Australia is a Long Haul

Not Chicken Stuff

Like many people, I’ve made the stomach churning, buttock clenching decision to pack up my belongings into a burlap sack and emigrate to Australia. Statistically, 60 people a day move here. From my own experience, another statistic is that at least 20 people a day will ask you ‘Why are you bothering?’. For some people, the decision to start a new life with my partner of 5 years is the equivalent of shitting on the Queen. During her Christmas speech. Whilst blowing raspberries to the tune of God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols. I’ve found I’ve had to be selective about how I explain why I’m going. Mention the weather  and I’m told it’s too hot in ‘bloody Australia’. Mention the potential to live a better way of life, I’ve inadvertently brought down the entire infrastructure of Great Britain and it’s glorious empire.

That said, it was during the second of the two long haul flights that I started to side with the pompous arses.

It’s been about 4 years since my last long haul flight and I think I sweetened the memories over the years. Oh it was lovely. Quantas economy seats are very spacious. You dine off gold trays. You get rude massages off the stewardesses. The very fact I thought these things suggests to me that there is something fundamentally wrong with my cognitive processes and I should seek immediate attention with a bonce specialist.

This year, within two hours of the first flight to Australia, my brain sent signals to all interested parties in my body that there was no way on God’s feted Earth I would be sleeping despite it being an overnight flight. As such, I entrusted my very being with the in-flight entertainment system.

As with all in-flight systems, most of my enjoyment comes out of trying to spot all the instances of editing that come with watching films on a plane. Back in the day, we would all sit on a plane, with orange headphones attached to ears like cybrmen headsets and watch the same episode of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em as everyone else. Nowadays, you can watch what you want when you went within certain predetermined rules. What these rules are, I’ve yet to work out. For example, during the recent summer blockbuster The A-Team, I was allowed to see guns fired, people punched, but no actual explosions. Swearing was cut down to comedic  dubbing.

‘Sir this is chicken STUFF.’

‘You think this is chicken STUFF. When I’m done they’ll think this chicken STUFF is chicken salad.’

Meanwhile, watching my 12^th episode of the Simpsons in a row, I was treated to a scene of Bart Simpson, dressed as Johnny Rotton, dispelling everything as being ‘Bollocks’. Okay, yes, they were using bollocks in that way Americans tend to do when they want to use what they think is typical British slang – Alright, you wanker, this here is bollocks now slag off! – however, the irony that I got more swearing in 22 minutes than a whole action movie was not lost on me.

At first it was amusing, then annoying and then like everyone else I became a drone to the system. Clutching the remote in sweaty palms, I mumbled the mantra as everyone else on the plane; ‘Ooh, that’s only just come out. FIVE episodes of Friends?!  Oh Ambassador, truly you are spoiling us’. I watched Shrek 4 for Christ’s sake.

Done with the goggle box embedded into the chair in front of me, I begin to spy on my fellow passengers. The passenger I took the most interest in was the lady two rows in front who was watching the remake of the Karate Kid. Why did this take my interest? Because she was ALWAYS watching the remake of the Karate Kid. I must have looked over every half hour or so to see Will Smith’s precocious little brat waxing on and off. So, suggesting that it’s about 2 hours long and the first part of the flight was 7 hours long… She’d already seen it 3 and a half times! Does anyone need that much Jackie Chan in their life? Evidently so.

Anyway, the point of the matter is that all my brain farts about how amazing it is to travel in economy made me realise I had been thinking absolute toss about flying and, as such, I began to resent Australia for being so far away. Stupid dumb red country. Ridiculous distance away. No frigging water or Government to speak of (which was true whilst I was in the air). Wail. Knash teeth.

And yet if I hadn’t done the flight, I wouldn’t be here now and, despite the fact I’m presently homeless, living in a room at the back of my mother-in-law’s house, I wouldn’t change this for a thing. So, suck it non-believers.

Ripper, bonza, etc. The end.

Beer and Living in Las Vegas

Las Vegas is a strange place to be at any time of the year. I’m making this assumption after only having been there for a week, but I’m pretty sure my theory holds water. We arrived at Las Vegas airport at half 7 in the evening and were met by several dozen posters promoting the latest in Las Vegas entertainment. All before we’d even picked up our bags. One particular poster promoted the top five chefs in Vegas. However, it’s intention wasn’t immediately obvious. Four of the chefs were male and frozen in botoxed facial expressions that wouldn’t look out of place on the front cover of a WWE magazine. It was if they were trying to prove who was the hardest bastard at putting together a vol au vent. The fifth chef had so much collagen in her lips she put the striptease show that was being advertised next to her to shame.

Speaking of strip shows, Vegas has quite a few of them. You may have heard. What you may not have heard is how many different versions of the same show there are out there.  At the airport and through out the course of the holiday, numerous shows grappled for our attention. All of them promoted more or less the same things; boobs, gyrating and a distinct lack of clothing. Where they tried to outdo each other was by what styles of clothing the girls would be wearing before they took them off. These ideas included nursery rhymes to lesbian vampires. I looked in vain for a Hasidic Jew show but was sorely disappointed.

The same shit, different packaging can be applied to the casinos that run up and down the strip. Nearly all of them comprise of a large hotel with an adjoining casino.  As strange as it may be to read, but there were some casinos that were just plain tacky. Harrah’s springs to mind as an example. It came across as not so much as a casino but what Blackpool constitutes as a casino. Plaster cast statues of stereotypical Americans stand at the entrance smiling insane grins which didn’t really come across as friendly.

Circus Circus was another casino that seemed to be designed to annoy and upset our party. Hunter S. Thompson described it best when he said:

The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos . . . but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space.

On the next floor up from the aforementioned casino is a fully functioning fairground with stalls, acrobats and arcade machines. Outside of this, it just becomes another hotel with conference rooms.

There was also the Adventuredome which during our stay was being advertised as the Frightdome. The whole dome was shut down for an hour each evening and redecorated to look something out of the Saw movies. For this change in decor, you were charged an extra $10 on top of the $24 they were charging during the rest of the day. We didn’t get much chance to do the dome in either of it’s incarnations as we had got ourselves totally lost and unable to find an exit. I’m not sure if my party will disagree with me when they read this, but I’m pretty sure that we were in there for an hour, wandering the corridors and praying that our next turn would be the turn home.

The Bellagio is classed as one of the biggest hotels on the strip and is a testament to how much money one can truly spend if they lose sight of a budget.  On the two evenings we went there, we pretty much set ourselves up in the Fontana bar which had a house band that served up some of the best of alt-rock, hip hop and country music…. Ahem. God, I hated them. They reminded me of a band I saw when I was at Butlins about 18 years ago. The same degree of energy and joviality was there as it had been with the band in Wales. They seemed so happy and willing to perform for us that I couldn’t help thinking that when they were on a break they spent it staring through a two way mirror, giving hand gestures and playing ‘who would you kill if you could’.

Still, I’m probably just being cynical. The populace of 40-50 year old housewives dutifully waiting for their husbands to return from the casino seemed to be enjoying themselves.  If you’ve never seen four or five very well off people dancing to a Vonda Sheppard lookalike singing Gwen Stefani’s Rich Girl, you clearly have never lived.

Plus, in all honesty, if I hadn’t have gone to the Bellagio I would not have seen the Fountains of Bellagio. And whilst the fountains will dance to any song including Everybody (Backstreets Back), once you’ve seen it to Con Te Partito (Time to Say Goodbye) you appreciate the spectacle of it all. Plus you feel lik you’re in the last 15 minutes of Ocean’s Eleven so that’s no bad thing.

MGM had it’s own lion enclosure… Not really sure what to say about. There was some discomfort amongst our party regardless of how many times the voice on the tannoy said that the lions were perfectly comfortable there.

Whilst all this was happening indoors, there was plenty going on outdoors. The one thing that happened a lot was the amount of pornography handed out on the streets. Regardless of whether you’re gay, straight, in a couple or pushing a child in a pram, you will have numerous business cards and magazines pushed in your face. All of them promoting the same escort service. Girls to you door in 20 minutes!, the cards cried, Hotel room service style!

No, I’m not sure what that means either.

We had that many cards in our hands by the time we got back to the condo on the second day, we had enough for a game of top trumps. A game which me and my girlfriend did actually end up playing. If you want to play it in Las Vegas, here’s a tip… Don’t use Liza. She’s rubbish. She’s free and as such can’t compete with Tina’s $96 fee.

After a while we became adapt at avoiding these guys. Mostly because a blind man could tell when they were coming up. They slap the cards together so much that they sound like a group of porn pedalling dolphins. Have a look….

Halfway through our trip, my girlfriend and I managed to escape the collagen, dolphins and house bands and see the Grand Canyon. There is literally no point in me trying to put into words seeing it. It really is one of those places your need to see for yourself.

On our last day, we made our way to Fremont Street to soak up the old Vegas. This is the Vegas you see in The Godfather, Scarface, Ocean’s Eleven, Swingers and the video to Eye of the Tiger music video. It’s a shame we only discovered it on the last night because, for me, it was my favourite place. Maybe it was the history and majesty of the lights, maybe it was the true embodiment of the American dream or maybe it was because beers were only $2 a bottle as opposed to the $6-8 I’d been spending all week. Who knows? To be honest, it was probably more down to the fact we didn’t have clicky clicky men.

In summary, the trip was fantastic and definitely something I’ll be coming back to. Americans get a lot of crap about their culture and it’s easy to be cynical about Las Vegas. As proven by the last page of text I’ve just written. However, if you go expecting to come back with less money than you originally had in your bank account and understand that time will stand still and you will probably never get that tan you’re after, you can be in for a really good time. Just promise that if you go, you’ll knock one of the clicky clicky dolphin guys out for me.

Thanks.