THOSE ARE JUST ACTORS, DOOFUS

What do you think most normal people go to Las Vegas for? Booze? Whores? Gambling? Sex? Gambling on possible STD’s and pouring booze down the cleavage of whores? Maybe to begin what will undoubtedly be a failed marriage?

I'll tell you what most normal people don't go to Las Vegas for: Star Trek.

Mr. Spock and the Vegas strip don’t necessarily go together like peanut butter and jelly or Mel Gibson and hatred.

If you’ve ever read anything that I’ve written you should be know that I’m anything but normal. I’m weird, and I’m a nerd and I like nerdy things, and because of my extreme nerdiness I've been to Las Vegas twice – specifically for Star Trek.

Are you fighting the urge to give me a wedgie? Admit it. You are.

Maybe you want to dunk my head in the toilet and flush? Grab hold of my nips and twist until you hear my flesh tear? Kick me in the scones, and then kick me again for using the word scones?

No problem at all. I get it. I completely understand. And honestly, you aren't the first.

My head is quite dunkable.

It's fun watching my faux-hawk swirl.

Here’s the deal; the Hilton in Las Vegas has a little something called "The Star Trek Experience" and its pretty much nerd heaven. Seriously, I'm not a religious man by any means, but if there is a god I’m guessing that he resides somewhere between the row of Next Generation mugs and the Porthos stuffed toys in the gift shop.

This place gives me a boner that makes my Rosario Dawson boner look like a Drew Barrymore boner by comparison – which is barely a boner at all.

It makes me feel like Augustus Gloop, the moment he first waddled into Wonka's chocolate factory and began to salivate.

I think I should mention that Agustus also had a boner in the original film.

Check the Special Edition Directors Cut, pause the moment before he topples into the chocolate and zoom in on his little shorts. You'll see it.

I want everything at The Experience to be mine. I want to take it home with me, and stack it on my desk and stare it lovingly. I want to read it, and play with it, and pop it into my DVD player. I want to drop my pants and make sweet love to it.

My wife of course hates The Experience and she hates the dumb look on my face when I’m there.

"Why do we have to go on that stupid ride again?"

"Steven, you're not really going to spend seventy dollars to get your picture taken in that captains chair again, are you?"

"Can't we leave, and go see a show or something? Maybe we can get tickets to Cirque Du Soleil?"

Cirque Du Soleil? Seriously? This woman had the nerve to suggest Cirque Du Soleil to me? Batshit crazy. Batshit-fucking-crazy.

She once had the gall to actually Celine Dion as a viable substitute for all things Star Trek.

I almost hit her in the face with a brick and buried her in the desert beside Fat Jimmy Stampanato.

It's one thing to not "get" my weirdo obsession with all things Trek. Fine. I can understand that. Okay, maybe not understand it as much as accept it, but still.

It's another thing entirely to suggest Celine Dion as an alternative. That's nonsense. It’s lunacy. It's fifty steps backward, right over a cliff and into a tank full of man eating Great Whites with lasers on their heads and chainsaws for teeth.

It’s the sort of thing that gets a happily married woman served with a stack of divorce papers if she’s not careful.

At The Experience they have a simulator ride called the "Borg Encounter." Before you actually get on the ride part of the ride, you and your group are lead through a series decently constructed sets, while explosions go off around you and actors pretending to be Starfleet officers play out a scenario in which the Borg are attacking the space station you’re supposed to be on.

It's petty sweet.

It’s Agustus Gloop boner sweet.

Also, when the actors aren't looking I like to touch all the fake buttons and pretend I’m firing photon torpedoes.

Shut up. It makes me smile.

At one point during the tour our group of space tourists was huddled in a cargo bay as the ship exploded around us. Suddenly the lights went out. My wife grabbed my arm and squeezed.

What the hell?

Was she scared?

The sound of an explosion blasted through the speakers in the wall behind us. A cloud of smoke came rushing into the room. My wife moved from my side and slid behind me. She buried her head in the crook of my armpit.

She was scared.

Holy Toledo, the doofus love of my live was honestly, no joke-scared!

She was also using me as a human shield form the fictional danger, but that’s whole other discussion

A group of three guys dressed in Borg costumes slowly began to walk through the twisted metal and billowing clouds. They were moving in our direction and the little red laser beams on their eyes were flashing off our touristy garbs.

My wife was peeking through the crack between my armpit and my torso like a terrified five year-old with urine running down her leg. She was breathing fast. Sweat was pouring down her face; her nails had punctured the flesh of my arm and were digging into the muscle underneath.

She’d clearly lost her mind. "What the hell are you doing?"

"What?"

"What are you doing? Are you scared?"

"N-no..."

The dude’s dressed as Borg - who likely worked part time at the best buy just outside of town - were barely ten feet away when the "resistance is futile" warning roared from a speaker system above our heads. At least that’s what I think happened. It sounded about as clear as the ordering window at a Burger King. My wife ducked her head out of sight and mashed her face into the center of my back.

I chuckled. I had to. She just looked so damn silly. "Shut up. You're really scared, aren't you?"

"No."

"You do know that those are just guys in costumes, right?"

"I know that.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Well…what if their circuitry goes haywire or something? You don't know."

Circuitry?

Wha?

Circuitry?

Screw it. I didn’t have the energy to respond.

I may be a dork and a nerd, and I might be a loser of the absolute highest order, and my strange man-love for Captain Picard could be considered morally reprehensible in the eyes of the fundamentalist Christians out there, but at least I'm not my wife.

My wife thinks the fake Borg guys have circuitry.

THE ART "EXPERIENCE."

I’m terrible when it comes to face-to-face social interaction. I really am. I’m awkward and weird, and I generally make people feel awkward and weird because of my awkward weirdness.

Did hearing me admit that make you feel awkward and weird about what you’re reading?

It did, didn’t it?

The proof’s in the pudding.

My ability to bring a party to a halt isn’t exactly a new development. I’ve been this way for a very long time and the chances of me ever being anything else are slimmer than, Calista Flockhart’s thighs or the idea that, Katy Perry will ever write a song that doesn’t make me want to chop her head off and store her boobs in my freezer.

Wait just one cotton pickin’ minute.

Did I just make a Calista Flockhart reference?

Wait one more cotton pickin’ minute.

Did I just say I wanted to chop off her head and store her boobs in my freezer?

Wait one last cotton pickin’ minute!

Did I just type the words “cotton pickin’” three times?

I bet you’re feeling pretty damn awkward and weird now.

Anyone that knows anything about me knows how utterly useless I am when it comes to situations in which human beings gather to do the things human beings do. It’s common knowledge. It’s also the reason I was so taken aback when my wife said the following to me over dinner one night:

“So…we’re doing this silent auction thing at school and I signed you up for an art experience with some of the kids.”

I nearly chocked on my fork of spaghetti. “What?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, Steven. You’ll meet the winners in the classroom and give them an art lesson. You can show them how to paint, or something. It’ll be fun. You’ll love it.”

I jabbed the fork into my brain.

Okay, I actually didn’t do that. I wanted to though.

It’ll be fun? I’ll love it?

Was this broad insane? Who the hell did she think she was married to? I don’t even have fun and love doing the things I actually have fun and love doing. I’m practically a Vulcan. I’m incapable of such emotions.

“Are you nuts? I’m not doing that.”

Instantly the expression on her face changed. It twisted into something ugly. It coiled and morphed into that angry wife-thing that wives everywhere do when they mean business. If you’re a man and you’re married, you know what I talking about. You’ve seen it before. It haunts your dreams and makes your genitals run for cover.

For some reason the name, John Bobbit popped into my head.

This was going to suck.

Two weeks later, I found myself in her classroom after school, waiting for the winners to show up and the art “experience” to begin.

Unlike John Bobbit, my penis remained firmly attached - loosely actually. Maybe dangly would be more appropriate? Whatever. What I’m basically trying to say is that it hadn’t been chopped off and tossed into the woods by a crazy woman.

I’d made the right choice.

Less than ten minutes later the kids arrived. There were four of them – all girls and all under the age of ten. My wife gathered the group around a table at the rear of the room and I proceeded to kill time by filling a few glasses of water for them to dip their paintbrushes in.

After I filled them once I poured them out and filled them again.

A quick glance at the clock told me I’d only wasted three minutes.

I emptied and filled the glasses again.

That killed another sixty seconds.

Damn it.

Why was I so nervous? They were just kids – snot-nosed little kids and nothing more. I was twice their size and in at least one case, three times! I couldn’t allow these kids to get the better of me. It was time to stop being such a sackless weirdo and grow a pair! It was time to knuckle up and be a man!

My hands were sweaty and my face flushed. I could feel their tiny little kid eyes watching me from across the room – staring at me and wondering why I was constantly refilling the same four plastic cups. They were talking in their little kid voices to each other – whispering. One of them laughed and another joined in.

Were they laughing at me?

I bet they were laughing at me.

Those, little punks.

That’s it! I’d had enough! I’d show them! I’d experience the crap out of that art “experience!” It was time to step up and knock this thing out of the park! It was time to point to the bleachers like, Babe Ruth and swing for the fences! It was time to channel my inner Kirk, and take on the Gorn despite being grossly overmatched!

It was time to stop making nerdy Star Trek references that were in no way helping my cause!

With my fully filled plastic cups I strode across the room with my chest puffed and my chin pointed north. I reminded myself once again that I was a grown-ass man and that my fear was idiotic. I needed to take charge! I needed to take control of my stupid brain and let it know exactly who was controlling whom!

I needed to fail miserably despite my bravado!

Wait. What?

Forget that last pat.

Barely five minutes into the “experience” and I was already a blubbering mess. I was sweating more than, John Candy in a, latex John Candy suit. Every sentence was a contradiction. My words were bumping and sliding into each other like drunken assholes in a mosh pit, molding and melding like glue and spurting from my mouth in mostly nonsensical grunts. Suddenly my hands wouldn’t work. For the first time in my life I couldn’t even draw.

Hell, I could barely hold my pencil.

Not only were these kids getting the better of me, they knew something was wrong. The puddle of perspiration on the desk below my head was a dead giveaway. The little girl with the wide eyes and confused look on her face across from me wasn’t helping matters any.

Her face was slimy. She kept smacking her lips and scratching her head, and dropping flakes of dandruff into the still wet paint below. Every once in a while her tongue would peek out from between her lips, extend upward and try it’s damndest to find its way into her nose.

She really needed to stop doing that.

In between my jittery pencil strokes and awkward burp-speak I could hear laughter coming from elsewhere in the room – from behind me. Though the muscles in my neck had stiffened to the point of being utterly useless long ago, I managed to spot my wife and one of her teacher friends standing in the doorway with wide smiles on their faces.

They were watching me suffer and they seemed to really be getting a kick out of it.

Wait one final cotton pickin’ minute.

This was all a set-up wasn’t it?

The little girl sitting beside me broke wind.

Being married is fantastic.