Well, not exactly – but recently we mingled with some of the relatives of notorious mob figures at the VIP Preview Party at the Las Vegas Mob Experience, a museum that has just opened in the Tropicana Hotel and Casino.
I am not a good person to review museums. Usually it is TMI for me. (Too much information – thanks to teenage grandchildren I am learning all this new hip shortcut talk – but evidently- see Comments – I’m not an expert at it yet). Actually I get bored very quickly in most of them, even with all sorts of interactive gimmicks.
(One exception was a small sex-down-through-the-ages type of museum in Europe we visited many many years ago. I forget the name of it and even what city it was in – maybe Amsterdam? I was alone in one corridor – Brad always likes to stop and read all the printed material in any exhibit so I am usually way ahead of him – when suddenly a man comes around the corner to face me. He is completely nude! Although he doesn’t speak English, I get the idea pretty quickly by his gestures that he is there with an “interactive” gimmick for this museum. Fortunately, Brad catches up to me about that time, we shake our heads back and forth, and quickly exit the museum, giggling so hard we could hardly get our breath.)
But I digress – back to the Mob Experience. You might like this if you are a real history buff and into the period of time when the mob was an important player in Las Vegas casino affairs. You might not like how that time, with all the blood and violence, is glamorized and “sanitized” (as John Smith wrote in the great commentary on his visit). But the electronics and real-people mobsters added pizzazz to the lifeless text-and-objects displays.
We weren’t actually bored to death once we got inside the mob museum, but we were pretty bored waiting in line with the mob of people who had been invited to this VIP event. The fact that we were invited – considered “media,” I guess – showed they went down many VIP levels. However, there were a lot of A-list (okay – maybe D-list – see Comments again) celebrities – Carrot Top was right behind us in line – and the cocktail party had top-notch munchies. We hit the open bar hard, with all the Sprite and coffee we could drink.
And it was all free – including this picture in the vault with all the faux ill-gotten mob gains.
Always happy to inspire study!
Dear Jean,
I just showed my wife the above picture of you and Brad, and I told her that it was taken in your basement. That got her to go to her computer to practice her Bonus Poker on your software for our incipient trip to Jumer’s, a local casino. A couple more hours practice and she’ll be ready.
Now if I could just find a way to play 9/6 JoB at the Bellagio without a $150,000 bankroll, I could take advantage of their offer of three free nights. 🙁
Feeling frugal,
John
thanks for the nice report on the mob museum. you may wish, however, to check with your grandkids for further clarification on the hip shortcut talk.
while “TMI” technically means “too much information,” it carries with it a connotation that the information being provided is of a highly personal nature that you’d rather not know (e.g. details of someone’s sexual escapades or recent surgery or exact location of their secret tattoo). what you probably were suffering from at the museum is more commonly referred to as “information overload.” sadly, there are no initials for that.
oh, and i did get a chuckle from seeing “carrot top” and the phrase “A-list celebrities” in the same sentence. i bet that’s the first time that’s EVER happened!