If I’m going to post some videos from the archives, I have to start with this one.  The Viva Las Vegas video was the first video I made.  Of course, no one else was making videos in 1990.  I was way ahead of my time with the technology to make this video, if we are being honest with one another.  But I’ll come back to that.  First the story behind Viva Las Vegas.

The year was 1990.  My high school buddy Schmeezle got engaged, so of course we had to throw him a surprise bachelor party.  I was living in Los Angeles at the time, but most of my buddies from high school and Paul were back home in Michigan.  We organized a surprise trip for Schmeezle to take him to Vegas, but with a stop in Los Angeles first, and then an RV trip across the desert from LA to Vegas.  You know, to earn it.  

Schmeezle didn’t even know anything was up until “the pilot tried to show me around the cockpit.”  Hilarity ensued, per usual.  The rest is on the video.  At least the part that the Ginman didn’t erase.

As for the technologies I mentioned, the Internets were not invented yet, computers could print out a letter, maybe, and phones were connected to the wall by a cord.  Phones did not have a video camera on board, as they do today, for recording the ridiculous exploits of you and your crew.  If you wanted to record said exploits, you had to lug a video camera around like a dork, which I did because everyone else saw things as they were and said why, but I dreamed things that never were, and said why not!  And the morning after, when everyone wanted to rehash the crazy events of the night before, I could be the hero and say STFU, let’s just watch the video.

But yes, video cameras existed in 1990, but they were not ubiquitous.  But even if you had a video camera, and went to the trouble of lugging it around all night to record the adventures, the crew’s exploits were on a video tape.  And by that I mean a physical video tape: a tape wound around something, that you had to unwind and run though a machine to watch.  You could invite everyone over to watch the exact video tape, but that might go on for hours.  Boring.  No one signs up for that.  

You need highlights, preferably with a soundtrack.

But in 1990, there was no such thing as digital video and digital music, and certainly no computers for editing video.  Oh no, to make this classic video, I had to connect two VCR’s (video cassette recorders, kids), and copy one to the next, starting and stopping them with an interconnected device, and then drop my own music into the audio track of the VCR tape.  Long story, and anymore than that would bore you, if I haven’t already.  Regardless, I was way ahead of my time.  Whatever, right.  

But watching that video, twenty five years later, note that nothing on that tape incriminates a guy for anything.  NOTHING.  Nothing objectionable to a wife, girlfriend, the law, his employer or history, assuming we remain free to not wear pants.  

But then, in fairness to this generation, technology at the time demanded that you step back, think about it, and then decide what goes on that final video.  In fairness.  

Just make sure you get rated.