White Clown!

Luckily, life after Kooza doesn't necessarily mean unemployment!

At the end of Kooza's run in Calgary last month, my drive to Las Vegas was event-filled to say the least. Within the span of 24 hours, I experienced a roller-coaster of emotions thanks to a series of completely unrelated occurrences.

First thing in the morning, on the last leg of my trip to Vegas, I get pulled over for speeding in Utah. Sure, I'm doing 90 in an 80 zone, but when I look in my rear view mirror, I see what looks like a Ford Mustang with two huge muscle stripes painted on the hood and over the roof. I'm thinking this hotshot is tailing me and wants to pass me. So I move over to the right, but he doesn't pass. So I go back left to pass a slow truck, then merge right again. He still doesn't pass. I don't know what this guy's game is until he throws on his flashers, and pretty soon I'm a few hundred bucks in the hole. Thank you, Online Traffic School for erasing my points. Those are 5 hours of my life I'll never get back.

When I get to Vegas in the early afternoon, everything is in high gear to prepare for a huge Halloween party that night at our friends Ben and Ross' house--a huge yearly blowout party that is always bigger than the year before it. The problem is, every year there seems to be more and more people there that fewer and fewer people know, which as one can imagine, could lead to mischief.

The party was great. Robin painted Ben and our friend Sarah as the Avatar couple, which of course took several hours. I hadn't seen her or my little guy Leo for three weeks before it, so I was catching up with them. Robin was dressed as a medieval princess, I was a swarthy knight, and Leo was a miniature dragon. We left a little early to put the little guy to sleep, but we realized that Robin left her phone at the party and I left my jeans. The next morning we went back to the house to retrieve them, only to find out that at the end of the party, around 4am, some girl who no one knew at snuck around the party and quietly stole people's bags, purses, phones, etc. and drove off. She barely drove a mile away, when she got into a huge car accident. She stumbled back to the party and told the other party-goers that someone stole her car and crashed it. By this point, people were noticing that their stuff was gone. They went to the crash site to investigate and found a bunch of their items strewn about.

Robin and I started to worry for our stuff--I had also left a brand new lens for my camera there, a $2K value. Amazingly it was still there right by the door, as were my jeans, but wallet was missing. And Robin's phone was nowhere to be found.

As we were desperately scrounging for our stuff, I'm beside myself with anger thinking I have to cancel all my cards and go to the DMV for a new license, Robin is crying because EVERYTHING is on her phone, and she has HUGE Halloween body painting jobs in the next three days. Moments later, I get a phone call from Cirque du Soleil casting, wondering if I'd be interested in a temporary position playing the White Clown in "O" at the Bellagio. It's at this point that I'm overcome with completely opposing emotions of joy and dread, quite a unique sensation.

Then, Ben gets a phone call from a synchro swimmer in Le Reve saying she got her purse back from the crash site, and my wallet was in it! So this thief girl went around picking up a bunch of stuff, including her purse, then she grabs my wallet from my jeans and puts it in her purse! I'm able to get my wallet back later that day, but Robin wasn't as lucky. It turns out all the phones that were taken were not recovered. This girl had an accomplice that made off with a good number of things from the crash site. She was subsequently arrested--not sure what became of her.

Luckily, the people at the AT&T store were surprisingly helpful, I think it helped that I brought Leo in to charm them. They were able to replace Robin's iPhone 4 for about $250, whereas an incident like this could have cost upwards of $700. So minimal damage done. I got my wallet back and a new job!

But it does make me a little worried about the state of things in Las Vegas. The housing market is not showing any signs of improvement, and reports of crime seem to be rising. We're going to have to be extra vigilant now that we're moving back there, relying on our home security system, not leaving anything of value in our cars, etc. But for better or for worse, we'll soon be calling Vegas "home" once again!

My stint in "O" begins rehearsals on December 21st, and my first show is scheduled for December 26th. And my contract goes until March 20, 2011. If you're in Vegas and have the means, please come check me out! It's a phenomenal show, and my part is a pretty sweet one!