A Word from the Editor...
That is all because of a few things: I have a life that exists outside of this world of being a self-employed blogger. Yes, I've been keeping it all together during this time that we are in... there's no need to ask me what my mental state is, or what my health has been like -- I got what I like to call my flu shot this summer and have not gotten sick at all during this pandemic. But as we enter the month of November today, I have been working on something very good that I've been hard at work on over the course of the past couple weeks that got off the ground after the long mid-October weekend. That includes starting my Black Friday shopping a month early, but not necessarily to get those early Christmas presents.
If you follow me on my social media, then you know that there are four passions that I have and follow everyday: the MTV beat is one of them. Another is my love affair with sports as proof in my family's NBA obsession and my dad watching sports almost every day, and me being a fanatic of the Olympics which this past week marked 100 days to the Beijing Winter Games three months after the Tokyo Olympiad. The third is the world of music, which I channel the diversity of the Olympic sports program to having thousands of songs from all types of artists and genres in my playlist. And the fourth was the focus of the big news that I got to share on all of my social media outlets on Halloween night.
During the past few years, Las Vegas and the culture of America's capital of adult freedom has grown rapidly among my interests... and though my first trip to there was as a young kid back in 1994, it was in 2007 that I started my near-annual trips to Sin City. Ever since, I have either flown or driven nine times in a thirteen-year span to Vegas, always as the young kid to either my parents or to my sister & her brother in law in joining them for these trips. But for all intents and purposes, I operate on my own terms whenever I go here: my parents are obsessed with playing with the slots, while I focus a bit more on the entire Vegas experience and capturing it all for posterity and eventually putting it on YouTube.
Last year in lieu of what would've been a 2020 Vegas trip, I took advantage of all this time at home to create a plethora of videos for my YouTube channel. I was able to produce the majority of the 180 clips that exists at YouTube.com/DC408Dxtr in posting videos from my 2007, 2009 and 2010 trips, along with content from my recent trips to town. Garnering the experience I've gained from filming my adventures there and from watching the work of other Vegas vloggers, I've done my very best in making my #DCVegas work stand out -- visually, sound-wise and to give it a "you are there" feel that allows it to let you experience Vegas from my point of view without tricks common to other YouTubers.
If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, then you are probably aware of the brand messaging that I've been using during this time in our world: "The Escape You Deserve." Whenever you check out the feeds on my profiles there, check out the videos on DC YouTube or even the quality content of this very site, then you are fulfilling the premise that I preach: offering escapist content that gives you reason to not worry about this pandemic, the politics or protests that made last year and this an exhausting time, or the panic that you have likely gone through at one point of another in the past twenty or so months. The promos that have been posted there -- which feature the same music, black background and fonts that say the words with no voiceover drives home this simple message without the in-your-face hype.
Even though I have posted a lot of these "Escape You Deserve" promos since back in March 2020, something that I've not done in my five years of doing part-time YouTube video work has been of posting a two-minute long, movie-style trailer promo. In a perfect world, we all look forward to getting to enjoy the magic that comes with going to watch a film in a packed theater on a weekend... and the road every big movie takes to get to the big screen includes getting to drop a trailer that strives to put some of the very best of your favorite movies into a small teaser clip. Many of YouTube's most-watched videos on a weekly basis are, after all, movie trailers... so, for the first trip I have taken during this testy time, I thought of nothing else to announce the arrival of DC VEGAS XI than with this clip.
The trailer above that was posted helps to bridge the gap between my "Escape You Deserve" promos and the DC Vegas vlog series, while not forgetting about what has gone on in our world in the twenty-four months in between trips. A characteristic of how I operate things with my YouTube offerings is that I never repost others' videos on my page (thus, there's no TV show, sports event or other things on my channel), but the sole exception to that rule is B-roll stock footage... and I chose clips from them from various sources to help to tell this narrative, along with some of my favorite moments from the eight sets of vlogs that I've posted in the past five years.
The result is what you see above, and it marks the kickoff to what begins in two weeks from now. This Vegas trip will be my eleventh in total, the tenth in this generation, the second time that I'll be coming here during the cooler months of late fall and winter, and the first big vacation of any kind in two years because of the pandemic. This also happens to be the second time that I'll be celebrating a birthday in Vegas after I got to do so back in 2009 the same weekend Manny Pacquiao fought Miguel Cotto. And this will also be just the second time that a Vegas trip is taking place during the traditional work week, rather than during the weekend... and it's because of comps my dad has collected in the time since we last went there in October 2019 and those nice airfares coming a week before Thanksgiving.
We know that traveling during this time is a testy thing, and as you'll suspect we'll be taking greater precaution and awareness of our surroundings, and we won't mess it with one bit. But in the time since my most recent Vegas trip and now, I have made big advances in technology: most importantly, I got a much-needed phone upgrade last Christmas -- having an iPhone 11 compared to my 5-year-old first-gen SE model has seen me advance from the Stone Age to the Space Age, and it will allow me to utilize all of its available functions to produce more stories, live content and better-quality video.
With the aforementioned shopping that I've done, I used up some of what I've saved up during this time to buy a mini gimbal camera which will let me film better and more fluid walkthrough videos around town and inside the casinos & properties when and where available. Well before this time I've added an additional HD camcorder, which will give me a total of four cameras that I plan to bring to Vegas to record content that I'll later edit in post production when I go home. And as usual before all of these trips, I'll be buying plenty of songs to accompany that precious playlist during this trip.
As you suspect -- and now as you realize from the relative lack of blog work the couple weeks and for the next few weeks, I am now getting into preparation mode for DC VEGAS XI. There's a lot of things I need to do now until I fly out on Monday afternoon, November 15th (two days after my birthday), and already I am anxious to let out all of that pent up stuff I've been building up over the course of 747 days from when I left on Monday, October 28, 2019 until I walk into the terminal of what will soon be Harry Reid International Airport on the edge of the Strip. So, "Welcome to The Ultimate Escape."
- I AM DC
#DCBLOG
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