Viva Las Vegas or fainting and Bette Midler

For our anniversary back in February, Raphael had bought me tickets to see The Divine Miss M in concert. For those who aren't "Betteheads" or gay, The Divine Miss M is none other than Bette Midler. I had seen her back in '93 for her Experience the Divine Tour and now at age 63 she's performing in Vegas in a new concert show, The Showgirl Must Go On.

To get into the mood I watched the film For The Boys, which Bette was nominated with an Academy Award for. We then drove to Sin City on Saturday morning and stayed the night to catch the show and hit the clubs. First stop was the pool though in the 100 plus degree heat where we enjoyed a cocktail while wading in the water. I hadn't eaten since breakfast and now at 5 p.m. inside the busy casino, I fainted! I woke up on the loud colored carpet with Raphael and a security guard staring at me along with plenty of onlookers. It's been over a year (that story here) since I went into a full faint due to my Vaso-Vagel (syncope or the classic faint) and it hurt not to mention embarrassing. It also took me awhile to feel normal again so I had to have a wheelchair wheel me back to my room, where I only had an hour and a half to compose myself before show time. Yes, I was still going, after all the show girl must go on! ;) I took a shower, ate some crackers, had some real food and cabbed it over to Caesar's Palace, I even went out that night but refrained from drinking since I still wasn't 100%.

Bette was indeed divine. What I especially liked is that her concerts aren't just about playing music, but include a lot of interaction with the audience and are a throwback to original Vegas theater performances. She's bawdy, funny and has great songs or in her own words the show is full of "hits, glitz and tits." She also kept poking fun at her age, which was funny. For instance, she usually does a bit where she comes out as the character "Dolores Delgado" in a mermaid suit. I remembered this from the first concert that I went to along with a bunch of hopping around in the Ariel like costume, so I wasn't surprised when she reappeared on stage in the fin outfit. However, this time she came out in the mermaid costume like usual, but on a motorized wheelchair doing a whole choreographed dance number on it much to the howling of the crowd. Despite her jokes about being older, she looked great and sang all of her popular tunes, From A Distance, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, The Rose and ended with Wind Beneath My Wings. Not surprising, there are clips on YouTube from her concert, here.

Afterwards. We live only 10 minutes away from the real LAX but had to wait 30 minutes in line to get into the Luxor club also named LAX, and that's with being on the guest list.