2005 CES Day 3 010706 - Tommy Lee sighting

Wow, I was able to wake up at 830am this morning then went back to sleep and woke up again at 9am. Christophe who is rooming with me on this trip has a 945am meeting while mine is at 11am. I get out of the hotel and into the cab line by 10am. I get to my meeting with Hanaho on time and head back to the hotel by noon. I was supposed to meet up with Fred, Joe, and Christophe at the Alexis Park to check out some of the high end home theater equipment but decide to grab some lunch in my room.

Room service has typically taken about an hour so while waiting for my lunch to arrive Rob from Memorex calls and tells me that he's at my hotel. I invite him up to chat about different things since we hadn't had a chance to speak at dinner the night before. We both sat at the opposite ends of the table. My food arrives at 1pm and Rob shortly thereafter. I finish my food (southwestern egg rolls, fish 'n chips, and diet Pepsi) and Rob leaves. It's a little after 2pm and I call to find out that the guys are almost finished with the Alexis Park and are heading back soon. I decide to wait in the room and finish up on some emails.

At around 3pm, I get a call and I meet the guys downstairs and we decide to go visit the Sony booth in the Central Hall. The Sony booth is huge and the big draw was for their new line of rear projection LCD TV's and the Playstation 3. The PS3 was under a rotating glass so there wasn't much to look at that I hadn't seen before. They also played some looped pre-rendered game footage on a few screens. For me, I was really interested in the HD video cameras. Now that Ryan is getting a bit older, I'm feeling a bit more pressure to take more video. I think its so cool for my kids to see themselves as toddlers. I wish I had that opportunity.

After the Sony booth, we split up, and Christophe and I head to the Pioneer booth to check out the cool DJ equipment. DJ Roony G (sp?), a Filipino DJ, is demoing their latest DVD-DJ equipment.

http://www.pioneerdj.com/

It was fairly impressive. At the end of the demo, Tommy Lee and his entourage walk by. The entourage consisted of Tommy Lee, 2 friends, 1 big bouncer, and 2 of Vegas' finest. TL didn't look too hot. He must have been partying hard the night before. A few folks went up to take pictures but the bouncer blocked their view and said no pictures. Tommy was busy talking to a Pioneer rep and DJ Roony G. It was obvious they all new each other from before. I didn't care too much for his attitude but I also respect that he wanted some privacy. Christophe and I left and head back to our hotel room.

Dinner reservations were handled by me while I was up in the room working on emails and waiting for the guys to get back. I tried to book a table of 8 at Nobu but the only reservation available as at 11am. I use opentable.com to look for a different restaurant and found Sushi Roku at Caesar's Forum Shops for 6pm.

http://www.opentable.com/

Sushi Roku is located on the 3rd level of the new addition to the Caesar's Forum shops. The restaurant has your typical sushi bar on the right with several tables that lead towards the back. Our table was in the very back where a very large wall of windows gives us a great view of Las Vegas boulevard and the Bellagio. The windows themselves open up and give you the sounds as well as the sights of Vegas.

The folks that join us for this dinner are Steve Nix of Ritual Entertainment, an engineer from Ritual, Fred Swan, Joe Kreiner, Christophe Poupon, and Billy Harrison from Promise Technology. We start off the night with some wine which I decide not to drink and choose some high end cold sake which was recommended by our waitress. We order some Kobe beef appetizers that are cooked over special river rocks from Japan. The rocks are heated to like 400 degrees and brought out to our table where we cook the thinly sliced strips of Kobe beef in less than 5 minutes. The rocks apparently retain their heat which allows us to cook on them. In addition to the Kobe beef strips, we also order their lobster appetizer which is served slightly seared.

For our main appetizer, we order different kinds of sashimi and sushi. There is nothing really different between the sushi served at Sushi Roku than any other sushi restaurant that serves fresh high quality food. After we ate the seared lobster, the restaurant offered to make a miso soup out of the lobster which was delicious. I order the chocolate souffle which was mediocre.

We head over to the Flamingo to kill some time before we head over to Tao. Tao is one of the hotter clubs and is located in the Venetian. We decide to meet up with some of Billy's Promise Technology co-workers who are hanging at the outdoor party bar gambling. We get there to find that there is a $7.00 cover charge just to enter the area. There is a live band and DJ providing entertainment as well as a gambling pit and bartenders juggling glasses, ice, and bottles. We stay for about an hour and decide to go check out the Star Trek Experience back at the Las Vegas Hilton. We get there to find that it was closed (it was only 930pm) and go up to my room to chat. We decide to call it a night because of our early flights home the next day.