Blackberry
“America is the #1 country,” blurted my Somali taxi driver as we sped past the jumbotrons and stumble dawn hookers on the strip, “But there is no help for me here. The condom broke and my wife and I – we are believers – so how will we afford the doctor’s visits without insurance? It is basic – basic!” He didn’t get it. We didn’t build this place to share and share alike. We need it plentiful and unforgiving. Keep your Somali babies and gods and healthcare and handouts. Looking down at my Blackberry, I never saw the yellow Mustang jump the line doing one twenty five.
Commandos
The ad van claimed they could deliver a hot girl to your room in twenty minutes – faster than a pizza. They must be staged inside the hotels. It’s the only possible way. A crack commando team of prostitutes packed into a twelfth floor suite. Hotel management is in on it too of course – kickbacks, percentage, free tosses with the girls. Are they right next door? I put my ear to the wall imagining reverse cowgirls with 8-inch heels. Suddenly, there is a sickening rumble. Out my window, the MGM is coming straight down like a green glass express elevator – the luxury bathsoaps, sexy ladies and all.
Promises
I promise the best fresh sliced sandwiches, better value, clean restaurant and prompt, friendly service. I promise intense flavor, zero calories, vitamin-packed energy and serious fun in an exciting new package. I promise 100% digital clarity, hundreds of premium channels, the largest national network and eternal life.
Waving
With the pirate ship smoke rising behind her, Angie Cho teased her spray blonde hair and stared up the six-storey waterfall. “There is only one thing more conceited than believing you are carrying out God’s will on Earth,” she thought, “And that’s refusing to accept a compliment.” So she smiled back at the young man waving at her from the pedestrian bridge, never noticing the construction crane buckling above her head.
Throughout the show
Tonight at Mandalay: Foghat opens for Grand Funk Railroad, America, Carmen Miranda and Van Halen with special guests X, Mazel Tov Handjob, the Wedding Present and a man from Mogadishu who can fit two six-month old babies in his mouth. Tonight’s emcees are Wayne Brady and Jack Nicolaus wearing a crotchless Santa suit. When the curtain goes up, Chris Angel makes a special appearance where he hacks off Howie Mandell’s limbs with the icepick used to kill Trotsky while Youtube videos of hamsters and children falling down stairs play on 140 plasma screens throughout the auditorium. Former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky recites old Brady Bunch scripts as rival former poet laureate Charles Simic is tied in a burlap sack and punched silly by Walter Payton, Lawrence Taylor, Playboy Playmate of the Year 1996 and a man who claims to be at-large skyjacker D.B. Cooper. Throughout the show, Jane Fonda’s dentures are on display in a radio flyer wagon along with Bart Star’s cleats, the first jar of mayonnaise ever sold in Guam, a scale model of the Khe Sahn marine base commissioned by President Johnson, three of the four horses of the apocalypse and an apple sculpted to look like a Porche Boxter being driven by Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle brandishing a wine bottle. If you have a smartphone, the entire movie “Goonies” streams during the concert. Eddie Murphy closes out the evening by setting the entire state of Nevada on fire while Isabella Rosillini re-enacts your favorite Three Stooges routines in the nude.