Bright lights

Coming from Salt Lake City, it was cool to see in person the places we’ve always seen on TV. As big UFC fans, it was cool to see the MGM Grand up close. There was an upcoming event and a bunch of MMA fans were hanging around outside. We overheard the following conversation.

Guy 1: How long do you think you’d last with Anderson Silva?

Guy 2: A few minutes, at least.

The answer was utterly insane, yet not surprising. Despite what some people may think, fighting ability is the thing dudes most egregiously overestimate.

We’re being completely serious. As an example - if someone was invited bowling and and cautioned “just fair warning, I bowl three times a week and I’m pretty good”, most dudes would be like “Damn, you’re gonna crush me! I never bowl”. But if someone was invited to spar and told “just fair warning, I box three times a week and do jiu jitsu the other days” most dudes would be like “Cool, I hope you’re ready to die”.

It’s always the guy who’s been in the fewest fights that’s the most confident about how he’d vanquish his opponent. It’s the fattest guy at the tailgate that boasts about how he’d leap for the catch. Ridiculous claims of athleticism follow one simple rule: the lower the likelihood of having to prove it, the higher the likelihood you’d nail it.

Wild claims exist beyond sports, too. We’ve all met people who brag “I coulda been a CEO!” or “I coulda been a doctor”. The rule here is: once someone’s window of opportunity has closed, it’s amazing what they could have done. The Navy SEAL’s have an age cutoff of 30, so every dude on his   31st birthday is like “DAMNIT! I just missed it. I coulda been the best. Rambo who?”

Cruisin

We hit the strip and saw the bright lights and shiny buildings that everyone talks about -- but no one ever mentions the glut of tacky billboards littered along the way. Every cheesy slogan either rhymed or employed a horrific pun. For the rhyming portion, we saw a billboard that read “In a wreck? Oh my heck! Call Tom for representation”. The pun billboard made us wince - it was from a roof company with a picture captioned ‘hot shingles in your area looking to get nailed’.

The most cringey billboards were the ones where people seemingly picked a profession based on the mileage they could get out of their name. One billboard was for a lawyer with the last name ‘Su’. The billboard assured passing motorists that he would SUe the big corporations in class action suits. Another was a woman with the last name ‘Taylor’, and she would sew your clothes to fit you just right. In Vegas, if you have a trash name, you simply can’t work.

Cleanin up

It had been a while since we did laundry and our clothes smelled like shit. We had probably worn everything two or three times over by the time we hit the laundromat. As we were walking in, a guy with half his face missing rode by casually on a bike. He was drenched in blood but completely nonplussed. We got outta there as quickly as humanly possible.

Showtime

The show was at a place called ‘The Center for Science & Wonder’. Before arriving, we envisioned it as a fancy, glassed-out architectural wonder but discovered it was more so a broom closet in a strip mall. It looked like a place where science and wonder go to commit suicide. The owners must’ve had a keen sense of irony.

On the inside, the only thing to signify it was a center for science was the outer-space themed paint job. Basically, glittering stars = science.

There was also a lone picture of Charles Darwin on the wall, and he probably isn’t the best example of a good researcher. I read several articles which stated he ate every animal he studied. I thought he was this great scientist but it turns out he was just a foodie.

We met another guy from PA doing the same thing as we are - living in a van, traveling around and doing comedy. Here we thought we had a novel idea, but there have been plenty of people who did what we did before - and people are doing now, and will in the future. We’re unique flowers.

The show was a lot of fun. There were two guys hosting the mic and they did a great two-man thing. We tried out new jokes that were, to put mildly, dark. It felt really good. Got a lot of groans from the audience, which was basically the intended result. We’re still finding our voices, so it feels good getting darker and more natural.

After the show headed to San Diego.