It started Friday, and it started early. Paulita was celebrating her birthday this weekend - let's just say it was still summertime in human age lingo - and we wanted to make it a memorable one. We saw Sin City Comedy at the Mile Long Shopping Mall in Hollywood Palace on the Strip and were treated to a rip-roaring performance by "The Legendary Wit," a comic who has no equal in the world of entertainment.
I perfected the art of the guffaw that night. Paulita did not even comment as she usually does that my laugh-out-loud was too loud. She was hysterical herself. She was laughing so loud I had to take a double, triple, quadruple look.
And it was one rip, one crack after another. The Legendary Wit had done it again.
He takes ordinary items, like a discarded toilet seat in one hand and puts a plastic bull on top of the seat and says, "Bulls__t!" He reverses the order, putting the toilet seat above the plastic bull and says, "Holy Cow."
He cradles two plastic white lambs in his sweaty armpits and says, "Silence of the Lambs." He takes a string of baby dolls and puts military helmet above them and says, "Infantry."
He puts some plastic grapes over a toy airplane and calls it "Concorde."
He asks some in the audience what their favorite movies are. One of them says "Pulp Fiction" so he wraps himself in a picture of trees - from which paper (pulp) is manufactured and rubs his body with the picture and exclaims: "Pulp Friction."
He just went on and on, non-stop for about thirty minutes as the audience guffawed.
Friends were waiting at the night club in Gold Coast on Flamingo but since Paulita and I got out of the theater at 10:30 and didn't make it home until 11:00, I called our friends and told them we couldn't make it anymore. Paul had refused to go to bed until he actually saw us home. He was still up and playing Halo 3 with his internet friend when we got home.
We usually don't celebrate Paulita's birthday because it's so close to August 8. Our daughter Natasha was born on 8/8/88 (August 8, 1988) and over the years August 8 was always a special midsummer day for us and our friends.
People looked forward to August 8 because it was an opportunity for a spell from the dog days of summer. People made plans to attend our daughter Natasha's birthday party year in and year out.
Our friends simply forgot that before August 8 there was July 19, which was Paulita's birthday.
Natasha is in college and would rather celebrate her birthday with her friends in LA. So this opened up the door for Paulita just a wee bit. Last Thursday I decided that it was time we celebrated Paulita's birthday.
It was a small group, just a few close friends, but we made sure that everyone would have fun.
First, I asked our friend Bobit to bring beer (he brought Heinekens) and the ladies had margaritas throughout the evening. We asked everybody to sing, but it was a motley crew, so most were too embarrassed to sing in front of people they did not know.
I waited for people to go to the backyard so I could execute my Great Plan for the evening. I was going to lure Paulita to the pool and push her in and watch as all hell broke loose, with people peeling off their clothes (not all) and jumping in.
We never went outside.
We'll do it next time. Summers are long in Las Vegas.
And it was not even Paulita's birthday yet. Her birthday is today, Sunday, and we have tickets to Tickled Pink at the Harmon Theater for an extended but quiet celebration.
