Las Vegas, in daylight, is actually quite a sad place, and not dream-like in any way whatsoever. Ironically, the bright lights at night do a great job of hiding what, in reality, is a pretty run down, dirty shit hole. The hobo-sized beers you can buy at every Walgreen’s along the strip probably help out a little too. On our third hungover morning, we decided we should get out of the city for day. We figured we could marvel at an engineering feat that exemplifies the triumph of the human spirit, and man’s adversity to overcome the problems presented by the natural world. I wonder if there’s any place near by we could do that. Perhaps a local dam of some type?
But first, we’ll need a car.
At the Avis Rent-A-Car, located in Venice, apparently – if the hotel and surroundings I was currently standing in are to be be trusted, my Electrician demanded that we get a convertible, with a small, terribly underpowered engine for a car it’s size. So we got a convertible, with a small, terribly underpowered engine for a car it’s size.
For sustinace on this adventure, we decided to waver slightly from the all burger American dream diet, and hit a Del Taco.
I won’t taco-bout how delicious it was (groan) but these were nacho (ughhh) average fast food tacos. I could guac (thin ice Jay…) about this meal all day, but I’ll stop just in queso (fuck it, I’m out) you’re getting annoyed. I stole about 30 packets of their various sauces, which currently live in the butter dish in my refrigerator.
With bellies full of Fish Tacos, we were off.
God-damnit all. I’m done, I swear
For one night, The Ramblin’ Boys of Pleasure (Which is what I’ve decided we should call ourselves, as I’m getting tired of writing ‘my Account, Electrician, and I’) decided we’d class up ourselves a bit, and head to Gordon Ramsey’s BURGR. This is clearly what 3 single males on a vacation/savage journey define as fancy. Also, after those Del Taco tacos we needed to get back on the burger.
I was too drunk off the $14 blood orange cosmopolitan pictured above to take a picture of the actual burger, but fuck was it delicious.
Me, In Gordon Ramsay’s yelling voice: “This burger is so facking greasy and full of oil, that Americer is trying to invade it!” is something I wish I could say out loud about this burger, but I can’t. It was wrapped in bacon, and topped with some of the best pulled pork I’ve had in my life time. I tip my hat to you G-Rams.
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I had strange nervous feelings on the final morning in Las Vegas, which was spent watching a Bar Rescue marathon (side note: fuck that show) It was more than the usual ‘sads‘ you get the morning you head home from a vacation. Is it the flight? Is it the fact that my phone will no longer hold a charge for some reason? or something else? Shit really hit the fan mere days before this savage journey began. I had the feeling nothing would be the same again when I got home. I was fairly certain I would be going home to a virtually empty apartment, filled with nothing but boxes containing my few possessions and memories.
I thought the past few years of my life had not only been a wild time, but I felt that they were just a small picture of the shape of things to come. Whatever it was, it felt like just the beginning. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of carefully written letters from the heart or Alkaline Trio song lyrics or fading memories of how things all began can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world with someone else. Whatever it meant.…
The true history between two people is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit and the way they act and present themselves to each other, as well as other people. But even without being completely sure of that ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy and connection between those two people, comes to an end, for reasons that neither person really understands at the time—and which never really explain what actually happened. Often, people can never return from these events.
My central memories of her seem to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—often during a trip somewhere, or at shows, or a weekend at a cabin in the middle of nowhere. We were often wearing leather jackets – sometimes matching and sometimes not, but not ever feeling the slightest bit ridiculous if they were matching. When in the vehicle, be it a Bombardier Q400 aimed somewhere at the horizon. Or a TTC street car rolling across Queen West, with it’s hipsters over flowing onto the side walks outside of bars disguised as restaurants smoking $14 packs of Belmont Milds. Or a 2001 Mazda Protege ripping through some winding backwoods road surrounded by the dynamite walls, all while constantly checking Google Maps to make sure we hadn’t missed the turn we never recognize or remember. I was never quite sure of exactly where we would eventually end up at the other end – and that should be part of the excitement. We, or maybe just I, was always stalling at taking the next step, despite the numerous best laid plans to do so, but I was absolutely certain that no matter where, or which way we went, or how we got there, we would come to a place where everything just felt right: No doubt at all about that…
There was a mild madness in a lot of areas in our lives, at any hour. If not family stuff, then work stuff or friend drama.… you can find sparks anywhere if you look hard enough. But, there was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing together was right, that we had this, and that we were winning.…
And that, I think, was the handle—that our sense of inevitable victory in the battle of Us vs. Everybody Else. Not in any mean or ‘we’re better than you’ sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy and connection would simply prevail over everything else. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…
So now, less than five months after everything fell apart, I could look out the east facing window of my room at The Flamingo, looking back towards home, and with eyes clouded by 4 days of Hamburgers and Tecate, I can almost see the high-water mark—that place where that high and beautiful wave finally broke and rolled back.
Holy shit.
Anyway, The final burger on our savage journey? A Carl’s Jr. at LAS.
Carls Jr. – “It’s like Burger King, only saltier”
That’s it! Guys, I think I’ve got it…Hamburgers. The American Dream, is hamburgers.
Bury Me In Vans 
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