Las Vegas-June 2013, Peepshow

Wait. Please don't judge us. Yes, we actually spent money to see the Peepshow at Planet Hollywood starring (a loose term) Coco Austin. We were swayed by the slick advertising, concept potential and the persuasive saleswoman at the Tix4Tonight booth. Mercifully, we didn't pay full price.

Peepshow is probably the worst show on the strip. It was a fifty/fifty show. Fifty percent of the time, I was bored to tears, while the other fifty percent had me laughing. Peepshow has very few genuine comedic or clever moments, but it was entertaining in the respect that it was "awesomely-bad".

SPOILERS AHEAD, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

The premise of Peepshow is that headliner (the semi-celebrity with the biggest tits in the show) plays a woman who is discouraged by love. The show opens with a video montage of Coco Austin as Bo-Peep in the real world, as a business woman returning home from a long day at work. You know that she's a serious and successful woman, because she wears glasses. She passes a happy couple making out in the hall of her building, takes sensual shower and finally settles into bed with a book. She falls asleep with the book opened to a picture of the nursury rhyme character, Little Bo-Peep. In her dream world, she becomes Bo-Peep and meets other characters who help her discover her sexy side.

Once Bo-Peep enters the dream world, a nonsensical spectacle of song, dance and boobs erupts on the stage. Most of this show makes little sense.

Here are some of the main problems.

1. There is no way that anyone could possibly believe that Bo-Peep who is blonde, curvy and has boobs as big as watermelons doesn't think that she's is sexy. It's ridiculous. Why not make her a woman who has trouble finding a good man? A man who loves her for the right reasons and not just her giant breasts? The story leans towards that topic, as the Peep Diva character tries to find the right man for Bo.

2. Keep your fairytale and nursery rhyme characters separate. There is enough material in each genre, why mix them? Somehow Little Red Riding Hood is stuck in among the Nursery Rhyme Characters.

3. Make it relevant. Early on in the show, we learn via a song that was clearly inspired by You Gotta Get A Gimmick from Gypsy, that the characters in the show are going to teach Bo the tricks of the trade to being sexy. The show is then comprised of scenes that are not very relevant to the theme of teaching Bo.

Half of the scenes are not even relevant to the nursery/fairytale theme. They are just dance routines set to remixes of popular songs, like the Milkshake song, in which a woman in a school girl outfit pours milk all over herself and a trio of girls swim in a giant pool of milk. Milk has never been less sexy.

Those that were relevant to the nursery/fairytale theme were not very creative. The scene featuring Little Red Riding Hood has her inexplicable dancing topless on a car.

A real missed moment was when we meet Mrs. Peter Pumpkin Eater. I expected a naughty scene regarding "eating", yet got a woman pole dancing. This was one of the better scenes in the scenes in the show, as the dancer playing Mrs. Pete was quite an athlete on the pole, but it just lacked relevance.

Rub-A-Dub-Dub only had one man. Did they even bother to read the rhyme?

What the heck was up with the woman on a horse? It looked good visually , made no sense.

The Goldielocks part sort of made sense, with a childlike-woman choosing between three stuffed bears, until the bear skin rug was the right fit. Her singing was like nails on a chalk board and I think that it was intentional. It was just really creepy, not sexy and had nothing to do with Bo-Peep.

4. The story had a beginning, so it should also have a clear end. I guess Coco Austin popping her boobs out was supposed to be the grand finale moment, but the story had zero conclusion.

5. Don't guilt the audience into giving you a standing ovation. It's pitiful.

From a storytelling stand point, this show was a piece of crap.

The cast, including Coco ( I feel silly every time I write her name) were fine. Although billed as the star, Coco's part was minimal. She was mostly a moving set piece, rarely even speaking. Her enormous breasts were a spectacle. The real star was actress playing the MC/Peep Diva role, who sang and did quite a bit of improvisational battering with audience members. She owned the stage.

The production value wasn't as high as one might expect from a Vegas show. There was little in the way of special effects or sets. I kind of felt like we were at a nowhereville dinner theater production of Into the Woods.

The choreography looked like something slapped together by high school cheer squad for a half time show. I feel like the cast just knows that they are in a shitty production and are trying their best to keep the audience engaged.

Sitting in front of us was a row of early-twenty something frat boys who could not have been less enthusiastic about Peepshow. In fact, one of the guys kept apologizing for getting the group to go. We were amused watching them sit stone-faced the entire performance, not even fazed by the plethora of jiggling breasts on stage. They looked miserable.

I saw The Thunder from Down Under last year and their show had more cohesive story lines than Peepshow. Truly, the two are companion shows on the strip. Thunder had the guys doing a fantasy vignette ending each scene with the guys exposing their asses. Peepshow had fantasy vignettes each ending with the girls exposing their boobs. Some basic concept, just Thunder didn't take themselves seriously and had better concepts for the scenes.

Upon exiting the theater, we were immediately offered access to an adjacent club with an open bar. I felt like they were trying to buy back our good graces.

At the end of the day, I'm glad that we saw it. It was so horrendous that it had us both laughing. My stomach hurt from laughing so hard. It also gave us loads to talk about on the way home, especially coming up with our own nursery rhyme soft-core porn ideas that were a million times more creative than anything we saw on stage.

I only wish that we had splurge the hundred dollars a pop for the meet-and-greet with Coco. It would have been priceless to have that photo on display when having guests over for dinner!

Las Vegas- June 2013, South Point Casino

After last years wonderful discovery of Tahiti Village, Dan and I have been open to trying other non-strip hotels. South Point had a great weekend offer and the reviews seemed decent, so we decided to give it a try for our end of July trip. Plus, sadly, Tahiti Village was booked solid. We love that place!

We arrived at South Point mid-evening on a Thursday and we were greeted with a long queue at check-in. The attendants seemed frazzled and the manager had several guests waiting to speak with her regarding complaints. We were in "vacation mode" and refused to let the vibe at check-in affect our good spirits.

We knew that the hotel would be busy due to the Art-n-Ink Tattoo festival invading South Point for the duration of our visit. I expected the convention to make a bigger impact to our stay, however, if I didn't already know that it was going on, I probably wouldn't have realized that it was happening. The people watching wasn't nearly as entertaining as I had anticipated. It was a tame bunch.

Obviously here for the Art-N-Ink Festival

The decor theme of South Point is late 80's cruise ship meets equestrian. They have a large equestrian center, so I get the horse theme, but it's very distastefully done. It's hard to believe that this is a relatively new hotel.

Further killing the atmosphere is the glaring bright lights. It's like being at a nightclub during closing and having all of the lights turned on before you exit. I've never been in a Vegas hotel with less of a "Vegas" vibe.

Naturally, the rooms carried the theme of bad horse decor, but they were clean and spacious.

The beds were not the most comfortable, a little hard and springy. We were there for three nights and neither of us got restful sleep on any of the nights. The walls were thick though and outside noisy was not a problem.

Hotel bathrooms are always important to me. In particular, I love to soak in a hot bath while on vacation. Our room did have a tub, but it was very shallow, too shallow for a relaxing soak.

I also like a bathroom with a great vanity area for getting ready. The vanity at South Point was in separate area and had oodles of counter space. However, the mirror was set back too far to be useful for applying make-up. I used the full length mirror in the hall, which had terrible lighting. I've been spoiled with staying at fancier hotels that have rooms with lighted make-up mirrors.

Our room had a great view of the pool, which was useful on the first morning when we were trying to determine if there were enough lounge chairs available to bother going down. I am so used to the overcrowded strip pools.

We used the pool once, on the first morning. It had just opened and we grabbed two lounge chairs by the adult only spa. The South Point pool complex is a concrete jungle with a few patches of astroturf and some lagoons. It really needs some atmosphere and greenery. There was no music to create an ambiance and maybe we arrived too early, but there were no attendants with the towels or serving cocktails. The pool was filled with kids, which spilled over into the adult only spa.

We stayed for about thirty minutes and then the combination of excessive heat and being underwhelmed with the pool complex compelled us to go inside. We didn't use the pool for the remainder of our stay and with the exception of kids, it never looked very busy from our room window. To be fair, the heat wave made it very difficult to spend time outdoors.

The heat was not fun for our Smart Car either!

South Point did have some major positives with regard to being a great value. We ate at four of the eleven restaurants (Garden Buffet, Baja Miguels, Steak N'Shake and Zenshin) all of which were an exceptionally good value. We had sushi and alcohol at Zenshin that was incredible and we left full for around forty dollars. The Garden Buffet was fairly average food, but we received a 2-for-1 coupon that made it an amazing bargain. All of the bars were cheap with mixed drinks for around five dollars. Giant, strong margaritas were only a little more. Cheap, Cheap, Cheap.

Entertainment was a bargain. We saw a two hour comedy show with headliner John Caparulo and Mark Ellis for fifteen each. It was a hilarious show and such a deal.

We skipped it, but they also offer a free comedy show for adults late on Fridays. Our hotel guest coupon booklet included free passes to late events in the showroom, including one of my favorite 80's cover groups, The Spazmatics, who play every Saturday night. There is completely different type of entertainment every night and really something for everyone.

If you like to gamble, the table limits are really low. We found dollar minimum tables on both weekend nights. I've never seen this on the strip.

The hotel has a Century Movie Theater and Bowling Alley. It makes for a hotel that is more family friendly and a bit over-run with kids, but it's also nice to have so many entertainment options.

This is not the hotel to stay at if you don't have a car in Vegas. It's about a fifteen minute drive to the strip and a taxi would not be cheap. We found it easy to drive our car to the strip, but it also made us decide to do most of our drinking at South Point. We spent more time in our own hotel, than we normally would when we stay on the strip.

Bottom Line- South Point is a clean, inexpensive option, but it does not have a traditional "Vegas" feel. I'd stay here again if we got a good offer and if it was off-pool season. If the weather is nice, the pool takes on a greater importance.

England March 2013- Final Trip Report

I've finally reached the last in my blog series of trip reports from our March trip to England. I'm left with pictures that simply didn't fit in with the other posts, but ones that I still wanted to share.

During my visit, we stayed with Dan's parents in the lovely town of Newbury. Newbury was fantastic. It's filled with many gorgeous Historic buildings, yet is modern enough to have a plethora of shopping, dining and entertainment options. The center of town is a short walk from Dan's parent's home making it easy to go explore.

Here are a few pictures of the snow in the front garden of their home.

Our rental van also got covered in snow. It only really snowed on our last morning, but the weather was cold througout our entire visit.

I liked the neighborhood watch stickers. Many years ago, I was working at Universal Studios and a group of police officers from London visited the park. While I was assisting them on the Jurassic Park ride, they handed me a sticker that said "I met the Met" and it had a similar picture and logo.

Neighborhood (neighborhood) Watch Sticker

On my first morning in Newbury, we drove over to the nearby Highclere Castle. Fans of the show Downton Abbey will recognize Highclere as the home of the Crawley family. Unfortunately it was closed for the season (and filming), but Dan took this picture of me with a Highclere road sign that was located right across the street from the estate.

One of the more interesting aspects of traveling in a foreign country is checking out the local grocery store. England has several major grocery chains and on our trip, we visited two of them. Waitrose is the more upscale chain. They sell organic food, offer free coffee in their cafe and Pippa Middleton writes a hostess column for their newsletter. It's nice and similar to Gelsons or Whole Foods.

Tesco is more like Walmart. They sell a little bit of everything and although it isn't bad per-se, it's definitely downmarket from Waitrose. One thing that Tesco had that I've never seen in America, is a service where the store slices your bread for you.

I spent the first afternoon of our trip walking around Newbury with Dan's mom. I was so busy absorbing and enjoying the sights, that I really didn't take very many pictures. Here are a few snaps.

Followers of my blog might recognize the following location from my series on British candy. Dan's niece sent us a box with several items from Mr. SImms. We went inside to get to the bottom of the banana candy that they sell. The banana candy is good, but has a strange taste, almost fizzy and taffy at the same time. The nice girl working behind the counter looked up the ingredients, but alas, we couldn't figure out the source of the bizarre taste.

The town has a new outdoor shopping mall with a big underground parking lot that we used to go to the nearby Victoria Park. The park was huge with a playground that the kids really enjoyed. The park also had a shallow pond that is used for sailing model boats.

No matter where I travel, if I see ducks, I'm a happy camper. Newbury has a canal running through the town and the canal is home to loads of ducks and swans.

I had a wonderful first trip to England and I'm happy to report that I'm going back! The tickets have been booked and we will be traveling at the end of the summer. The England adventure, to be continued...