Vegas Vacation, Part One: “Heart-throb”

In case you did not know, there was a real reason that my parents and I took our trip to Vegas this past week, rather than the end of the summer, where, like the past two years, we would drive to Disneyland in time for Bats Day weekend…the reason was eBay Live!, eBay’s annual convention, which was held this year at the convention center at Mandalay Bay…as we have done for the past two years, we stayed at Excalibur, which, along with Luxor, is connected to Mandalay Bay via walkways and tram shuttle…however, just like everything else in Vegas, the buildings are so huge that it took about as long to walk from our room to eBay Live! as it did to take the tram…freakin’ giant everything…

I was not quite sure what I would think of eBay Live!…I have never really been to a topic-specific convention before, just collectible and antique shows, where the merchandise is pretty varied…I wondered what all of the eBay losers would be like, and I feared that I would be out of place, considering that it’s my parents (which is to say, almost entirely my Mom) who do business on eBay, not me…in all actuality, it was pretty enjoyable…first of all, the convention center at Mandalay Bay was HUGE, and there’s TWO convention centers in the building, in addition to two hotels, a giant shopping area, and, of course, a humongous casino…and Mandalay Bay is one of the mid-sized casinos, as far as I know…

The main room was called the Solutions Center, where booths were set up by many companies who help people with eBay, as well as actual eBay-owned companies, such as PayPal and Skype…one of the main attractions was the pin giveaways…throughout each of the three days that made up eBay Live!, music would start to play over the loudspeakers, indicating that eBay employees were distributing exclusive pins…each time the music played, a different pin was given away…being in Vegas, the pins were shaped like poker chips, and there were seven of the to collect, each corresponding to one of the seven colors in eBay’s logo (yes, seven…look closely and count them)…there was also a super limited edition pin that had rhinestones in it, and was randomly distributed in the same packaging as the ‘regular pins’…of course, I lucked into being given one, and Mom wore it around for the second and third days, which prompted many eBay losers to try and trade for it/buy it off of her…in case you were wondering, we still have it…I swear, those eBay people are nuts…each of several hundred eBay employees had a whole backpack full of pins, and these losers are running and pushing and shoving people out of the way to get theirs…one lady asked me during her frenzy if I was giving away pins, but she quickly turned and asked someone else before I could ask her how many other eBay employees were wearing black fezzes with a flaming eyeball on them…idiots…

The first day (Tuesday) closed with the keynote speech, with parts from Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, The Postmaster General of the United States of Freedom, and Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America…they all talked about new things that eBay is up to, and things that they have been working on since last year’s convention…if you did not notice, eBay has been running a campaign call “it” (as in, you can get “it” on eBay)…the song that is used in the commercials is “Daydream Believer” by The Monkees…Meg and Bill were talking about how much they each love The Monkees, and the said that they had a special Monkees-related surprise…as they leave the stage, a band comes out on a moving platform from behind the stage, and Davy Jones himself comes out and starts to sing!…it was really cool and totally unexpected…Mom and I went right up to the stage, and we both shook his little, sweaty hand…he performed for quite a while, which was pretty neat, and he joked about himself and the other Monkees, which is totally cool…

Part One ends there, but I’m still running on Pacific Time, and I’m not tired at all…that means I’ll start Part Two as soon as I’m done with this…

E.

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This entry was posted on June 18th 2006 at 4:22 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.