Surreal Vegas Life

I just got back from a few days of R&R in Las Vegas in celebration of my wedding anniversary. We were married in Las Vegas (by Elvis) seven years ago, so it's always fun to go back and relive the old times. Some fun stuff happened while I was there:

- We landed right smack in the middle of a serious desert dust storm with 60-70 mph winds so powerful they knocked over a semi on Highway 15 and cut out power to a huge chunk of the city. They were issuing out alerts via cell phones in the area, yet we were trying to descend? The first attempt didn't quite cut the mustard. We dropped out of the sky, got tossed around like a rag doll, only to have the pilot abort that attempt and head back up for another go-around. The second time we came in from a different direction and did a sharp left over the strip to try and land with the wind, rather than against it. That worked, but I was sweating bullets by that point.

- I went shopping for clothes at John Varvatos yesterday and suddenly realized the guy helping me was actually John Varvatos! He was there to help train the staff and was snooping around the sales floor. Imagine shopping at Chanel and having Karl Lagerfeld come out to help you! Or Marc Jacobs at Marc Jacobs! That was pretty insane. I'm a big fan of his clothes and if there's one thing I will spend serious coin on, it's clothes. Needless to say, I went a little nuts.

- My new best friend (and childhood idol) Dean Cameron invited us to be VIPs at his stage play of "The Nigerian Spam Scam Scam" last night, where we found ourselves seated next to none other than Penn Jillette, the world famous magician (half of Penn & Teller). Dean was hilarious and it was even funnier to hear Penn laugh hysterically at the jokes. I would have recognized that husky cackle anywhere.

- After the play, we were waiting around for Dean to grab a late night bite to eat, and it turned out that Penn and his posse were coming along with us. Penn doesn't drink, so we ended up at a 24-7 diner off the strip called Blueberry Hill where we all ordered breakfast food. Since there was no booze on the bill I had no problem covering the tab, which I think shocked Penn a bit because I'm sure he's used to paying. He didn't really understand who I was, or why I was there, which of course made it funnier for me. When's the last time you bought a celebrity breakfast off the strip late night?

-David Driscoll