up the horse races. It was this game that had 5 little horses in this little race track and you'd bet on which 2 horses would come in first, and each combination had different odds for each race. And you have like 30 seconds to place your bets (a quarter each) and then it takes another 30 seconds at least for the horses to get around the track. And you can yell at them like 'GO 3 GO!' and its funny cause they're mechanical. I liked that game cause it took a long time to lose your money if you were only betting a quarter at a time. Everyone else got bored with it after a while, but I didn't. Plus it was getting me a plethora of free drinks ... all of which were Pina Coladas. I decided to see how many I could drink in one day, which may sound unhealthy, but they give you very, very, very weak ass drinks if you're playing cheap games, so I didn't even get drunk despite the 8 pinas I had. The moral of this story though, is that I put a quarter on horses 3 and 4 to win with 162 to 1 odds, and it fucking hit. I was so excited. Me and the guy next to me were high fiving and yelling. He bet 10 on it so he won nearly 400 dollars. I only bet 1 so I got around 40 dollars. But it was still exhilarating. I left after that and robbed the Excalibur.
Man, my fingers are getting tired. Almost done though, bear with me. After that we went to Casino Royale and I pissed away all of my winnings at the craps table. Turns out that I don't really like craps. I lost at it almost every time I played. Casino Royale was lame. We went back to our hotel and got ready to go out that night then. Me and Todd sat down at Wheel of Fortune before we left, and on my first pull I got a spin and won 200 quarters. Cha-ching. On Todd's third pull he got a spin and won 100 quarters. I then decided to play some more dollar slots and won 10 more dollars. Then we both played Monopoly on the nickel slots and I won 6 and Todd won 5 bucks. I was on a roll and so was Todd. We were feeling good as we left to go out that night.
First we stopped by Bellagio to see the water show. It was set to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." It was pretty impressive. After that we went downtown. That was a bad night for almost all of us. We went into Fitzgerald's to play some $5 blackjack. I threw down $60 to have it changed into $5 chips. Over the course, then, of 12 hands, I won once, and promptly lost that 5 bucks. So in effect, I really lost like 13 hands in a row, and I was so pissed. The dealer sucked too, she wasn't fun to talk to or lose to. It was probably the only time on the trip that I actually got upset about losing. I got up and took a walk around the casino. Everyone else got robbed by this bitch too. I swear she had so many blackjacks and stuff. It was absolutely ridiculous. Needless to say my winning streak was over. We went back to Aladdin and drank some more beers that I went ahead and just paid for.

Tuesday: The next day we had to wake up a little bit early to check out of our hotel rooms. By a little bit early I mean 11:00. We checked our bags and went to get some last minute gambling in at the Aladdin. I had 70 dollars left over and not much time so I decided to go balls to the wall on dollar slots. First thing I did was play some San Francisco game and win 50 bucks right off the bat. Then I hit Wheel of Fortune. I decided to put all of my dollar coins (80 dollars worth) into the machine and not cash out my credits. So if I lost, I lose, if I won, I won. I wasn't going to play anymore credits. Well, I put in 80 and I took out 80. Big deal, so I found a different Wheel of Fortune game that I was feeling good about. I hit the spin a few times and won 50 bucks, 30 bucks, 30 bucks, 20 bucks. In the end I was left with a bucket totaling around 150 dollars.
I didn't have much time left, but enough to still be gambling. And I could have left with 150 in my pocket, but I still would have been down and I hadn't hit it big yet. And it really takes some startup capital to hit it big, so I decided to go for it. I sat down at a few more dollar slots and slowly pissed away all of my winnings until I was left with nothing. And thats how you find me here today. Completely broke. Shit. Dirty Vegas. Oh well, it was a completely friggin blast.
We caught our plane then to LA, which didn't make much sense, but oh well. We got into LAX late and our flight to Austin was about to leave. So we had to literally sprint the entire length of LAX to get there on time. Needless to say it was a little bit painful for your arthritic, crippled author. We made it though and got to Austin around 10:something. Time zones really mess with me. We ended up in College Station around 2am and went to bed.

And that, my friends is the end of my Vegas Vacation story. Though you might not believe me, I didn't document every event on this blog, so if you still want to know more, just let me know, I'll talk your ear off. If you read this whole thing, consider yourself among the most loyal of Sidesho-Viewers. Thanks ... and gig this.