ShutterSpeed

People outside the Thomas & Mack Center (the building in the background).

so this is it, the big time? i’m on the road with fellow wte bad boy robert gagliardi blogging from within the confines of a very nice media room at the thomas & mack center in las vegas, nev.

ah, the allure of bright lights, sunny days, and an abundance of poolside aesthetics… who can complain? certainly not this photog.

last night we met some interesting people who were also taken in by sin city. one young lovely i met brought a tear to my eye. a working gal who hails from cheyenne. we talked for hours about the virtue of the taco john’s taco bravo in comparison to its taco bell counterpart, the double decker. truly, i was enlightened.

My credentials. I was later outfitted with multiple additional credentials to assure security that I was in fact a photographer and wasn't just carrying thousands of dollars worth of camera gear.

the tournament tipped off a few minutes ago and i’m pretty psyched to be here. though i attended three tournaments previously (two in denver, one in vegas), this is my first time as a working professional (of sorts).

as for the tournament and my not-so-expert predictions: the ghost of hanna zavecz haunts the opposition and the cowgirls advance to round two via a 62-55 win against colorado state. the men, on the othe hand, need to summon the spirit of the lord to pull out a 77-76 squeaker against new mexico — a team that beat them in laramie less than a week ago.

if all goes well, gags will win big and bank roll us to the big time.

and as they say in some commercial i saw on television at some point in my life, “viva las vegas!”

The original WTE bad boy (O.W.T.E.B.B.) Robert Gagliardi.