While in Vegas last week, I spent some time with my buddy Michael (we call him Mickey) Paraskevas, a talented illustrator (mainly of books 4 kids) and producer. Some of the things Mickey produces have real budgets and appear on real TV networks…and some of them are The Cheap Show, which he does for around eleven dollars an episode for public access TV and podcasts.
Last week was Mickey's first visit to Las Vegas and he walked around with that "Springtime for Hitler" look at times but ultimately liked the city enough that he's eager to return. He kept saying to me, "I see why you like this place." It also didn't hurt that something happened to him which seems to happen often to Vegas first-timers: He won. Granted, it was only about a hundred bucks on a slot machine but that's enough to (a) produce nine-and-a-half more episodes of The Cheap Show and (b) make him think it's always that easy. One of the things on which Las Vegas thrives is returnees trying to recreate the dumb luck they had on their first visit.
So here, if you've got the three minutes, is an appropriate episode of The Cheap Show from a while back. In it, Duncan Biscotti (played by Mickey) and Pico Smiley head for Sin City with Duncan at the wheel and Baby in the back seat. The role of Baby was played by Mickey's peachy mother, Betty Paraskevas, who left us a few weeks back. When Mickey and I were at the Licensing Show in Vegas, every single person we encountered had to tell him how much they missed Betty. Including me.