The last weekend of July, my Internet buddies and I had put together another “mastermind” meeting. Missy wasn’t buying the fact we’d do much work.

The usual troublemakers were there…yours truly Jeff Johnson, Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, John Reese, Mike Long, Jeff Mulligan, Jason Potash, Andy Jenkins and even the “Rich Jerk”. Plus David DeAngelo, Craig Clemmons & Drew Kossoff (from DoubleYourDating.com) and Neil Strauss, best-selling author of “The Game” came to help kick our nighttime activities up a notch.

Frank and I stayed in an awesome 2-story, 2-bedroom suite at the MGM SkyLofts – check out the site when you get a second -they are frickin insane! (Oh and just for the record - Rich Jerk stayed in a regular suite)

If you are looking for a Vegas splurge – I highly recommend staying here. It’s definitely not like the regular MGM Grand hotel (which has got much better). You start with a $450,000 Maybach limo ride from the airport (unfortunately all the Maybachs were out so I got the regular stretch limo on the way in – but I got the Maybach on the ride home). I was greeted by my own personal butler at the door when we arrived to check-in. Actually the entire check-in process was inside your room and not at the front desk. Frank and I couldn’t think of anything that exciting for our butler so we had her iron our shirts – which I hate doing.

Our place was really awesome!

We had a pool table, media room and 2 or 3 little “living room” areas. Perfect for our “mastermind”. The whole place was ultra modern with cool electronic gadgets for us guys. The suite was decked out in Bang & Olufsen gear and flat panel TVs everywhere. It was all controlled by hand-held touchscreens in every room to adjust lighting, TV, radio, drapes, climate, etc. It was damn cool! Actually Corey Rudl had the same set-up in his house and now I want the same deal in my next place. What’s more, the best thing was they made up personalized business cards and Skyloft letterhead for me. Too cool!

Here are a couple pics (left to right) 1. View from our place 2. One of 3 Living rooms modeled by Jason Potash 3. Dining room 4. Media Room 5. Billiards room (I thought this was the only spot they fell down on because the table could have been more modern) 6. Here’s a pic showing the huge 2-story windows of the suite 7. Mulligan posing with our 8x marked up mini-bar liquor that we immediately hid before the other guys got their paws into 8. Mulligan found a nook that he was the only guy skinny enough to get into 9. Here’s a bunch of us…um…..”masterminding” in living room #2.

1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

On the last Vegas trip we took together the guys gave me shit about having stripped socks. I can’t help it most them have no fashion sense. So I brought my stripped socks again -

They all laugh when I tell them they’re like $30/pair at Neimans - but secretly they all want some. When Mike Long ran out of socks last trip - which ones did he borrow? Yep you guessed it. And when Kern needed some this trip he came to his “roomie” for the goods. Here’s proof:

Case closed!

On the first day we didn’t just stay put in our suite all day. We went out Go Kart racing and our competitive sides kicked in.

Frank Kern fresh off the Road Rally didn’t make it in the Winner’s Circle

John Reese took the checkered flag with Mulligan in 2nd and a surprising Jeff Walker in 3rd place.

I’ll post some video of us racing when I figure out how (hmm…I am good friends with Jim Edwards - maybe I should bust open his Multi-media course he sent me).

That night after some more Masterminding we went out to dinner at Stack in the Mirage . I’m a bit of a foodie and wasn’t overly impressed for Vegas. The whole concept I think is the food comes out served in a Stack. The menu was really sparce and the food was hit and miss. I remember the sushi-style apps being great but the entrees were ok. However, we were seated next to a bachelorette party so that was mildly entertaining watch Craig go to work. (One of the few single guys on the trip.) Here’s a little smooch he came back with:

If you enlarge the photo you’ll see evidence of some major lipstick.

After dinner we all went out to one of the hottest clubs in Vegas at the moment, Tryst at the new Wynn hotel. VIP table and bottles - our bill came out to about $4000. Here’s a little candid shot from the mayhem - this is Craig switching roles and giving a girl a lap dance.

I think everyone got home about 5:30 or 6:00 AM. Word of advice - don’t play BlackJack after a night of “masterminding”. I didn’t play with that much and I was actually up until Mike Long (the devil on my shoulder) kept saying “Bet it all! Bet it all!” I ended up losing like $300 or $400 in 2 minutes after that. Oh well…off to sleep…

The next day the troops slowly reassembled for round 2. Not much during the day since everyone was recovering a bit. We met back at our suite for more “masterminding” before going down for dinner inside our hotel at CraftSteak. Because there were a ton of us at dinner we got the family-style dinner option with Kobe beef. Lots of variety and most of it was great. In typical “Yanik style” I ordered up a bottle of a terrrific Dunn Napa Cap. I think it was a 1985 or 1986. Good stuff! I’ve had better but still it was darn tasty. Last Vegas trip Johnson was giving me a hard time because he was only a beer drinker and I was ordering up $400 bottles of wine for the table. I’m just trying to do my part to help culture some of them.

Here’s a little shot of all us at dinner - see if you notice anything below the table on my feet:

(From the left-hand side clockwise) Yanik, Jeff Mulligan, Kelly Felix, Craig Clemmons, Mike Long, Jeff Johnson, Jeff Walker, Jason Potash, Andy Jenkins, Frank Kern, Neil Strauss, Air’n Monahan and “Magic Ryan”.

To step up the action on a whim I decided we should buy a chicken suit I saw down in the shops of the MGM. No idea what I was going to do with it but figured there would be miles of enjoyment for everyone. Here’s me preparing for dinner:

The chicken feet actually matched my orange shirt perfectly so I had to wear them down to CraftSteak. You should have seen some of the looks I got. After dinner we hit a VIP table at Tabu in our hotel and Jeff Mulligan smuggled the chicken feet in. Nicely done! Here’s a pic of Jeff at the club sporting the feet. Then we met a few people and one of the girls knocked over a drink at our table. We decided the punishment was wearing the chicken feet.

Jeff doing the Chicken Dance

Punishment for spilling one of our drinks

We took the party back up to our suite and the Chicken was centerstage. We tried convincing people we had a website called ChicksInChickenSuits.com. It was a membership site where 1000 people paid us $20/month to see new pics of women in chicken suits. I think I had a few people convinced. What a niche market! I did decide to later register it and might develop it as a goof. Now here are some of the chicken suit photos you’ve been waiting for: 1. Jeff Mulligan prepares for his role as the “chicken” (Side note: If things get tough with his online business he is available for birthday parties and bar mitzvahs) 2. Pick-up-artist Neil Strauss, Aka “Style” with his new chick 3. Jason Potash with a shot suitable for framing 4. Yanik asking, “Is this what I paid for?” and 6. You can insert your own caption here - but looks like a strangulation

1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

Later on we did get one brave girl to put on the chicken suit (hey, my first addition to my new site) -

The party died out at about 6 AM and I went down to the BlackJack table because I didn’t learn my lesson the first night. Once again, take my advice - don’t play after a night of partying. Dropped another $500. You know somebody has to pay for the nice chandeliers they have in Casinos. But all wasn’t lost because for some reason (probably the red bulls) I couldn’t sleep and got up at 10 AM to play some BlackJack when I was actually coherent. This time I went on a nice run and ended up in the black about $400 before I had to take off in my Maybach to the airport

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 3rd, 2006 at 9:14 am and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.