The Vegas Recap…at last.

Business…here are the Jumps from Monday and today.
Well, August is trying to beat me down.  Had to take a 6-day trip to start the month, which was followed by a four day trip, which will be followed up by at least two more trips by the end of the month, including a trip to the islands for my brother’s wedding.  Tired?  You know it.  But eh, deadlines don’t wait for nobody, yanno?
NABJ was hot.  And I do mean hot.  One day, the WMD and I were walking from our palatial accomodations at the Super 8 toward Bally’s, and we noticed that the sign at the motel said it was 97 degrees outside.  We both commented that it was probably the most comfortable 97 degrees we’d ever felt.  It should have been.  It was dark outside.  No sun.  And 97 degrees.  At 10 p.m.  Viva Las Vegas, ha?
So this is how the convention started.  Soon as we got in from the airport, we stopped by the Ocho, dropped our bags, then headed toward Bally’s.  On the way, it seemed a good idea to stop and get bottles of water…if for no reason other than to stop my fiancee from asking me if I’d been drinking water.  So we get in there, and the person–at that point, gender hadn’t been determined–working the register was real ag with something.  I thought it was the heat, so I said not to sweat it.
“I ain’t about to let a muthafuckin stranger stress me.  What I look like?”
Clearly, I misunderstood.  So I made that clear.
“Oh hell naw, I thought you was talking about them.  I was gonna tell ’em they could get deez nuts as soon as I grew some.”
Well, we knew she was a woman…but only then, through the use of quite the interesting bit of banter.
Welcome to Vegas, baby.
First, shouts out to the Ellis Island Casino on Kovahl, home of the $3.50 steak and eggs special.  And the steak was much better than the diner here that I get steak and eggs from, which really just gives us the leftovers from the previous night’s Philly cheesesteaks.
Overall, ’twas a great time.  Caught up with lots of my folks I haven’t seen in a while, met some people, attended some informative and entertaining sessions.  Can’t knock that, especially not when one of those sessions involved Don King, Bob Arum, Floyd Mayweather, and too much action to try to relay in this space.  Let’s just say it was just short of pre-fight press conference madness.  Floyd don’t like Don, he don’t like Bob, and they seem to feel the same.
Then there was that Obama speech.  Hillary spoke, too.  I went to see neither.  Know why?  Because there is nothing either of them can tell me in the summer of ’07 that’ll matter by January ’08…and the stuff from then won’t matter much after National Convention.  Right now, these cats is just raising bread.  I respect that.  But I ain’t gonna waste time listening to it when I ain’t giving nobody no money behind this.
The game is large and powerful.  And while both candidates talk a good game, neither of them is saying anything that leads me to believe they have any inclination to change the game.  Oh, Obama thinks he does.  But once he gets face first with that machine and realizes how powerful it is, he’ll be explaning why what he said at a speech I didn’t bother to hear didn’t hold anymore.  Such is the game, folks.
Straight up?  It doesn’t really matter too much to me who wins the next election.  The problems with the current presidency are more rooted in incompetence than ideology.  Agenda’s a part of it, too, but incompetence is the matter of the day.  Anybody can do better than what we’ve got now.
Sadly, I’m so disillusioned with things that all I’m asking for is a little improvement.  I’m not even getting greedy.  Just do better.  Henceforth, just about anybody’ll do.  Further, those low expectations–which, I admit, I’m dramatizing a bit–make listening to Barack Obama make assertions that have a radioactive half-life an inefficient use of my time, especially after being out until 4am the night before.
Might come back later this evening.  Gotta get on a couple things.