I'm gonna refer to people by their usernames so that those of you who know MBTV will (maybe) know who I'm talking about, and I'm explaining that so that those of you who don't read MBTV won't wonder why these people have such crazy names.

Wednesday, I packed. Went to bed around midnight. Woke up around 4 AM, packed some more, and toddled off to BWI. (I mention this to establish the lack of sleep which became a theme of the trip.) On the flight to Vegas they showed "The Skulls" -- which stars Joshua Jackson of "Dawson's Creek," and features Wing Chun's sister as an extra. Total shout-out to MBTV! So I had to watch it. It's really bad and incoherent. And has a bad guy named Caleb Mandrake. When you name your kid that, you've pretty much doomed them to be evil, haven't you? I snickered into my hand a lot, while trying to avoid confusing the nice old couple who were sitting next to me on the plane.

Got to Vegas around 10:30 AM. I was meeting up with another MBTVer, alex richmond, since her flight got in about the same time. After a lot of wandering around, we found each other and grabbed a shuttle to the fabulous Luxor. The Luxor is an Egyptian-themed giant pyramid which shoots a blazing ray of light out of the top at night. Just like the ancient Egyptian pyramids. Or something. I could actually see the pyramid from the plane as it taxied to the terminal, which was kind of frustrating -- I wanted to shout, "Hey, just drop me off over there!" Anyway, we couldn't check in yet because our rooms weren't clean, so after some more wandering around, we made it up to Sars' room to meet her and Mr. Stupidhead (her brother) and Wing and KR and Gustave and Niki and Pooh and probably someone else I'm forgetting. Gustave greeted everyone with a kiss on the cheek because he's all continental like that. Aw.

Those of us who hadn't eaten decided to journey down to the buffet, which at the Luxor is called "The Pharoah's Pheast." Yes, really. So we had some "phood" there (they didn't call it that, but we did) and more people turned up and so on and so forth. Also worth mentioning at this point is the room service menu, which I was very tempted to steal because it featured items like "Eternal Life Corned Beef Hash." Ewie.

Thursday night we mostly hung out and got checked in (finally) and waited for people to arrive and gossiped and watched TV. Pamie turned up after reporting that her mother (it was her mom's birthday, so she'd brought her along as a present) had already lost her gambling allowance of $250, so she'd put her mom to bed and was ready to party with us now. We went to some Mexican place for dinner that had margaritas by the yard. Yeah, it was in the hotel; the Egyptian theme comes and goes at random. No one had a margarita, despite the prospect of getting to take home a plastic margarita glass that looked suspiciously like a bong. Oh, then back up to Wing's room, where we got our fabulous official MBTV Convention T-shirts. Which we bitched about, because the one that came in the comfiest large size is a horrible mustard color. And because we're all terribly ungrateful about getting free stuff. Wing kept saying, "We're ordering more, so if you don't like these you can get others, but please take some because I'm not dragging 30 t-shirts back to Canada with me." The shirts were very cool though: on the back was the MBTV logo, with "Test Pattern 2000," and on the front it said "Blah blah blah Las Vegascakes." If you don't read the site that should bewilder you, and serves you right for not reading the site, so there.

My roommate, Nicole, turned around the same time as Omar and Omarette (his girlfriend whose real name we couldn't remember -- it's Rebecca, for the record) and Megyn and Djb. Megyn, I'd like to mention, is ridiculously gorgeous, as well as being brilliant and funny, and I'd hate her for it if she weren't so damn nice as well. A few people went off to ride the coaster at New York, New York. Among them were Djb and Mr. Stupidhead, both wearing their spiffy new MBTV shirts. Pooh begged them, "Don't be that guy! Don't wear matching convention t-shirts out in public!" But Mr. Stupidhead pointed out, "Come on, this is the only time we can do this! I mean, we wouldn't walk around in matching t-shirts in your home town! But it's Vegas!" And the rest of us chatted some more and finally wandered off to bed.

Our rooms were pretty nice, if overwhelmingly yellow (Egyptian theme, y'see). And they had amazing curtains -- if you closed them, the room was pitch black, even at noon. And of course there were scary pseudo-Egyptian decorations. We were in the towers, not the pyramid part, so we didn't have slanted walls, which made us sad, but I think you have to pay extra for slanted walls. Plus, the tower rooms have nicer bathrooms for some reason. The only down side was that our room was right over the bus drop-off point, which meant I was awakened by bus horns each morning around 10. Given that I was up till 2, or 3, or 4, each night, you can understand why, by Sunday, my eyes weren't so much bloodshot as pure red.

Friday Nicole and some others trooped off to the spa, and I went exploring. Man, oh man, Vegas is strange. I toured the hotel first, and tried to find some suitably tacky souvenirs in the shops. The best/worst thing I found was a large troll doll dressed as a pharaoh. I won't describe the items I did buy, since most of them are gifts... but I will mention that I'm now the proud owner of my very own mini-disco ball. Hey, it was $8, how could I refuse? And nothing says Vegas like something sparkly.

After touring the Luxor, I ventured through the underground walkway to the Excalibur next door. That's the castle-shaped place where Merlin battles a dragon in the moat each night, and oh, my god it's scary. You think Renaissance Festivals are creepy? No contest. I mean, at the Ren Fest, at least you get the sense that the *performers* are sincere about it, even if you still want to repeat Dr. Forester's famous "'Sample my wares?' Sample my FIST, you reject from community theater!" quote. Oh, it was bad. Plus, there's a WCW themed restaurant/gift shop. Does that go with the Merrie Olde England theme? No. So I walked through that as fast as I could and out the other side. Where I was forced to go -- gasp -- outdoors! Into natural daylight! Aieeee! Luckily, there was a little tram right there that could take me to another hotel, Mandalay Bay, so I hopped on it.

Mandalay Bay was pretty low on tackiness, and had some upscale shops, so I toured those. It also has Shark Reef, which is at the very farthest possible end of a huge wing of the hotel, as I learned when I thought, "Well, I'll just walk to that and then turn around and head back." So I walked and walked and walked, and realized that I'd made a mistake, but by then I was too stubborn to give up and turn around. I got there eventually. Then I thought I'd venture back outside and take a shortcut back towards the Luxor. Wrong. Walked in a big circle, discovered that Vegas really doesn't encourage pedestrian activity, and ended up going back the way I came. I walked a lot, is what I'm saying. But I made it back eventually.

The big plan for Friday was that we were all going to go out for a nice dinner together. We settled on the Luxor Steakhouse. Yum, yum, yum, and again I say, yum. I had a gigantic stuffed portabello mushroom, and some fillet mignon that I'm still drooling over, and garlic mashed potatoes. Yum. And we talked and annoyed the other diners and so on. Afterwards, there was some confusion, as some people wanted to go ride the New York, New York coaster again, and after that we were all going to go see "Bring It On," because Wing couldn't wait another minute to see the cheerleading movie. We finally agreed that we'd all go to the coaster, and some people would ride it while others, like myself and Sars (who is my kind of people), held their bags, and then go to the movie. And then no one moved, while Wing and KR said, "Okay, let's go. Let's go do that then. Are you all going to come with us? Well, we're going!" and finally started off. Gradually the herd followed in their wake. I ended up with Djb, Megyn, Nicole, Omar, and Omarette. Wendola was going to meet up with us also, after stopping in her room. We did not choose our leaders wisely, because Djb and Megyn walked very quickly in entirely the wrong direction, and we trailed behind them shouting, "Um, do you know where you're going? Didn't Wing go the other way? Hey, guys? Guys!" So they ended up leading us outside, through parking lots, and eventually started to try jaywalking across a very busy street, at which point Nicole and I rebelled and decided we would take the handy raised walkway across instead of risking our lives further. Omar & Omarette also vanished around this point.

So we did that, and still beat Djb and Megyn to the coaster. Which was closed. D'oh! Next stop, the movie theater at the MGM Grand. More walking very quickly in random directions, while Djb made very amusing arm-waving gestures. Then we remembered that Wendola was expecting us to be at the coaster. Again, d'oh. We tried calling her cell phone but couldn't get through. So we abandoned her to the fates and continued our Baton death march. (Get it? 'Cause it's a cheerleading movie. I'm clever.) The theater at the MGM is cleverly situated in the most hidden location possible. We had to go in, upstairs, outside, find a hidden elevator in a parking garage, go down, acrss a scary bridge, and then finally ended up back on the street outside the ticket booth. Where there was a tremendous line, and no one we recognized was in it. We called Wendola again, and tried to guide her through the obstacle course while we waited in line. She turned up, we got tickets, got inside, and even managed to find the rest of our gang in the theater (Omar & Omarette had, of course, gotten there ages ago). Whew!

The highlight of the movie for me was when the showed the little "welcome to the theater" generic trailer backwards. The whole thing was reversed and upside down and the sound was going backwards so it had a certain "Welcome to Satan's movie theater!" feel. "Bring it On" started well, but got a little confusing since it seemed to start as a satire, then become a high school romance, and ended up as a genuine sports movie. Also, the male love interest was doing an excellent Xander impression the entire time, which was especially disconcerting since he and Eliza "Faith" Dushku were supposed to be brother & sister.

Best line: "A cheerleader is a dancer who's gone retarded."

Second best line: "This is not a cheer-ocracy!"

After that, a lot of people were going off in search of a karaoke bar, but Sars and Nicole and I thought sleeping sounded nicer at that point, so we wandered off to the hotel (and it was a much shorter walk that time) and went to bed.

The original plan was that Saturday we'd meet up at the Pyramid Cafe (oh, they don't miss a detail, do they?) for lunch and the official MBTV business portion of the trip. And also to discuss our casinos -- at some point it was agreed that we all had to think of a theme hotel/casino for Vegas with some random prize for the best one. Naturally, my little ears pricked up at the thought of a competition, so I'd filled a couple of pages in my notebook with ideas. Because I'm a psycho like that. But apparently the karaoke-ers had stayed out past 5 AM, so the meeting got rescheduled a couple of times until we finally ended up meeting in Wing's room for about an hour in the late afternoon. Nicole & I just puttered around Saturday morning, so there's not much interesting to say about that. We had the meeting, but forgot to talk about our casinos, so I think that will end up being discussed in the MBTV writers' forum. I'll be sure to share details, since my idea was pretty damn sick and wrong and I'm going straight to hell, so all I can hope for now is to take you all with me.

After dinner, most people wandered off to ride the coaster since it had been closed the night before, and Nicole M-R and I and Wing and KR ordered room service and watched "Return to Me." It was cute. Obvious, but done pretty well, and it made up for a lot by having Carroll O'Connor and some other adorable little grandfatherly actors as his friends, because they stole the movie.

That ended, and we retired to our rooms for a nap, because we'd agreed that everyone was going back for more karaoke that night. Woo-hoo!

The karaoke was, without a doubt, the highlight of the trip. And I say that even though I loathe karaoke. Words cannot convey how funny everyone was. Djb and Pamie should have their own variety show. Apparently they'd done "Wannabe" the night before. When we got there, people were doing "My Heart Will Go On" and crap like that. Oh, and there was this one guy who I like to call Mr. Sincerity. He did "Another Day in Paradise," for god's sake. Yeah, that's a party tune. Anyway, we dealt with that until our names started coming up, and then Djb got up and sang "All Night Long," and people were racing to the dance floor, and it was beautiful. Wing and Gustave sang "You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore," and inserted some new lyrics -- Gustave called Wing a frigid bitch, and Wing called Gustave an impotent alcoholic. Omar sang "Lady," and got down in front of his knees in front of the very startled waitress as he sang. I can't remember what Pamie sang, but it was a love song that she directed to the DJ, and at one point she was writhing around on the ground in front of him. Oh, and Pamie also sang "Flashdance." It was all amazingly amazing. And during another song Djb began plugging the site instead of singing the lyrics -- he even got it to fit into the rhyme scheme.

During one song Omar and Omarette danced, and they looked darn sweet together, and I don't have anything interesting to say about it, except that Wing turned to me and said, "They're so cute!" at the same time that I exclaimed, "They're adorable!" So I wasn't the only one.

And then, best of all, Wing and Sars sang, "I Don't Want to Wait," which for those who don't know, is the theme to Dawson's Creek. Which was particularly funny, since the song doesn't exactly make sense, and Wing & Sars started commenting on that fact instead of singing. There's some line about a man coming home from the war, which led Wing to wonder, "What is this, Saving Private Ryan?"

Around 4, a few people headed back to the hotel because their flight was in a few hours (ugh!) and I went back with them so that I didn't die of exhaustion.

So I slept, and a few hours later I woke up, and Nicole and I checked out and went to the airport and got on our planes and came home. And Monday I slept and slept and slept. Ta da. That's my story. Yeay for me!