Willapalooza Recap

Will and Noel arrived at about 4:45 on Saturday at my house and along with Mark and Will, we headed to Dan's and then to the airport. We met up with Bob and Brad and the seven of us all made it without anyone Schcultzing it up.

Being the groom-to-be, Will rode in stlye up in first-class while the rest of us slummed it in coach. We got into Vegas about 8am as the rest of the group poured in from around the country California, Chicago, Minneapolis and Memphis.


There was some kind of giant party going on in Vegas that involved lots of costumes, and everyone was willing to pose. We saw guys dressed up like big-time wrestlers, star wars characters and the well-known "Beer Man".

Binon's while not being able to get a free drink to save our lives. On a positive note, our limo driver had been voted the top limo driver in vegas by the adult entertainment yellow pages, so we knew he was good.


We walked through lots of the casinos, including Caesar's Palace. Brad got us all excited to go to this great dinner where you're fed like greek god's in togas. We tried to get a reservation and found that the dinner hadn't been around for many, many years. If you didn't know it, Brad is old. Will also learned about his love for greek neo-classical impressionists, amongst his other favorite creations of the greeks.



On Saturday morning, we discovered the Excalibur Buffet.... The food was sub-par, but they had a horse made of butter. The good part about it is that we always felt good about ourselves while we were there. How can you not when the motto is, "You Rule".


On Sunday night, Ted booked a cool event at Red Square, a Vodka bar at Mandalay Bay. Assuming the greater good of the team, Ted bought a bottle of Vodka for $300 (plus $75 in tax and gratuity) for us to drink (and expected payment from all of us). We all put on Russian coats and hats and headed into a freezer, and drank the Vodka on Stalin's head. It made for a fun time, and after doing a little research online, we continued to rub it into Ted that the same bottle could be bought online for $50. No one said anything in Vegas was cheap.

After the vodka bar, we were all standing outside when a bride and groom walked by. When the groom asked, "Do you mind if we get a picture here?", many might of interpreted that to mean, "You guys are standing in front of a beautiful waterfall and we'd like to get our picture taken here." Not us. We collectively, without a thought pulled the bride into our group and had the groom take her picture with us. Ted followed that up by getting a picture with the bride and groom as well.


Sunday night we recuperated at the pool and sports book. The sports book gave us giant comfy seats to watch every football game known to man. We bet the Lions, Noel called his wife and was told to be on the Bears. The Lions won. We decided that picking Washington +15 seemed like a no-brainer, until New England decided to embarrass them at our expense. We then hit the Wynn Buffet to gorge ourselves. Noel took full advantage of the exotic foods available, and celebrated their world-renowned pretzel. After spending a fortune in cab rides (3 cabs for the 11 of us per trip) we decided to try riding the Deuce, Vegas's public transportation system. On the 14th stop, Brad, Rich and Bob decided to get out and walk, thinking they'd get there faster. We tied.

We ate ourselves into a food coma and Bob called our limo-driver-to-the-adult-entertainment world to give us a ride back to the hotel. We got lucky at the tables, largely in part to Noel's pastoral blessing. We would ask for a pastoral word on the next card to come out of the deck and every now and then he'd be right. We all did fairly well, with Noel being the big winner. We tried to convince him to give his winnings away to the poor (the rest of us who were way down at the tables) but it wasn't happening). As we'd win big hands, there were high-fives all around and loud chants on behalf of our dealer - "Gary!, Gary!, Gary!" Our dealer described the waitresses like this, "Our waitresses may be slow and old, but at least they're ugly."

On Monday, we went to lunch at the Hard Rock, to the Pink Taco. Will was told that he "just had to try the Pink Taco", and he mistakenly thought that he really did have no choice in the matter. Bob was kind enough to choose the tequila for us in our pitchers of margaritas, and we all felt lucky when the bill came and we found we'd been drinking $60/pitcher margaritas to go along with the $400 vodka from the night before. After a long walk back (we were really sick of expensive cab rides at this point) we headed out to watch the Monday Night Football game at ESPNZone. Kohne and I picked Denver, wanting to see Green Bay lose and put the Lions in first place. We learned the lesson to never bet against Brett Favre on Monday night. Brad and Bob were the smart ones (or so they thought), picking Green Bay. There wasn't a minute that went buy that they didn't remind Mark and I of our bad choice. Brad and Bob went to cash in their tickets and found that they'd picked the wrong side accidentally - losing just as badly as Mark and I.

We went for dinner later on and had Kobe Beef burgers, and sat next to Randy Couture, the Ultimate Fighting heavyweight champion. I considered punching him in the head so that I could say that I have punched THE Randy Couture, but decided against it. Randy brought our celebrity sighting up to two people along with Criss Angel (the creepy levitating self proclaimed Mind Freak) (and later having Mike spot the creepy Carrot Top at the airport and get a picture with him).

We had a great trip - eating, drinking, gambling, walking, hanging out and celebrating Will's greatness. He's our last bachelor friend ever, so it's either time for someone to get divorced and re-married, or time for us to get a younger friend.

We now all have matching Willapalooza shirts out of this, but we all felt a little left out when Ted and Will dressed exactly a like every single day. One other interesting element of the trip is that there are now two more people in the world that know Will that didn't before the bachelor party. Rich McIntosh and Mike Koch (Rhymes with Rock) joined the trip in the spirit of "the more, the merrier" and were a great addition to the group. If we had $1 for every time we introduced Mike to someone with the phrase, "guess what is name is?" and then had him follow it up by showing his drivers license, we'd all be very wealthy. There were at least 4,000 very funny jokes repeatedly made about his name, and even though he'd heard them all 8,000 times, he went along with it in a great way. Rich was able to teach us many new uses for a cell phone and Mike was able to teach us that his wife is not crazy, by the very nature that she's married to such a a great guy (Sara - even if you are crazy, you're now in with the family by the very nature of being married to Mike, plus his having such a great last name).

It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip for a one-of-a-kind friend. We're all very blessed to have the guy in our lives and we all wish him the best in his upcoming wedding, even if it is going to be dry.