Viva Disaster, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #207 | @MDWorld

November 28, 2012 Arthur Tebbel 1 Comment

Dear Art,
I already know you’re a massive hypocrite, after complaining about the crass consumerism of Black Friday you bought three things over the holiday weekend.  Not only that but you took a trip to Las Vegas the nation’s capitol of materialistic excess.  I hope you were swiftly punished for your two-faced ways.  What do you have to say for yourself?  Do you have any pleas for mercy from the heavy hand of karma?
-An Especially Wrathful Aspect of God

God,
Ugh, what the fuck man?  Was what I did really that bad?  I did all my shopping online!  If Amazon is using the kind of manpower to make their servers work on holidays that big box retailers use then they’re the least efficient company in the universe and deserve nothing but scorn.  I’m pretty sure the deals go up based on timed computer algorithms.  There was no reason to take such horrific revenge.

I did go to Vegas this weekend.  Vegas on Thanksgiving weekend is a good time.  You get a nice mix of orphans, foreigners and the tackiest families in the free world.  It’s win-win.  Hell, I even left town up over $600 so it was win-win-win.  Every part of my transportation experience was a hellish nightmare though and I’d like to share that with you now.

My first mistake was deciding to travel by Greyhound.  Greyhound recently opened their Greyhound Express service to the Los Angeles to Las Vegas route.  They advertise that those buses have wireless Internet and power outlets at the seats.  This sounded like a great way to travel.  Unfortunately none of the things they promised were real.  The Internet was functional for about 10 minutes of the five and a half hour ride; the outlets were nonexistent.  I went on Twitter to complain and I was quickly called (on my cell phone) by a Greyhound customer service rep that agreed to send me a voucher for half of the cost of my ticket.  So next time I want to use this service I wasn’t satisfied it’ll be cheaper.

That’s not the worst part of the Greyhound experience though.  The worst part was the woman two rows behind me who was telling her seatmate the story of how she ended up in LA because she was kidnapped, beaten and then abandoned on the streets and was just trying to get back home.  I think I’ll pay extra for the plane ticket or drive myself next time if it means I don’t have to confront the dark pits of the human experience while traveling.  If this were the 80s there would be a joke about airline food here but there is no such thing anymore.

Two days later I tried to go home and things got no better.  Apparently half a million people visit Las Vegas on Thanksgiving weekend and all of them leave between 10-5 on Sunday.  The traffic was so bad a dozen cars broke down before they reached the first exit out of town.  The first exit had a gas line over an hour long.  I had intelligence from friends who had left earlier that it took them more than seven hours to get back to LA.  I ended up staying another night, eating another two meals and returning home a day late.  Las Vegas is a fun town but it’s awful when you’re there against your will.  Next year I’m staying home (I probably won’t).