For Carey, price was right for $35,000 cheeseburger
A few years ago, "Simpsons" co-creator Sam Simon told me my favorite gambling story ever, about the time he and Drew Carey ate $40,000 burgers while gambling in a high roller section.
Carey is in Vegas to stage "Drew Carey's Improv-a-ganza" (one of my favorite shows) at MGM today through Sunday. So I asked him to tell me the Simon story, and it made me laugh all over again.
Actually, Carey says, Simon got a grilled cheese sandwich for $40,000, and Carey got a $35,000 cheeseburger.
"It was at Mandalay Bay, the first year they opened. We went to see what it was all about," Carey says.
"We were walking by the high roller section, and the guy goes, 'Mr. Carey, you gonna be gambling with us?' I looked at Sam and said, 'Nah, we're kind of hungry. We're gonna go get something to eat.'
"He goes, 'We've got a butler here that can get you anything you want.'
"I said, 'Let me see the menu.'
"He said, 'There's no menu. Just tell him what you want and he'll get it for you.'
"I was like, 'OK.' So we went in and met the butler guy. I said, 'I'll have a cheeseburger.' Sam said, 'I'll have a grilled cheese sandwich.'
"Honestly, we could have got lobster, filet, caviar - anything we wanted.
"And we sat down and got markers and started gambling a little bit. And we got hammered. By the time our sandwiches showed up, I had lost $35,000, and Sam had lost $40,000.
"Sam still claims they were watching us and throwing our sandwiches away. Like, they were making them and throwing them away, waiting for us to give up.
"Because we kept going, 'Another marker please. Where the (expletive) are our sandwiches?' " Carey says and laughs.
The way Simon told me this story, it ended with him looking at Carey, who sort of shrugged and smiled about how delicious his $35,000 burger was.
Carey says that's exactly what happened.
"Yeah," he says. "We bit into our sandwiches and we were like, 'Hey! Good cheeseburger!' "
That wasn't the first or the last time Carey paid a big price for food.
Many years ago, Carey used to live in Vegas, back when he was young, broke and not even close to being famous. He lived near Fremont Street and Charleston Boulevard. Sometimes, he would splurge by dining at the Horseshoe.
Anyway, he came back to Vegas once with cast mates from "The Drew Carey Show," and he took them to his old spot at Binion's Horseshoe.
"I was telling them about the steak special I used to get - a New York strip steak and a salad for, like, $2.50," Carey says.
"We were like, 'Let's go for old time's sake!' "
But when Carey's crew rolled up, they were told they would have to wait 20 or 30 minutes for a table.
"I could clearly see they had tables open. But we went and gambled while we waited. And I lost a couple of hundred bucks."
That's when Carey formulated his own personal theory that Vegas food is delayed so that everyone will go gamble.
"I was like, 'OK, I get it,' " he says.
"I also used to fall for the cash-your-check-here scam," he says.
That's the casino offer of letting you spin a wheel, to see if you can win a prize, after you cash your work paycheck at their cage.
"The bet was," Carey says, "can you make it out of the casino with cash in your hand after you cash your check?"
In retrospect, he says, the offer shouldn't have been all that enticing.
"You would never triple your paycheck. It would be like, 'Here's a roll of nickels.' "
As for "Improv-a-ganza," let me just say it's one of my favorite stage events that ever happens on the Strip. If you liked "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" it's a lot like that.
This weekend, Carey is bringing "Whose Line" vets Brad Sherwood, Colin Mochrie and Jonathan Mangham.
He's also bringing Heather Anne Campbell ("one of the best improvers I know now") and a few newcomers.
"They're so damn good, it's scary," Carey says.
See you there.
Doug Elfman's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.
