Last Man Standing: Vegas Notes

By Spencer Hall
The scene: Mandalay Bay. The medium: horrible, no good, very bad sketching because you can’t take pictures in the book, and because somehow, some way, the amaretto-chugging drunk woman from Minnesota being hit on by three men at once had to be immortalized.
[img=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3085/2355902088_281252bd47.jpg?v=1206307580]
Mandalay’s another fine Vegas production: rows of practical but ample seats, superb big screens, and a bartender pouring drinks strong enough to strip the stink off a muskrat. Nathan texts me. He’s an otherwise responsible professional with an IT job, wife, and a fully normal life, and has been in town for four days on a sleepless bacchanal for the tournament.
After four days of donating money to the Clark County economy both at the tables and at the sports book, he writes:
[quote="Nathan"]Sunday here in Vegas at the sports books is like the finish line at the Ironman--nothing but tired, glassed over eyes and only the strongest left standing.[/quote]
Nathan’s hanging in as the final round of games cranks up. Others, like the abominably drawn woman from the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes above, are clearly stumbling to the finish like Chris Legh at the 1997 Ironman.

Yup. It’s looking a lot like that in here right now.
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