When you visit Las Vegas as often as I do, you eventually so some things you're not so proud of. I have my own list of sordid tales including:
- Taking free rooms from casinos then not living up to my gambling expectations
- Playing "Real or Fake" with my wife while watching the topless Jubilee show
- Convincing a drunk guy that the escort cards they hand out on the strip were numbered, and if he collected the whole set, he got a discount.
Beyond these small transgressions however, lies my deepest, darkest secret about my time spent in Vegas. It's not something I talk about often, but I've come to grips with it now, and I think it's about time that I can stand up and admit to the world...
I am a member of the Celine Dion fan club. I'm not one of those wimpy new members either, where all you have to do is submit an e-mail address to join. No, I'm one of the old school
paid members from back in the days when it was $35 to become a fan. Back in the days when signing up got you real benefits, like a shiny membership card, and a subscription to every Celine mailing list ever created (Seriously, every one. There must have been 10 or 12 e-mails a day from various Celine interests. The French ones were particularly helpful.).
Of course, before you spend too much time wondering how such a prime example of manliness could end up in this type of club, the prime benefit of membership was a select group of tickets for Celine's Las Vegas shows available only to members. Lori made it clear very early in our Vegas visiting career, that she wanted to see Celine. Being the good husband that I am, I made sure that it happened and that we had very good seats for the show. I'll even go as far as to say that Celine's show impressed me. The production value was incredibly high, and once you look past some of the theatrics, the girl really can sing. The fan club section however...
Celine has some die-hard fans. I mean really deep, emotional, "Celine is singing just to me" kind of die-hard fans. Everybody around us kept shouting things to Celine, and whenever she said anything back, the entire section went nuts. At one point the guy beside me burst into tears and kept shouting "I love you Celine" over and over again. They also knew every word to every song, including the French songs. This might have been when I felt most out of place, as my French musical knowledge begins and ends with the days of the week song, and unfortunately she didn't sing that one (I did though. Lundi, Mardi, Mercredi.....).
With Celine's new show in Vegas, it seems the fan club rules have changed. There's no longer access to tickets for fan club members, so everybody has to find their own way in. That's fine with me, as I've had time to cultivate an absolutely terrible gambling record at Caesars Palace, and with that kind of record there's usually some tickets available to you somewhere. Last summer Lori and I took eight of our friends to see the
new Celine show, and although our tickets weren't quite as good as our fan club visit, at least nobody sitting next to me started crying and only one member of our group sang along with the French songs (she's a French teacher, so we'll let it go). It was nice that I was able to share the benefits of my lack of success with my friends, but I'm still the only one with a shiny membership card. Of course they don't have to deal with random Celine trivia showing up in their e-mail every hour either. Anybody else want to know what Celine's new years resolutions were?
