Was in Vegas this weekend for a bachelor party. My body held up surprisingly well (and still is). Pretty surprised about that.

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One of the things I love about Vegas is that there's always music everywhere you go. In the casinos - while you're waiting for cabs - while you're in cabs - while you get out and enter the next casino. I can't live my life without music, and it's probably one of the subliminal reasons why I enjoy Vegas so much - awesome music, all the time!

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I got carded at nearly every table at the Hard Rock Casino - I thought the dealers were messing with me. Whoever runs the Hard Rock Casino are geniuses - they put their high limit blackjack tables right around a series of pole dancers - that has to be incredibly distracting.

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Saturday night (at 4am, of course), I "got" craps. Just as they were about to close a table, we took it over and brought life to it. And BOY, did we bring life. Three of us got on a consecutive hot streak - I believe we all nearly tripled our money (most of us were playing with our last hundies). I can't wait to go back some day and play craps (while I always kind of knew the rules, I never knew the side props - I know most of them - dolla YO!).

I still prefer blackjack for meeting new people - get a talkative table and a great dealer and you'll have a lot of fun.

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I lucked out and got to catch one of my favorite bands (All-American Rejects) in concert at the Hard Rock. They were taping a segment for tomorrow's Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which was pretty cool (cause they made it a free show). 

The guitarist kept throwing AAR picks into the crowd - I managed to snag one. Amusingly enough, the pick had a picture of Hello, Kitty! on the back. I'll put up a picture of it tomorrow.

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Interesting conversations with cabbies. One was telling me how much of a monopoly the cab companies are in Vegas - the number of medallions are controlled by a state governing authority, which has very close ties to the cab companies (the major one's been a huge family in Vegas for a loooong time). This makes starting up an independent company nearly impossible (and also impossible for freelancers). Companies are even blocked from working outside of their "district" - one new company can only pick people up in west Vegas - I had no idea it was so heavily regulated.

The reason I was asking was because I was always curious why cab companies didn't adopt more hybrids. For the stop-and-go traffic of Vegas, it seemed the efficiency of hybrids would do wonders to increase the bottom line. As it turns out, the gas costs aren't subsidized by the cab companies - that comes out of the driver's fees. And since the cars are purchased and owned by the companies, it makes no sense for them to take the overhead cost of hybrids since they won't be the ones reaping those benefits. (Seems something like a nice tax break would help with)

One other thing I didn't know - the cabs in Vegas which are the Crown Vics are actually fueled by propane. My driver used to drive one of them and said it was ridiculous, because the tank would never report accurately how much fuel was left. Not only that, but he said (and I'm assuming this is secondhand) that there were reports of tanks erupting. A little something to be concerned about.

And why did taxi cabs convert to propane?

Because a propane company bought the cab company - of course!