PubCon 2006 Night Life

So, if you read the LinkWorth blog, you'll already know that something interesting happened to the group of us that went to the Viva Las Vegas Lounge on Thursday night. I want to toss out my perspective on that night (as, possibly, the most sober person in the group). To give you a hint of what's coming, let me plug in a few key phrases like "Beer", "Dirty Vodka Martinis", "Limousine", and "Tattoo Parlor".

The day started off pretty much like Tuesday and Wednesday did. We got up early, took the monorail to the conference, learned about SEO and whatnot from the presenters, had a few drinks at the Ask.com reception, etc., etc., etc... This night, however, we had plans to go big. Before we even left Pennsylvania, my boss mentioned that he wanted to meet up with the guys from LinkWorth. I didn't really know who they were, other than that we had been working with them for years. Now, Thursday was supposed to be our "free night", where we could do whatever we wanted as long as we didn't get arrested and as long as we didn't miss the flight the next day. However, trusting that the people I was traveling with would make this an interesting night, I said "alright" and tagged along.

After dropping our laptops and swag (if anyone nabbed more green silly putty than I did, I'd be surprised) off at the hotel (we stayed at the MGM, by the way), we started our trek to find the Hard Rock Casino & Hotel. About 40 minutes later we arrived at the Casino and proceeded to the Lounge. Much to our surprise, Jim Breuer was there, just wrapping up a show with the Sirius Radio guys. After the requisite photo snaps, we all set out to find the guys from Linkworth. This is where we ran into a problem. See, we'd never met them before. We had ZERO clue as to what they looked like. Our only recourse, of course, was to simply walk up to EVERY table in the lounge asking "Are you from LinkWorth?" After making our way to the opposite end of the lounge, we finally ran into them at the very last table.

After exchanging pleasantries, the next words from their mouthes were "What can we get you to drink?" At this point, I knew the night was going to be interesting. Not wanting to drink (anymore) on an empty stomach, we all (not including Dave, he said that the 4 Bud Light's was enough of a dinner) wandered over to the "Pink Taco" to get a bite to eat. Now, when I told this story to my girlfriend I left that part out. She almost certainly would have made the assumption that it was a strip club and started yelling before I could explain. Aside from the name, it's all completely innocent.

After eating, we all started drinking and loosely talking shop. Somewhere over the next 4 hours Dave got the bright idea that it would be awesome to get a LinkWorth tattoo. That's right, he wanted to get a tattoo of someone else's company logo. In any case, it was at this point that Matt (from LinkWorth) said "if you get one, so will I, and I'll pay for it". That was enough for Dave. It's worth mentioning that at this point he'd had the 4 beers from the reception and 8-10 strong Dirty Vodka Martinis from the lounge. It's amazing that he could stand...

We all finished the drinks we had in hand and headed out to find transportation. The first thing we saw was a stretch limousine. That, of course, was what we hopped into and took to Vince Neil Ink, the tattoo parlor attached to O'Shea's Casino (a great place for cheap Blackjack, by the way).

This is where it started to get interesting... Dave started insulting people just a few short moments after walking in the front door. None of it was exactly to the level where he could have gotten trouble, but calling the woman who runs the shop "a poser" and then yelling at the guy who is about to give you a tattoo is not exactly bright. Once everything got underway it was all pretty routine (or so I would assume, I've never gotten a tattoo and never will). Once the tattoos were done, and almost immediately after walking out into the casino, Dave got in an argument with one of the casino patrons that started with her commenting on his new tattoo and ended with him yelling "Do you even care about SEO?!?!?!"

Anyway, at that point things started to slow down a bit. Dave did some epileptic dancing in front of the house band at O'Shea's, wanged his head on a railing while trying to run up some stairs, and chased after almost every woman he saw ("chased" being used loosely, he was bent at the waist at a 30 degree angle and was moving at a normal person's walking speed, it was enough to send most of them running away though).

All in all, it was a very entertaining night for us. One of the people we met at the conference, Amanda, was with us the whole night and was snapping pictures and video on her digital camera. As soon as I get that from her, it'll go up so Dave can be publicly humiliated some more. In any case, he's been a really good sport about it and says he doesn't regret anything. With any luck, we'll all be back next year to tattoo OUR company logo on him.

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