I’m in Vegas right now.  Even though I’m writing this on Sunday, the 12th, I can assure you I’m not having a good time.  I’ve only had a good time once in Vegas and that was when I was trying not to cry in the hotel room of a man I met earlier that month.

During the day I work part-time doing marketing for an entertainment company.  I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say, so I’ll leave it at that.  Every year we have our conference in Vegas.  I don’t generally enjoy it.  Yeah, the conference itself is fine.  It does what it’s supposed to.  It gets you pumped up for the coming busy season.  It’s also great to see in person the people who also work for the company across the country.  There are a handful that I have a lot in common with so it’s nice to see them outside of Facebook.  I don’t gamble, so Vegas holds no appeal for me there.  I generally don’t party either.  Although last year a ton of little things piled on top of each other and just caused me so much stress and anger that I ended up drinking way too much Scotch, much to the dismay of the guy with whom I was sharing a room.  I coated the bathroom from both ends.

I’ve been to Vegas to perform at Trooperfest, the first Star Wars convention specifically for the 501st.  I got to hang out with all sorts of nice and wonderful people.  Every time something cool happened, I felt like I was verbally and emotionally punched in the face when I wanted to share that with the person I was closest to at the time.  It was years ago, but my overall memory that festival wasn’t a happy one.

Last year I was in Vegas for the World Series of Comedy.  Again, trouble in my personal life kept me from enjoying this potentially awesome networking opportunity.  My head wasn’t in the game and I was out in the first round.  I remember getting ready to go out on stage and just deciding to wing it and riff with the crowd even though everyone in that situation should know that the last thing a judge wants to see is how well you do crowd work.  Yeah?  Well, my crowd work is right up there with the masters like Pardo and Iott.  Mike…you idiot!  I got off stage and Eric Yoder from Funny Business just gave me a look like, “What the hell was that?”  Technically, I was doing my Bear Calendar joke, which isn’t really crowd work.  It’s my magic trick.  It’s a slight of hand.  It looks like crowd work, but it’s mostly scripted….or at the very least flow charted.

So, I was in Vegas after having crapped out in the first round of The World Series of Comedy and I still had a couple nights left until my return flight.  Earlier that month I worked with Carl LaBove in Grand Rapids at Dr. Grin’s.  Words can not explain how great I think Carl is.  He’s like Yoda and the Dude from Big Lebowski rolled up into one.  He’s wise and care free.  He’s a master story teller…and what’s great about his stories is that after you’ve enjoyed them and you’ve had time to reflect, you see that his story that he picked to tell you at that moment was serving a point.

Early the second morning of the World Series of Comedy, I was sitting in the hotel lobby trying to decide if I wanted to walk to the casino where Carl and I were to meet for lunch or if I wanted to take a cab.  I was trying to use Google map on my phone, but Vegas is deceptively large.  Comedian Brad Tassell stopped in and we started talking.  We worked together years and years ago and his comedy group Hoosier Daddy was kind of the inspiration for me forming the Desperate Houseguys.  Brad had a rental car and offered to drive me to the Riviera for my lunch appointment.

I called Carl when I got there to let him know I was downstairs.  Minutes later he burst out of the elevator as upbeat and cheerful as ever.  We took off for lunch, and without giving any details in where or how he did it, Carl managed to scam both of us free meals.

If you’re not a huge comedy nerd, then you may not know that along with Sam Kinison, was one of the founding members of the Outlaws of Comedy.  Carl was Sam’s best friend and they worked together through Sam’s entire, albeit short lived, career.  Carl has seen it all.  He was there in Los Angeles during the comedy boom.   This morning, the wild man who partied with rock stars and porn legends was working a grift to  get us breaded fish and mac & cheese!  For dessert, stolen ice cream!

During lunch I brought Carl up to speed on where I was personally.  It always seems like when things are going well professionally, they’re hurting personally.  When they’re going well personally, professionally they’re suffering.  This was one of those times where both personally and professionally things weren’t going well at all.  I was down and I needed my happy sage to pick me up.

We went back up to his hotel room before his show and he opened his iTunes.  He started playing me song after song and telling me the story of how he found the song and what it meant to him.  Those songs spoke to me at that moment and speak to me now as the best memory of have of Las Vegas.  Here are a couple of them.

I sat there listening to the lyrics of about a half a dozen songs and felt like they were written just for me.  I knew I was experiencing a profound and beautiful moment that would last with me for the rest of my life and I had the foresight to know and appreciate that.  It was a perfect moment.  I tried to fight back the tears.  Carl took a break from getting ready for his show and sat down next to me smiling and seemingly pleased that this moment he orchestrated didn’t fall on deaf ears.

We jumped on Youtube and he showed me a couple things he was working on.  We talked about great guitar players and shared our love of music.  He shared with me some of his guitar playing.  This is a song he wrote about his life.  I love it a lot.  I hope he records it…or someone helps me lift the audio from this so I can put it on my iPod.  Even through the turbulent moments of this song, I feel a peaceful and soothing rhythm.  The song has momentum and makes me feel like things are going to move forward no matter what you do about it.  Check out Carl’s playing.

I’m in Vegas now.   I’m not having any profound moments, but things are moving forward no matter what I do about it.  And that’s okay.