Showmanship

February 22nd, 2007

Wednesday was a day of showmanship. I did very little in the morning, just stayed close to the hotel because I knew A’s conference would be letting out around noon. I did make it back down to the Flamingo to take pictures in the habitat, at least.

In the afternoon, we took the shuttle to the Liberace Museum, which was great. I don’t know why I find Liberace cool and Elton John annoying, but I do. The museum has a bunch of his cars and pianos in one building, and then in another building they have his costumes (including one that weighs 200 pounds ) and replicas of some of his rooms. The second building is adjacent to the original restaurant Liberace opened in the 1980s, but that wasn’t open while we were there. The costumes are just astonishing…did you know he was the first entertainer to convince the IRS to allow him to deduct the cost of his costumes when tax time rolled around? The onsite cafe wasn’t that great, but the gift shop was fun - A got this cool shirt to wear for patriotic holidays at work (and so forth); I wanted this shirt but I already bought a Hello Kitty Las Vegas shirt (at the Sanrio store in Fashion Show Mall) and I couldn’t bring myself to spend $35 on this one. I did get the World of Liberace DVD though.

I was a little cranky in the afternoon, but we went to the Bellagio for shopping. The water ballet was performing when we got there, but my camera’s batteries died again. When we were done in the Bellagio, we got a bite to eat in the food court at Caesars Palace. We took a quick nap back in the hotel room and then it was time to go see Penn & Teller! The shuttle from Harrah’s was full of people who had already started drinking, but we made it to the Rio just fine. The show was awesome. I have never seen them live before, and I still don’t think I’ve seen everything…my jaw was hanging open and I was cracking up the whole time! I noticed that Penn has got really amazing hands. He plays the double bass in the preshow band and during the show itself, and obviously he’s a magician, but his hands were just so animated. I kept expecting him to break into sign language, because his hands were always moving into different shapes and I felt like they were communicating. So when the show ended, I realized I wanted to take a picture of his hands. How weird is that? But he let me do it, and so did Teller, who actually talks to the audience after the show. Penn accused me of planning something nefarious involving Photoshop!