Viva Las Vegas turnin' day into night time

Well, I am currently on a 3 hour lay-over in the Las Vegas Airport, awaiting my red-eye flight back to Fort Lauderdale (the pic at left is actually of the Strip as my flight from Orange County taxied to the terminal tonight). And so ends my week in California.

My meeting (that I was in Garden Grove for) went well, and even provided some entertainment (although I only drove past and did not actually go to Disneyland which was 3 blocks away; same with the Crystal Cathedral). The funniest moments of the week both occurred yesterday. The first occurred during the main meeting of the week, which had over 400 people in it and can be rather long and tedious (yesterday consisted of 3.5 hours--which is short). In an (unofficial) effort to cause randomly selected individuals to pay better attention (i.e. it was somewhat created out of boredom), a game called "Lingo Bingo" was developed. The game is a variation of Bingo, where the squares have words/phrases (i.e. "lingo") in them. Players can mark a square if the word is spoken in the meeting by one of the speakers. Sample phrases from this year's cards: "flagship", "initiative", "game plan", "war chest" and "nailing jello to a tree". It is this last one that caused the first funny moment...

Now, it has happened in the past that a speaker at the meeting has purposely stated words/phrases on the cards; and been fairly blatant that they were doing so. In fact, I was even semi-chastised for speaking at the meeting and not "utilizing" some words (which I felt might be cheating in some respects, as at the time, I needed only "utilize" to win). Typically, though, most things on the cards are just highly likely to be said, and come up naturally during the course of the meeting.

On an early inspection of my card, I noticed that the jello phrase was there, and felt I was doomed to have to avoid the square. But, low and behold, towards the end of voting on changes to the rules, the chair of the Rules & Regulations committee (who runs this portion of the meeting) manages to incorporate "nailing jello to a tree" into his description of how the committee's prepares rule proposals for the voting. I almost fell out of my seat when he said it (fire code preventing me from sitting on the floor--my normal spot--this year), and had to keep my laughter quiet. I was highly entertained, particularly when other athlete members seated nearby started asking/questioning whether or not I had prompted the phrase to be said (I didn't).


The second funny moment occurred last night:

A d.j. was brought to the hotel for a dance to occupy the athlete representatives at the meeting (well, mostly the younger/high-school aged reps). The d.j. was playing house music, to which I, for one, couldn't help but start dancing. Apparently, however, it was not what the group wanted to hear, as about 45 minutes into the d.j.'s spinning, as all of them had left the dance floor and the room and were hovering in the hall outside.

At this point, one of the high school girls returned from grabbing her iPod from her room and got it hooked into the d.j.'s system. Within 3 notes of some hip-hop song starting to play, the approximately 30-45 athletes out in the hall picked themselves up off the floor and rushed back into the room and onto the dance floor. And then proceeded to bounce around in sync with one another (but not necessarily with the music) for the remaining hour. The mass influx was almost a stampede.

My take on the whole thing: the house music was too foreign for them--they'd never heard it and therefore didn't know what to do (maybe they didn't know if it was cool?). I was surprised, however, that it didn't make them dance somewhat...


Viva Las Vegas
Viva Las Vegas