We're off to see JUBILEE with Miss Rusty Frank, our guest teacher from LA who has flown to Vegas a day early to enjoy our delightful company!
I just LOVE this campy show - the Bob Mackie costumes are towering feathered confections from the neck up, consist of about 3 rhinestones from the neck to the waist, and then explode from each sequinned butt in a frou frou of endless metres of maribou and swarovski crystals (ooh - I'm saying ALL the magic words!)
Most of the show reminds me of the "Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend" number from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (but with tops off, of course) Showgirls are strapped to the chandeliers, lifted by the most jaded chorus boys in show biz and parade emdlessly down a crystal staircase.
Where that homoerotic "Samson & Delilah" number came from I'll never know, and Fluff Le Coque must have had several sherries when she decided to sink the Titanic at the end of every show - it must have been terribly chilly out there on the high seas in only a picture hat and a g-string!
After the show the glamour kittens scatter, and Rusty takes Grant and i to a FANTASTIC Old School Vegas restaurant off the strip - The Casa de Amore. It is dark and musty and we sit in a red banquette under a picture of the rat pack. The walls are covered in vintage vegas pics and a crooner in a velvet tuxedo sings Frank Sinatra songs on a tiny stage - pinch me!
It is half price wine night so Grant orders a bottle of veuve cliquot - wheee!!
We are there late, and the dinner crowd are dwindling, so soon we are best friends with the waiter and an obliging lounge singer who takes requests.
After dinner the waiter offers Grant a free t-shirt if we order dessert, so we order a cab and desert. The cab comes IMMEDIATELY and soon the cab driver is also our best friend, sitting in the banquette with us while we finish dinner. He seems delightful, and is an architect who has worked on lots of Vegas's iconic buildings, including Aria and Wynn, before being retrenched and forced to drive a cab.
We start talking about mid-century homes and he offers to take us on a tour of the enclave of mid-century homes in the old part of Vegas. So at midnight we are driving round the mid century estate - He is an absolute MINE of information, pointing out clerestory windows here and atomic mouldings there. It is FABULOUS!
Rusty wants to see fremont street, and although it may be a suicide mission to walk around that part of town at this time of night, we head down there, when out of the blue our cab driver says "do you want me to tell you a dirty joke?" um, no thank-you. "what about a fag joke, by the way this is where the fruits hang out and I could take you down some back lanes to see the fruits if you like" - ummm, no thankyou ... "lots of working girls down here - do you want to swing by?" - ummm - thanks for offering but ... no. "Would you like to hear a Catholic joke then?" - sigh of relief - SURE!!!! and then please let us out Mr Weird Fruity arcitecture freak.
Rusty loves all the vintage neon of fremont Street as we do, but I do have an inkling I could be stabbed at any minute, so we head back to the hotel in order to get an hour or two of sleep before our big day of tap in the morning.
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