Infamous

This year the Black and White Ball was spread to two nights, the Black Ball, and the White Ball. We arrived at the Black ball around 11, and enjoyed some alright house music until about 3:30 when we crashed. The next night we arrived in time to catch DJ Jackalope who blew us away... for about 10 (awesome)minutes, before she had to leave for three other gigs. Some other DJ hopped up there, and was pretty good, but was missing something. THEN another guy hopped up there (DJ Shim) and started out kicking ass, and did not stop for an hour. It was truly epic, and I was sure to let him know that when his set was done. Next up was Regenerator, a slightly formulaic (but still good) Rammstein-ish group, complete with the obligatory eye candy raver/punker/gogo/whatever chick. (too cliche to be enjoyable)

As the set started I noticed the goons beginning to spread themselves out against the walls as the house lights came up, but Regenerator continued, and the goons were kind enough to let them finish their song (it rocked) before interrupting. My friend pointed to the corner and said that Priest was here. Priest is the head of Defcon security and head goon, if he was there, there were problems.

Priest stopped the music after the song and took the stage. He began by talking about our reputation in this town; essensially, we were notorious. This was met with applause which he quelled by announcing that all precincts of SWAT were on full alert at our presence. This drew a more concerned response...

Apparently some underaged gentlemen, (very possibly of hacker descent) became inebriated and decided to test the aerodynamics of redbull cans by tossing them out their high level hotel room window. Unfortunately, a janitor on the ground level did not know that he was taking part in this experiment (near miss). This explained the police involvement.

He explained that the head of security for the Riviera had been losing sleep (since about 5 weeks prior) at the thought of having to deal with the hacker convention his hotel had agreed to host. (It should be noted that his worry was compounded by the 5 inch thick binder of Defcon attendees' past transgressions against bystanders, the hosting hotel, and entire city. Priest quoted him as saying he was "prepared for the second coming." (A little overdramatic to me, but I haven't read that file...) The head of Riviera security received phone calls approximately every hour from different hotel directors who conveyed similar queries; specifically "Is the hotel still standing???" (ahem, erm, yes...)

Additionally, people had been voluntarily evacuating four floors down (we were on the top floor penthouse) due to the loud music. Also, it seems, we scare the crap out of all the non-attendees in the building (like seriously), and this is bad for business.

All this aside, Priest said that the head of security was amazed that we'd been so well behaved for the majority of the con (one day left), and the he would support an invitation for our return next year. This was good news for us, as we started off on the wrong foot (some fire marshal inspection issues), and judging by the casino patrons' reactions to us, we were not very welcome.

But Priest was sure to warn us that we could "fuck that up in a heartbeat" and warned that Vegas simply doesn't much like us; so we needed to be on our best behavior to ensure we had a place to Con in the future.

A few people gave him crap, but he threw it back at them. He's a good guy, and we respected what he was trying to do for us, and readily (though reluctantly) left the Ball at 2.

I mean, if we manage to get kicked out of Las Vegas; who the fuck is going to take us?!