Las Vegas part 4, Pawn Stars and a show!

Since we got up so early we finished the Hoover excursion a little before noon which was a lot sooner than I thought we would so we called Ed and Shellie to see if they wanted to go to the Pawn Stars pawn shop that afternoon instead of the next morning before the wedding. Jessica didn’t want to have any other stuff going on that morning when she wanted to get ready which turned out to be a good idea because the next day flew by. Before we went and did that though we stopped at an Albertsons grocery store to pick up a few things to eat. This is also where Jessica got the bouquet for the wedding. At first I didn’t really like the flowers that she wanted because they were in one of those premade bundles and they just didn’t look right to me. Since the florist took pity on us because she had 5 daughters she did her florist magic on them for no charge and really made them look great. They didn’t look like the same thing when she finished with them and really looked nice. Jessica was happy, hence I was happy. I was also happy about the entire floral budget for the wedding being about eight bucks. Can’t beat that with a baseball bat.

We met up with Ed and Shellie and headed for the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop. In case you didn’t know that is where they film the reality show Pawn Stars that airs on the History Channel. It’s 3 generations who work in the same shop and they buy interesting crap from people. They also have the typical comedy relief doofus named Chumlee who seems to be functionally retarded. On TV the place looks really big and the stuff looks pretty nice but when you get there it’s cramped and full of typical pawn shop junk. None of the people on the show were there and it was just packed with tourists (not like us of course, we’re better). A quarter of the store was dedicated to souvenirs which seemed to be the only place where anyone was buying anything (including myself, I bought a clearance t-shirt). All in all I was pretty disappointed with it but I don’t know what I was expecting, it is a pawn shop a block or two away from the ghetto, run by a family of people of whom none graduated high school. Still worth the looksie and I still like the show, even though it was a little bit like pulling the curtain back on the wizard.

Honestly after that I Jessica and I could have both gone back to the hotel room and went to sleep but we still had to go to the obligatory “Big Vegas Show”. Jessica got tickets for the Cirque du Soleil KA show that was playing at the MGM Grand at 9:30 that night. I know next to nothing about these big Vegas shows but this is one that I wanted to see because I saw a special on it a few years ago and all the stuff in the background to make it all work was just insane and it just looked cool. Jessica also has a friend that works on the crew for the show that was going to give us a quick backstage tour but we never did get around to doing that. We let Ed and Shellie take the rental car early so they could have their day to use it since Ed kicked in some money to pay for it. We picked up some tickets to ride the monorail so we didn’t have to walk because it was a little ways away and it was getting cold. I’m surprised that they don’t have that monorail all over town so you can get to all the tourist traps because the traffic on the strip was so bad and it was miserable to drive anywhere. I love a big city with good public transportation. Jump on and bam, you are where you want to be with no hassle. We jumped on that and before you know it we were at the MGM station, picked up our tickets from the will call and waited for it to start. They had a lot of Cirque du Soleil weirdos wandering around before they started the show. A lot of free spirit, crazy kind of people that were overjoyed by being strange and making people uncomfortable. We had awesome seats in the second row in the center. Really close, it turns out almost too close since this show takes place not just in front of you but above you and all around you. My neck was hurting at the end from trying to look around and see everything. It’s hard to explain the show itself, they didn’t speak a word of English, it was just a made up oriental sounding gibberish language and you followed the story through what they were doing. They wore oriental looking outfits and the bad guys wore body suits that looked like those full body tattoo patterns that certain cultures used to have in the orient at one time. It had battles, underwater scenes, flying, climbing icy mountains, riding a ship in a storm, basically all kinds of stuff. It’s really hard to explain but it was almost two hours straight and it was an awesome show. If you have the opportunity to see it I would recommend it highly.

That’s it for Las Vegas on Day two. Next up is day three, the wedding day! Video of the event will of course be available for viewing.