Armchair Anonymous: Las Vegas

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Miniature Mouse Padman. Hi. You guys wanted it? I don't know if they wanted it. Vegas Stories. Of course they deliver. Yeah. And we're stupid to have not had this prompt a bunch of times. I know. I have regrets about that. There's drugs. There's singing. There's injury. There's singing. There's kidnapping. I mean, this has it all. Yeah. This is a good one. Everything that happens in the world happens in Vegas. Yes, that's right. Please enjoy Crazy Vegas Stories. Oh. Hello. Oh, cute. Cute sweatshirt. It's the robot. Cute sweatshirt alert. Alert. Okay, so what fake name should we go with? I think we're going to use Marie. Marie. Okay, wonderful. Love it. And Marie, are you allowed to tell us where you're at? Yeah, I'm in Fullerton. Oh, sure. 126. What's the highway that goes through there? Never mind. It's okay. You don't have to know. I don't know highways. I don't. Yeah, I get off the 91. Okay, great. So Marie, you have a good Vegas story. I do. Okay. So it took place in September, 2020. So like right after COVID. You could go to Vegas for like 30 cents, right? At that time. Yeah. We were going for my birthday and we had been, you know, kind of cooped up for a while. So we decided to taking advantage of the good prices, get this beautiful, sweet two bed, two bath wraparound balcony. Oh baby. Is it a secret? Which place? The Cosmopolitan. Okay, great. Lovely. Newer offering. The balcony overlooks the fountains and just all the fun stuff. It's me and my husband, Chris, and our two best friends, Taylor and Eric, and our dog. We brought our dog, Killer. Oh, why not? Oh, scary. Yeah, you know, we brought him everywhere with us at the time. So Chris and I are really excited. We get to Vegas early. We're like, who cares? We don't need to be there at check-in time. Like, we're going to go start the party. Taylor and Eric meet us there. They meet us at a bar that we've been at for a little while. Nothing too crazy, just a couple drinks. By the time they met us there, it was time for us to check in. And so Taylor and I went to the hotel while Chris and Eric stayed at the bar. We get in the room. We're running around just like little kids, so excited to be in this hotel room. And we're looking at the view. And I'm in one bedroom. Taylor's in like the living room. And she wants to FaceTime her niece to show her this really fun room we're going to have for the weekend. This is crazy. Like we don't do this sort of thing, you know. So it was really exciting for us. I hear the FaceTime connect. I hear the niece on the phone. And I get so excited. I take off running into the living room. Why I felt the need to basically break into a sprint, I'm not sure. I did not clear the doorway hit my toe directly into the wall I dropped to the ground it's one of those ones that almost knocks the wind out of you and the toe pain is a hot pain it's an immediately searing pain it also sucks because it's such a small it's like I hurt my toe people don't take that seriously they're expendable but it hurts and there's not much you can do for a toe you just kind of have to deal with it That's right. It was my toe next to my little toe. So it wasn't great. But better than the big toe, right? Better than the big toe, yes. Still made it very difficult to walk. The boys come back to the room. We decide we're just going to stay in. I'm going to let my toe heal in the morning. It's going to be better. We decided to party in the room. We had drugs. We had alcohol. Oh, God bless. You did it. What drugs are we doing? Please tell me. We were doing cocaine mainly. Wonderful. Wonderful. This is a good time. Wonderful. Were you doing meth? No. No meth. You only do meth if you don't have cocaine. That's like the poor man's cocaine. Well, I'm on meth right now. Oh. And I've been enjoying it. Yeah, well, of course. I didn't realize I'm on Sudafed. And it's nice. But you already realized that, Monica. I have to tell you. I just haven't done it in a while. Yeah, you've had a layoff. But you've always enjoyed the tea. I relapsed. Yeah, yeah. Okay, great. So we have a little cocaine. Not to get bogged down in the drugs, but of course I'm going to. Did the boys score the Coke at the bar they were drinking at or had they brought it with them? They brought it from somebody we know and trust here. Sure, sure. Trusted source. Okay. Yes. So that's the night we're having a good time. I don't remember all of the details, but I'm sure I was not babying my toe the way I should have been if I wanted it to get better. I felt invincible. It was great. Now, another pervy question. The drugs was part one. Is there any talk about anyone having sex out on that balcony overlooking the fountain? There was no talk about it. Okay. You're smiling. Oh, wow, wow, wow, wow. Okay, I might have jumped ahead. Okay. Okay. So, okay, that's night one. We wake up the next morning and it's not better. It's probably worse. You know, I'm in no shape to be walking around. So that day is my birthday. And we decided to call the front desk and they sent up a medic. Oh, okay. And he came up and he wrapped my toe for me and gave me crutches. Was he hot? Oh, nice. He had crutches too. I don't remember, honestly. Yeah, strange. I don't even know. I would have never thought to call a medic from the hotel. I would just deal with it. I thought it was my fault and I deserved it. Yes. It was so embarrassing too. So I quickly realized like there's no way I'm going to be able to get around the strip on crutches. So we decide to rent, you know, those little motorized wheelchairs. Little rascals. Yeah. So we rent one of those. I don't look like I need it, first of all, unless you like look at my foot. Right. And it beeps every time you reverse and you're always reversing. You're never not reversing in these things. You know, you're in the bathroom. You got to reverse out of the stall. We had to call handicap accessible taxis. I had to ride the scooter up in the back, sit there, and then reverse out. It was incredibly embarrassing. But it was what it is. Got me around the strip. We had a great day. And we had already planned. So with doing the Coke, we also brought ecstasy. Okay, great. Yeah, we'll shift gears for the next night. That night, we're going to roll. We're going to have a good time. So we get back to the hotel. We get in our cozy clothes. There's a nice big couch in the living room. We're going to all kind of just pile on there, watch music videos for a little while. and at the time you know the song by Justin Bieber called holy yes yes so the music video is incredibly emotional and sad and why we thought this would be a good idea to put this music video or not skip it or whatever I'm not sure so I should also mention that up until this point I had done ecstasy just a handful of times and each time I'd only done a half a pill at a time so responsible congratulations well not tonight I took the whole pill and basically the last thing I remember is the music video playing. After that, I have two snapshot memories. One of them was I was in like the corner of one of the bedrooms on the ground and I threw up and I proceeded to go right into the throw up. Oh, face down into the throw. Yeah. For the listener face plant. Yeah. Not sure what possessed me to do that. And then the other memory I have is at some point I'm looking in the mirror in the bathroom and seeing bruises on my face and like not understanding where they came from. Oh my God. So because I don't remember all of this, I got with Taylor, Eric and Chris the other night to get all the details because basically the rest of the story is like them retelling it to me. When I told Taylor like, oh, I have these snapshot memories. She was like, Brian, those were six hours apart. Hold on one second. I just got to say something. First of all, anyone listening, don't do drugs. Secondly, what I think is hilarious about drugs is it doesn't make you like six years old again. You can't handle your shit. And it's funny because you're an adult. You throw up like a baby does and then you fall in. Then you're bruised up. It's like a time machine back to being incompetent. I like that part. It's not fun for the people around you who aren't on it and they have to take care of a baby. Well, that's why you do it all together. Everyone has to do it. Yeah, yeah. All in. All for one, one for all. We all took it. I guess what happened is the video played. I got hot, as you do, when you're coming up. And one, it was like, let's go out on the balcony, which is why we got this room to specifically like enjoy our trip watching everything pretty quickly upon getting out there i like started rolling around on the ground kicking my feet flailing my arms it's a cement balcony my toe is in no shape to be being kicked onto the ground they couldn't get me to stop so they're like running into the room to get pillows to put under my legs under my feet unsure why i'm doing all this they finally got me to come inside because they're like This can't keep happening. And that is when I started throwing up again on the floor, rolling around. Oh, my God. Being, like, violent. Not, like, trying to hurt anybody. I think other than myself. I was, like, hitting my head on the wall, hitting my head on the floor. This sounds not fun. You're not making a great case for MDMA for Monica, which I keep trying to convince to try to. The only bad time I've had. I promise you that. They were like, okay, we need to get her on the bed. So they pick me up. They put me on the bed. And at this point, their mission was to just physically restrain me. So Chris is holding my legs. Taylor has one arm. Eric has another arm and I'm fighting. I'm like trying to get away from them. And I must've been going through like some turmoil at the time. Cause the only thing they could make out me saying was like, I'm not a good person. And then gibberish. So that took about an hour, hour and a half. I must've calmed down enough that they were like, we got to get out of this room. It smells like throw up in here. It's hot. It's sweaty. I had like cut myself at some point. So there's like blood. And apparently we get outside and I like that snap right out. You just needed to change the venue. That's exactly what Taylor said. She was like, we need to get her out. She needs fresh air. She needs a new scenery situation. Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah. Let's do a hard reset. It was like me taking you on that walk, Monica. Oh yeah, that did help. Yeah. During the craziness out at all, Chris got really scared and looked at Taylor. He was like, do we need to call 911? Is she overdosing? Yeah, sure. Taylor was like, she's just having a bad come up. That's all this is. Come up for eight hours? No, no, it was only an hour and a half in. That's a long time. No, that time clicks by when you're really quick. This is all really telling. Like, I love what's happening right now because it's all about what your comfort level is with chaos. That's just from your childhood. You're hearing this stuff in with good reason, Monica. You're like, this sounds terrible. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this is novel and interesting. Yeah. Didn't stop me from doing it again in the future. But yeah, so we stayed outside where the dog was when this was happening. I have no idea. We got all the clean blankets and pillows we could and took them back out of the balcony, brought like a speaker out and then just spent like four or five hours all just like kind of cuddled together watching the lights it was a great time wow wonderful and i did send pictures oh great the aftermath oh yes that fourth toe is definitely purple although it could have been fatter okay your legs are much worse for the wear oh my god it's like you took a ball ping hammer to Oh my god Oh yeah you got a purple eyelid You really went through it Marie Oh shit Oh wow Had you guys driven there or flown there? We drove How was the drive home? Not great I didn't have to go to work I had all these bruises on my face How am I going to explain this to my job? You didn't say you got jumped Or you crashed your little rascal One of the two Yeah so that was my story The time you lost your marbles inside of the really nice hotel room. Did we get the vomit cleaned up? Did you guys incur any costs? I'm sure we did. I'm sure we had to pay. I can't imagine we were cleaning that up on our way out. We just need to get out of there. These hotel rooms have seen so much. They have. When you're walking around barefoot, you got to really consider all the action that's going down in there. You don't want to consider. Okay, so no one had sex on that balcony. That was the long and short of it. Not at that trip, no. Okay. Not on that trip. That's good. We returned to the hotel one time. Did you request the same room? Same style. Maybe not the same room number. Yeah, they didn't want to touch that room. Yeah, exactly. Like a hundred foot floor. No, yeah, that one should be hazmat. Oh, that was great. That was wonderful. If I could just give a little shout out to Taylor. She was actually supposed to be here with me today to say hello. But she went into labor yesterday and had the most beautiful baby girl early this morning. Congratulations, Taylor. Yeah, congrats. What's the baby's name? Do you know? Her name's Indigo. Ooh, cute. Indigo. I love it. What if she said Marie? Shout out. Cute little baby. You got to hold her for a little bit. Sweet. Is she the first in the friendship group to have a baby Yes Oh it the best They hit the lottery because everyone going to be really really excited And then when the fifth person in the group has a kid you like okay we been through this a bunch of times Yeah. Okay, well, shout out Taylor. Yes. And thanks for sharing that story. Thank you guys for having me. This was so great. We love listening to you guys. Me and Taylor actually consider ourselves like the Dax and Aaron because we've been friends our whole lives since we were babies. By the way, from that story, it sounds very similar to some Dax and Aaron antics. Yeah, we get into some crazy things. Fine. If you can pull it off, it's good. All right. Well, lovely meeting you. Lovely meeting you as well. Bye-bye. Okay, bye. Can I have a tissue, please? Oh, yeah, yeah. The transformation's complete. You're me. You're late. I hate it. You're late. You're blowing your nose and you love meth. I hate blowing my nose. I feel so vulnerable. Also, this morning, I hit my head so hard right here on a wall that I wasn't ready for. You don't know your surroundings. Yeah. And I was like, CTE. Oh, yeah. So I just want to let you know that I have CTE. Okay. Oh, my goodness. Hi. Hi. Hello, Madison. How are you? I'm good. How are you guys? Good. You have an enormous shoe collection I'm seeing. We got 60 to 70 pair of shoes behind us. Yes. This is a ding, ding, ding. So I have a new closet. My shoes are displayed. Now you can see them. And Jess was like, oh, my God, you have 80 pairs of shoes. And I was like, I roll. You're exaggerating so much. And he was like, we're going to count. And I had in the 70s. Oh, my God. Oh, my goodness. I said, I was like, I have 40. Oh, wow. And those things add up. They do. I actually can't take credit for any of the fabulous things in this room. This is actually my sister's office slash closet. And she is quite possibly the most fabulous person I know. Good for her. She's got 100 to 200. She's a wizard when it comes to style, everything. So I'm very grateful for her very fashionable background. We thank her on our behalf as well. Madison, where are you? I am in Raleigh, North Carolina. Oh, nice. I love it there. I'm hearing so much about Raleigh because I'm going through a lot of the old Sedaris books on tape all over again. And of course, Raleigh comes up quite a bit. It's a quality spot. I just moved back here nine months ago, so happy to be back. And is he the pride of Raleigh? Do people know that David Sedaris hails from there? Maybe. I'm not from here originally. I'm a military kid, so I call a million and ten different places home, but I'm sure some Raleigh locals would love to weigh in on that one. Okay, so you have a crazy Vegas story. I do. So to give you a little bit of context, when I was in high school, I was in a nationally recognized high school show choir. So just about the coolest group of kids you could possibly imagine. It was for everybody from third grade to 12th grade. And the closer you got to high school, the more it kind of became a little bit intense. And my sophomore year, I had made it into the elite high school choir group. So it was a big deal. Not that many sophomores get to have that moment. And can you tell me what happens when you're in an elite choir? Do you travel around? Is there competitions or do you just perform? What happens? So we gave multiple performances throughout the year. We did a Christmas show. We did a choral production. And then in the spring, we did a Showtime show, which was like kind of anything goes. So we do different Broadway sets. One time we did like a British invasion number with all of these different songs and mashups. Thank Glee, but with more sparkles and like a very weird obsession with red lipstick. Oh, okay. And are there competitions or no? No, but every summer we would go on tour, which is how my sophomore year, we found out we were going to Las Vegas and it was pretty exciting. And that for me was like a peak year. I would say maybe as close to my seventh grade year as I could get. Okay. Tenth grade was it. So I had just moved to Florida to this little panhandle town, joined this choir. I had my first boyfriend. Are you going to the beach? So much. Yeah. Town is on the beach. It was the height of life. All year, we were so excited to go to Vegas. It was all anybody could talk about. And sure enough, summer came and everything fell apart. My boyfriend broke up with me the week before the trip. And I was not looking forward to this. But here we were 40, 50 kids on a flight to Vegas about to have the best week of our lives. How many chaperones? Like how many adults per? I think about six or seven. And then plus the two choir directors. 50 kids? I'd want max three kids per chaperone. You would think. I don't know how they did it, but it was chaos nonetheless. So naturally, you have a breakup. I'm heartbroken. Friends are picking sides. Tensions are high. and if you know anything about the show choir life choir kids are competitive we're all friends but we're all like upset you got the solo we're upset you got that part limited real estate dog eat dog so all week it had just been a disaster girls were fighting the boys are just like having a great time and they're enjoying all the attention that the girls are giving them and that was the week that my boyfriend or my ex-boyfriend decided that he wanted to have a little rebound fling with one of my friends on the trip oh he's was he also in choir oh yeah extra tense oh i had no idea he was on the trip yeah the chaperones and the moms are just as in all the dramas all the kids we're doing workshops for a master class in church choirs for people like we're performing to teach these church choirs in nevada how to choir then at night we're going to see different shows so we We saw like Celine Dion one night. We went to Phantom of the Opera. And then during the day, we're hanging out. We're seeing all the sights. What hotel do they have you guys at? We were in the Venetian, which is going to be the location of the pinnacle of the drama. So all week drama, all week chaos. Do you have words with the gal that he hooked up with? Are you guys ignoring each other? Had to stay as far away. I was like, I'm not even going to be around you. I'm going to go hang out with another group of girls. At one point, we're like, we can't shop anymore. We have no more money. We are so over it. We just want to go have fun. So the chaperones against the rules were like, yeah, just go ahead without us. Just don't cause trouble. So we went off on our own for the day and had a lovely time. Well, that afternoon, texts come bombarding in. And this is 2011. So there's no real social media yet. So everything had to be done by mass text. And my boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, decided that they were going to do like a whole makeout on the strip and they were going to send photos. And so photos got sent to me. I'm crying. Now I've transferred into he's a dick. It's okay if you don't want to be with somebody, but now this is a dick move. You couldn't have waited. Also not to mention my 16th birthday was the last day of this trip. Let me have fun. So my friends and I had gone down this trip. All this happens. I start crying. And my friend, Mary, who we're still very close to this day, looks at me and says, we need to do something big. We need to like show everybody that you don't care. And so what are 15 and 16 year olds to do when you're alone in Vegas? We decided to go into the nearest CVS and buy a box of hair dye. And we were going to dye my hair. Oh, okay. Big change. Okay. Okay. A big revamp. We were not cool by any means, but this was as edgy as we could get. I keep thinking like, how are they going to get booze? You would think. So we grabbed the box of hair dye. We raced back down the strip. We have to be at the taxi line by 6 PM. So my friend is dyeing my hair in the sink of the venetian hotel bathroom i went from like a very sandy blonde like beach blonde hair to as dark brown as i could get without it being straight megan fox black and i thought i was hot shit oh good you liked how it turned out yeah i was like this is amazing i had texted some friends i was like wait till you see what i did of course rumor spread people were thinking i went and found a way to get an underage tattoo or i had gone drinking at one of the day clubs or I had gone gambling. I don't even know how all these rumors got out of control, but they were spreading so much so that the moms were upset because they thought that something real no, no had happened. So sure enough, I show up at six o'clock with my friends in the taxi line and we are like, look at her. She is fabulous. I'm feeling good. And not a single person notices because they're like, how dare you go to the club? How dare you drink? This is not okay what are you doing and my one friend just could not be more upset with me and as i am trying to calm her down she says something and i see this thing behind her just like a blur ball and i hear this giant sound trigger warning the next part of the story gets a little sad oh no okay okay we're gonna take a big turn here the whole area just went still and silent my friends and i all turn I had witnessed it. It turns out that a drunken selfie had gone wrong. Somebody had fallen from the parking garage. You saw a body fall out of the parking garage? Ryan Murphy could not have written this glee line. It would have never happened. But he didn't land on any other people, though. No. Was it he or she? It was a man. See, really quick, I'm just going to add. So I'm getting nervous. A big fixture fell off of the ceiling and killed a very innocent person from the choir. That would be the worst case. Okay, well, we don't need to do what's worse. No, I'm going to. You get yourself into it doing a selfie by trying to be a daredevil. I'm feeling less bad. Yeah. And then when it's a boy over a girl, even less bad. So as bad as it is, there were a few things that lessened it for me. I also thought someone was trying to die by suicide. Okay. We all just start panicking and we're looking around and plus we're all 15, 16. There's one mom standing there like, oh, fuck. And people start frantic. They're like running up to him. They're calling 911. and some of us are just in shock. Some of us start sobbing hysterically. We get pushed into a cab because we were next in line. When I tell you this was all within a very close space. So they push us into the cab. We're all sitting there. People are sobbing. People are calling other moms. People are freaking out. I'm just sitting there like, what the heck? I text my mom and I'm like, what did you send me to? Where am I? This is the worst week of my life. And she's like, I don't understand what's happening. You come home tomorrow. Just hold on one more day. I haven't cried yet because you're 15. How do you even mentally process something like that? And we don't even have all the details. So we just know what we saw. They rush us down the strip. We get to the next hotel. We're at the MGM. We see all of our friends who have now heard from all the frantic calls. My boyfriend's looking at me like, are you okay? And I'm like, please don't talk to me. Yeah. Now he wants. I love your new hair. What happened? No one notices my hair. No one notices anything. People are asking me what I did that day. I'm like, how could you talk about this rumor right now something terrible just happened and it is just a frenzy and so the choir director gets up and he's like everyone needs to shut up everyone needs to get over this we have got to keep this ball rolling show must go on your shit together so they're like let's go into the theater everybody sit down we'll watch the show and it will take your mind off of everything and you'll be okay except we were seeing the lion king and if you've never seen the lion king on stage act one ends when Mufasa is thrown off of the cliff. Oh, fuck. Okay. A little sim moment. Yeah. A little PTSD. So everyone starts crying. I'm so sorry. I'm trying not to laugh a lot, but I had just said to Monica the other day, I don't know what it is about Vegas, but girls be crying in Vegas. Well, they saw something very traumatic. They did, but they were crying even before that, Monica. There's been a lot of crying in this story. And I'm just saying, I hope it doesn't sound sexist, but they You have to have a good cry in Vegas. Yeah. Yeah. Not to mention we're choir and theater kids. So like we just like to cry anyway. Yes. Yes. Yes. Double whammy. Like she was saying, the boys are having a good time. All the girls are crying. That's what I observe. They're having a good time and they're falling off buildings. No, no. I'm talking about the group. I know. But I'm saying that's the difference of what's happening in Vegas. Yes. The girls are crying, but the boys are falling off buildings. The boys are having a great time. The boys are wearing matching fedoras. It works for our gender I don know why We go to Vegas and we fine Okay so you in the show and everyone now crying all over again one ends we all sobbing and everybody is just like this is just too much after the lion king we actually had to stay and do like a meet and greet with the cast and so it's just this group photo with these incredible performers and then all these kids who are like red face and puffy new hairdos yeah and so the next day they were like don't talk about it don't bring it up we don't want to hear about it like everyone just keep moving forward we're going home tonight. But now tensions are too high. The next day I get reprimanded because they're like, you went to a club. I was like, that was a rumor. There's no evidence to wrap it all up. On the very last night, of course, we hit all of the flight delays. It was like every possible terrible thing that you could imagine on a trip went wrong. We're stuck in the Atlanta airport flying home. And that's when our choir director decides, you know what we should do? We should have you guys get up and cheer up. Oh, that's curious. Absolutely. You guys have a superpower. Flash mob. So a predominantly all white choir got up and they insisted that we do our African tribal number complete with dance in Atlanta too. Yeah. You could have gotten away with that in North Dakota, but that's not going to, no, they would have been like, take this shit out of here. We do it. Not a single clap, not a single, that was good. No thing. Everybody looked at us like they wanted to just end us right there. And we got on the plane, I got home and I looked at my mom when I got in the car And I was like, that was quite possibly the worst way to turn 16 I could ever imagine. We would call that an unmitigated disaster the whole trip. Although it does sound like you went to a lot of cool shows. That's true. You and Celine Dion. We did. Did you go to the O show? No, we did Celine Dion, Phantom, Lion King. And then we got to go to the oldest burlesque show on the strip. But we went to the show where they covered the nipples because children cannot see that. There have been more crying probably. Yeah. So it was the choir trip from hell. Wow. Oh, well, that was enjoyable for us. Now for you. Lovely meeting you. Yeah, thanks for sharing. Thank you guys so much. It was so fun to share this story. All of my friends were so excited. And if I could just give a quick shout out to my mom, Elizabeth, and to my friend, Allura. They are my fellow arm cherries because we've been listening since day one. We love having you. Thank you. Yes, thank you all. All right. Bye. Take care. Have a great one, y'all. Here's Jack. This one's gross. There's photos. Oh, good. severed penis thing we haven't had a severed penis should we have that as a prompt hello jack hi oh tell me about this side piece headphone here this is new for me i'm actually visiting a friend in los angeles and i'm borrowing his equipment is that a gaming headphone or something you know what i have no idea okay great great i'm gonna be honest that doesn't look like a closet in los angeles that looks like a closet in the midwest it's in santa clarita okay that helps i I do call Santa Clarita the Midwest of LA. I really do. You do? Yeah. What? I do. I've said that a million times. It's like normal. You definitely. What? You haven't said it a million times. Well, I'm not saying anything a million times, but I've said that a lot because I used to shoot out there. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm always like, yeah, I feel like I'm going back to the Midwest when I come here. Oh, wow. It's like all chain restaurants. A lot of people that are in the labor side of the show business. Yeah, definitely more suburban. Where are you visiting from? currently in Tucson is winter, but I'm semi-nomadic, mostly in Northwest Bellingham, Washington and Squamish, Canada. So I'm snowboarding right now. And that's what you're chasing. And in the summer, do you go like whitewater rafting or anything? What do you transition into? I'm actually a climber, which feeds into the story. Oh, okay. Okay. Set us up. Tell us everything. So this happened at the end of 2017. I was going to a music festival with two people that I knew through rock climbing. And at the time I was living in Tucson, Arizona. So we were traveling, we got a hotel and we went to this festival called Life is Beautiful. Blink 182, Muse, some big names. We were really excited. The first night went without a hitch. Everything was great. And we had a ton of fun, made it back to the hotel. The second night is where things went a little sideways. Can I ask what kind of things we're consuming on this trip? Is this a group that just drinks? Are we doing drugs and drinking? What's happening? Just drinking and alcohol is one hell of a drug. Oh, it's probably the worst one. Yeah. The stupidest mistakes are probably on alcohol. Yeah. And you're losing your equilibrium. Everything's getting downgraded. Absolutely. so the start of night two we pre-gamed a little too hard i think we might have consumed anywhere from like seven to ten drinks even before we made it through the gate i think we were just trying to save money because the drinks at the festival were like $15. In the end, it didn't save money. It was Pennywise and Pound Foolish. We go to the festival. We have a great time up until the last set. And at this point, I'm pretty drunk and I'm also hungry. So I go off and I do a little solo adventure and I find some carne asada fries. They were probably like $22. and as I'm waiting for my food, I see this art sculpture and this art sculpture spells out the word love in 3D letters. It's a metal sheet and it has these cutouts and the cutouts are the shape of a bird. So being an avid climber, that was like my identity at the time. I said, I want to climb this. Oh, sure. It's taunting you. Yeah, exactly. And everybody else was climbing the easy letters, the L. And I wanted to climb the V, which was overhanging. And what's the height of this thing? Can you give us a ballpark? It's about 12 feet. It's not awfully tall. So in my drunken state, I essentially am sticking my fingers in these metal cutouts to my fingers in this metal cutout. and it's the shape of a bird. And my ring finger slots into the wing of the bird. Oh my God. Hold on. I'm going to tell the listener. I'm going to tell the listener because I'm looking at you and you have all your fingers. Because I would be on pins and needles that he doesn't have fingers. Please continue. So as I'm climbing, my feet slip and this finger is slotted in. Essentially, the flesh of this finger is removed to the bone. about three-fourths of the way around. Oh, my God. So this injury is called a degloving injury. It oftentimes happens with wedding fingers. It happened to Jimmy Fallon. How did Fallon do his? Drinking-related, I think? I think it was on a countertop. Yeah, it sounds drinking-related. Okay. Yeah. Degloving, what a terrible... I hate that word. Yeah, I mean, it's so... It's an onomatopoeia. Yeah, it is really a great word because we know exactly what it means, but it's rough. Is your whole body weight now hanging from just that one finger? Essentially, yeah. I was able to get it out. I was able to make it to a first aid station. And at the time, I didn't know how bad it was, but I knew I was bleeding and I knew it was quite bad. And I looked down and I just see most of the finger hanging off. And at that point, I knew I needed medical care. I knew it was pretty serious. But also a blessing that you didn't leave the tip of your finger back at the art installation because that could have easily got hung up in the wing and stayed, right? I'm very fortunate. So they took me off to the ER, and I got several different pain blocks in this finger, and they stitched it up as best they could. I think it was an intern at the time, which I wasn't so happy about. Although you kind of deserved an intern, if I'm being honest. Yeah, your standards are too high. Two days later, I got reconstructive surgery from a hand specialist. Okay. In Vegas or back in Tucson? It was back in Tucson. Okay, we have photos. Is this a good time for us to look? I'm scared. I think it is. If there were ever a good time. Okay, oh, great. So we get... Oh, we got good pics. Wait, how do we have such great... Oh, no, no, no, no. Wait, how do we have such good photos of the finger in the bird thing? Did you go back and recreate this? I actually found that art installation about five years later in Las Vegas. No way. I cringed when I saw the art installation because it just brought me back to that memory. Wait, so you put your fingers in it again? To show what had happened, right? Yeah. You guys. Well, he was probably standing on terra firma at that point, right? You weren't climbing. I was very sober at that point and I was not climbing. Okay. I don't really know how anyone was climbing any part of this. Seriously. Were the people climbing the L also putting their fingers in these? No, I think they were doing photo shoots and that's about it. But they weren't putting fingers in sharp metal holes. When you had the reconstruction, did they have to like attach any tendons or anything or they were just getting the glove back? I hate that picture. Yeah, it does look like a penis a little bit because it's such a demarcated head. What was the extent of the reconstruction? I'm going to cover this so you can think, Marco. Yeah. I know that they attached the nerve together through a nerve bridge. I think the tendon was mostly OK, but the arteries needed reconstruction. But as a climber, that's the number one tool right there, right? You must have been a little panicked. Absolutely. In resolution, I actually have good strength in this finger. I just have sort of weird feelings, pins and needles, but that's to be expected. Yeah, I have on my shoulder where all the metal is. The mobility is fantastic. I can lift weights. I can do everything. But I have some nerve between the metal in my skin. and you can just graze it. And it's like you stabbed me there with an ice pick. It's just shocking. Yeah, similar for my finger. Yuck. Oh, wow. That is yuck. Well, that's a bummer. But also, it sounds like it could have gone a lot worse. It could have. Also worth noting, the two friends that I went with, they were brothers. One of them, he, on that same night, this was separate after my injury. He went and climbed a bus stop. He did what's called a bat hanging climbing, where you essentially flex your feet and you try hanging from your feet with no hands. Guys, what? He ended up falling, obviously. Oh my God, what if this was the guy? I know, from last... From the other call that watched the body come off of us. Yeah. Okay, so he fell. You're right, Monica. Did he go to the emergency department too? He didn't, no. I think he went to urgent care. Dax is obsessed with the idea that women cry in Vegas and like, come on. You're right, you're right. I'm conceding to... Thank you. Yeah, my point is I can't tell you how many elevator doors have opened when I'm in Vegas and there's like two or three girls on the ground of the elevator just bawling. She said, well, also you have got guys jumping off stuff and doing this shit. So it's like, yeah. Yeah. Wowie. Oh, Jack, this was delightful. It was really great meeting you guys. Thank you for hearing my story. Yeah. Thanks for listening. Are you listening while you're driving back and forth? Is that it? You're in the car a lot. All the time. It makes the drives much more bearable. That makes me happy. Well, great meeting you, Jack. I hope you have a great rest of your trip. Thank you so much. All right. Bye. Take care. Handsome man. Fucking gorgeous. We like when our arm cherries are hot. They always are. Oh, oh, oh, O'Reilly. I don't know if it'll be a boy or a girl. I think it's a girl because, yeah, the way it's spelled. Very feminine with all the whys. It's a boy. It's a boy. No, you were wrong. You said a girl. I know, but I wanted it to be a boy. The spelling makes it seem like it's a girl, hey? Yeah, a little bit, right? You're in Canada? I am in Canada. Alberta, Canada. Got it really quick that time. The accent gives it away. You threw an A in right out of the gates, which I appreciate. Tell me about this background. I see maybe an electric drum kit. What's going on? Yeah, so I'm in my basement here. This sounds kind of the best. I have a five-year-old daughter, so she creates a little bit of noise. Sure. Is she right there? No, so this is my wife here with me. So here's a fun one. We're both named Riley. Oh, fun. How's hers spelled? R-I-L-E-Y? No, R-A-I-L-I. Wow! And do you manufacture candles? My wife does so she wanted to put that in the background to hide what I had going on back there so she thought that was a good idea It cute Wren candles So does your house smell great All the time Our business is named after our daughter Wren Oh, lovely. And what do you do? You assist in the manufacturing of these or you just play the electric drums all day? Just all day out down here. Just wasting time. I have a construction company that I run and then help with the candles as needed. Okay, great. Family biz. Let's first start with when you're a Canadian, you're up in the Great North and you're thinking of visiting the States. I got to imagine Vegas is one of these places where you must visit at some point. Is it up there with New York or LA? Yeah, I've been to Vegas many times, even after my Vegas mishap. It's one of my favorite spots, Vegas, LA. I've been to New York once, but yeah, it's a top destination for us here up in Canada. Okay. So walk us through the year, whatever backstory we need. Let's hear it. So I was 19. It was in 2014. I had just got a notice in the mail saying that due to excessive speeding in my car, I was going to have my license suspended starting November 1st. So I reached out to my buddy who, funny enough, got the same letter within a couple of days saying that he also was going to get his license suspended for speeding for 30 days. So we had like a two week window where we could still drive, which doesn't make any sense. If you think about it, it makes a ton of sense. You got to get as much driving in as you can. We're like, you know what? Let's just leave. Let's go to Vegas, go to Vegas, LA, up the West coast, do a whole like 10 day, two week thing. We pick up a friend of ours along the way. And so from where I live, Vegas, if you drive straight through, it's 21 hours. We left at about six o'clock. I think it was a Thursday. PM or AM? PM. Sorry. Yeah. That sounds like the kind of decisions you guys are making. So we drive straight through, we get to Salt Lake city, which was about 16 hours. It's now like the sun's coming up kind of thing in Salt Lake. We hit the parking lot and the three of us driver's seat, passenger seat, backseat. We say, you know what? We're going to sleep for a couple hours. So we sleep there, get up and we head to Vegas. And then the first thing we do is like, well, we need a place to stay. We got no accommodations, no planning whatsoever. So Circus Circus seemed like a great idea. Oh, can I add one thing to you at that time? We're allowed to drink legally in Canada at 19, right? Yeah, but not now when you get to the States. So what the fuck's the game plan for booze? That's a big part of the story. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm just immediately nervous for you that you've left a place you can drink and now you can't. And naturally we didn't tell our parents either. In Alberta, we can drink when we're 18. So we get there and we're like, well, we need to get a hotel, which comes into play here with the being 21 thing. You need to be 21 to get a hotel room. Yes. Okay. So I'm like, well, we brought some dress clothes. We brought a suit, right? I told my buddy and our friend there, I said, go park the car and I'll go check us in. So I go in and I start talking to the front desk. I'm like, yeah, you know, my pregnant wife is in the parking lot. She's very pregnant and she has her 18 month old son with her as well. Okay. Need a place to stay for three nights. Riley, I must pause you because there's so many great details. I'm not even sure that you're picking up on, which is like you said her. 18. I know. Which implies like not only you've got your hands full, you've got a woman with her own kid and then presumably one in the oven. Yes. Just say whatever I need to, to get a room. I hand them my ID. Again, you need to be 21 to check into the hotel. And I just kind of catch me if you can, like the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, right? Just talk my way through it. He scans the ID, doesn't look at it once and here, sir, have a good stay. Beautiful. So we're there for three days. Vegas starts fairly normal. We just hit the strip, go from resort to resort. Just look at all the pretty lights kind of thing. We learned quickly that we couldn't get booze inside the casinos. But the slushy stands, Fat Tuesdays, no questions asked. No problem. I'll give you whatever you want. Oh, wonderful. Every 300 meters, those things are available. You just hit them up. Day one was fine. Day two was fine. But day three, we're kind of bored of that. Like we want a little bit more. We put the suits on again. That apparently solves all our problems. We walk around the strip. We have dinner. It's 9, 930 kind of thing. the cosmopolitan was under renovations at the time. And so it's all boarded up on the sides there where we're walking from one end of it to the other to get to the rest of the strip. A lady comes out of nowhere and she's got a guy with her and she says, Hey guys, this is kind of weird, but they love the suits. Your buddy's suit jacket would make a perfect backdrop for some photos we're making. And we're like, what photos are we making here? She's like, Oh, we're just making some fake IDs for a couple people. And we're complete idiots. And we're like, that could work for us. Now we hold all the cards in our eyes, right? We'll give you the suit jacket, but we also want fake IDs. She's like, yeah, no problem. It's just off the strip. Just come with us and we'll make that happen for you. And keep in mind, I'm 120 pounds at this point. Like I'm not saving anybody from any problems. We think that we got them right where we want them. It's one guy who's younger and then this older lady, she's probably 40-ish. We follow them off the strip. Rule number one, don't do that. Don't go to a second location. Yeah. Next thing you do, you certainly don't get into their car. Oh, goodness. Okay. Yeah. We're so pumped. We're getting in the car and they take us to like an off strip mini resort kind of thing. So there's a hotel with a mini casino. It's got a parkade. We go to the top of the parkade and we park there. We walk down, go into the thing, and they're like giving us food, getting us drinks, some spending money for gambling. What? Oh, yeah. Having a great time. We think we've hit the jackpot, right? Like next best friend right here. So what I didn't realize is that one of the people we were with, the buddy we picked up, it was a girl. So her name is Sam. They drugged her. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my God. I didn't know it at the time. I don't know what that looks like. I'm like, oh, she's just really drunk. But like she couldn't see. She couldn't stand. like they messed her up. Yeah. We wait there for like an hour and a half, like having the best time, right? Other than, you know, she's been drugged. Didn't know. So we get back in their car. She says the fake IDs are ready. So we go to another location. We get to this motel and it's out of a movie. I kid you not. The car that we're parked beside has bullet holes in the side of it. And the car, a couple of cars over, the windows are smashed out. The motel doors are like a couple of them are knocked off the hinges. Oh, wow. Okay. And I'm from a small town, Alberta. Yeah, you're in over your head. Oh, absolutely. We park and she's like, I just got to go into the room and get the IDs. And so she leaves and there's the one guy in the front left. I kind of start looking around and he sees me looking around. And that's when problem number one starts. So he looks at me and says, put your fucking head down. If you look up again, I'm going to put a bullet in the back of your skull. No. And then he lifts up his shirt and shows me his gun. And I'm like, oh, shit. Oh, my God. I do what I'm told. And now I think there's probably a pretty good chance we're not getting fake IDs. Yeah. Keep in mind when they did the fake ID thing, it's illegal. So they took our phones, our credit cards, our cash, right? Because that's like, oh, just to make sure we're good. 19, stupid, right? She comes back out and doesn't have IDs. Shocker. We drive around some more and we're just going from location to location. And I'm not really getting it. Now I understand that we're doing drug deals. Like she's going and dropping off drugs and stuff. Okay. And we've picked up a third person in the process. So now she's driving. There's a muscle number one in the passenger seat. And now we've got muscle number two in the back and three more in the back. Oh my God. You three, yeah. Crucial to the story because now there's four people in the back seat. So we do this all night. At one point, she gets me out of the car and sends me into a very sketchy gas station to go get them supplies, which I can see now was a test to see if I'm willing to like come back. So now the sun is up. we're just held hostage in the backseat of this car. There's tears. We're shaking. We're not saying a word and full daytime at 6am. So we get to a point where we're at a red light. No one else is on our side of the intersection. There's a bus stop to the right. And so I speak up and I say, Hey, you got our credit cards. You got our IDs. You got cash. I don't know who you are. Just drop us off. The two muscle guys don't say anything. And she just nods. And then I turns green. Instead of turning right to the bus stop, she turns left. And we're on the outside of Vegas. Like there's like three lights remaining and then it turns into a gravel road. Then it's just desert. That's where we're heading. Yeah. Oh my goodness. I'm focused on that. And I'm thinking now's a good time to pray, do whatever we need to do and be prepared. Right. What I didn't see, there was a cop on the other side of the intersection facing us. So we turn left and he can see in the car. Four people. Not enough seatbelts. Yeah. So he sees that. Lights on. pull her over. And this is where I learned everything. So this lady, in the time that the cop pulled us over, she called someone and it was on speakerphone. She put the phone in the middle console. She starts screaming to this guy and turns out she had just got out of prison a month ago. She had three guns in the trunk, three bricks of cocaine in the trunk. Oh my God. And she's screaming at the guy wondering what to do. And the guy says, shoot everybody and get the fuck out of there. No! No! That's his pro tip advice 101 so at that point though the cops they were quick that's what saved me there was one guy on the passenger side one guy on the driver and the passenger guy had his little baton he taps the window and then the other guy's kind of already looking in so she pulls her window down a couple inches he doesn't even ask her he looks in the backseat to us and he's like do you know these people oh wow and we're just wide-eyed like no it's out of the movie they pull their guns they draw him and they're like, get the fuck out of the car right now. We get out. The one cop pulls us aside. He gets our IDs and stuff from the car. We're like, hey, like they have our stuff. So he looks through him. These were underage and he's like, you didn't know them? We're like, no, no chance. And he's like, do you know what was happening to you? We were getting fake IDs. So we're 19. We're thinking the cops are better than option A. You think you're in trouble. They're like, they take people like you. They bring you in. They love you. They make you feel like you're part of the group. And then when it comes down to it, they take you out to the desert and they say you either work for them. Now your old life is gone. You got new names. What? You're never leaving. And if you don't say yes to that, they kill you. And you're never to be heard from again. Like, that's it. He gave us money to get on a bus. And he said, go back to your hotel and just leave Vegas, man. Like, come back when you're 21. Wow. Oh my God. So I assume they arrested those people. Yeah, we didn't stick around for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You made your way back to the bus stop. He said that they knew who she was. Like she was a big time player, I guess. Yeah. Woof. Scary. Reminds me of Justin Long's story. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Being kidnapped. Oh, God. So when you got back to the hotel room, do you guys go like, all right, let's nap? Or do you go, let's get in the car and leave immediately? The issue we had was that it was like 9.30 at this point. Our checkout was 11. Guess we're hitting a breakfast We didn't go home We continued on to LA and did three days there And then went up the west coast Sure, played it a little tighter to the vest The rest of the trip There was no hunting for fake ideas The reason I'm here Talking about it right now is because my wife loves you guys She's been for years You gotta submit your Vegas story They do it the Friday, you gotta submit it And I'm like, no I'm not gonna do that And then you guys put the prompt We curtailed it exactly to you. That's right. So you had to. Yeah, I've become a fan over the last six months specifically. We spent a lot of time together. So I listened to a lot of you guys' stuff. I love what you do. Oh, thank you. Thank you. That was exceptional. We love that, Riley. I'm so glad you guys made it out. I didn't tell my mom for a while. Let's just put it that way. Yeah, that's best told like 10 years later. Great meeting you, Riley. That was great. Thank you so much for this. This is awesome. Take care. Wow, scary stuff. Scary stuff. Vegas is scary Lots of bodily injury and harm Oh my god, true Oh wow Well that was a good prompt It sure was I bet there's more water in that well That's right Is that a saying? Yeah, sure Okay More ink in the well Alright, love you Love you Do you want to sing a tune or something? We don't have a theme song Oh Okay, great We don't have a theme song For this new show So here I go, go, go We're gonna ask some random questions And with the help of our cherries We'll get some suggestions On the flyer, Rindish On the flyer, Rindish Enjoy