Chapter 13, Terrible's Lakeside Casino Osceola, IA November 9-12, 2006

The Elvis Oddessy Tour rolls into Osceola, Iowa














This is the main foyer. The gift shop is on the left, the buffet and hotel is to the right. The casino is straight ahead.



















Ah, yes. The palace where many doth feed their bellies. Many an evening did I find myself eating until I could nary stand up.
































Wow. What else can I say? We were treated like Rock Stars for four days. There was a multi-cultural food buffet. Oriental, Italian, American. One day they had Cajun. I swear to you that they had an entire crocodile, seasoned and baked to perfection. He was looking at you, while the chef was cutting meat off his tail on the other side.
We each had our own rooms for four days. A family of four could have comfortably stayed in the room I had to myself. I'm so busy these days between work and family, it was nice to have some time to myself for a few days.
Not that I sat around by myself for four days, mind you! Three of the four nights, we did a walk through the casino with Elvis. Shaking hands and taking pictures, we strolled through the rows of slot machines and card tables. Elvis seemed to bring luck, as several of the people he approached won on the next lever pull, or button press.
We played eight shows, two each day. They first show was always one hour long, but the second show tended to go a bit longer. We played eight sets and they were all different. We tried something new on stage during one show.
During a normal length show, Bruce, Jason and I all leave the stage. Dad pulls out his acoustic guitar, and him and Al sing an acoustic set. One of the songs they do is "In the Ghetto". During one of the shows, someone called out, "Play 'In The Ghetto'!" And we did it. I just watched Dad, tried to follow his chord changes. Bruce threw in tiny taps, keeping the beat going, while Jason kept it light, and played little fills in between the vocal lines. The fact that we hadn't played the song together before that gave us this kind of hesitant feel that you hear on really good slow songs. It was almost as if we had practiced the song so much, and we were so tight on it, that we could just play soft notes and get away with it. But really, we just didn't quite know how the song went, and we were trying not to screw it up!
A couple of really funny things happened during these shows. One was when Al answered one of the ticket holders obnoxiously loud cell phone. He had the audience cracking up when he acted like it was a sexy women he was talking to. He asked caller for thier name and acted shocked when it was "Dave".
The other funny thing was when this woman kept calling out "My Way. MY WAY!!!" Well, we didn't know My Way, so Al side-stepped the request by saying "What do you think this is, Burger King?" He got a laugh, we went on with the next song and the show proceded. No sooner did we stop between songs, did this woman yell out, "Play MY WAY" again. Again, Al turned it into a joke. The next song we were planning on playing started out with a few chords, then a pause before the vocals start. We played the few chords, then, just as Al was about to start singing this lovely ballad, he shreiks out in mock fanaticism "MY WAY!!!", then goes into his normal, deep, relaxed voice. It was perfect and got big laughs, both from the audience and the band.
There's so much that happened that weekend, I couldn't begin to tell you everything. So, I will just finish by saying that Terrible's Lakeside Casino is great, they have top notch people, a clean, comfortable hotel, a delicious buffet and a beautiful sunset on the lake is hard to beat.
See ya!
Isaac


The world according to Bruce....




The world according to Jason....
















The world according to me....