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Jun 7 03: notes on vegas

With this renewed vigor under the hood, I was inspired to keep some records of the grand anthropological expedition that was John’s bachelor bash. Aren’t you lucky. Various observations follow, in no particular order.

• The cheaper restaurants along the strip are noteworthy for a few things, and here are two: $4.99 breakfasts, served all day; and alarming agèd ex-showgirl waitresses who have changed neither hairdo nor make-up since their last performance waaay back in 1963. Breathtaking.
  
• Regional Foods You can get foods here that you can’t get on the East Coast. I don’t just mean brands of potato chip that you’ve never heard of. I mean variant flavors of familiar global-behemoth products. We went into a pharmacy on our first morning in town—because it had the only ATM we could find that didn’t charge a fee of $3.00 or more to access your own damn money—and on the shelves were Guacamole Doritos. Sounds like a great idea, but when you see them you understand why they haven’t gone national. They look like Mildew Doritos. Crispy triangles of fried corn meal, powdered with a horrible green-grey dust. Eeeeeew. I couldn’t bring myself to try any, even in the name of Science. On the other hand, I would have cheerfully tucked into a package of Dulce de Leche M&Ms, if only I could find them. At present they are only available in heavily Latino markets, like the Southwest. (But not New York City? Hello?) I had it on fair authority that Vegas would have them. They’ve even got a gi-normous M&Ms Memorabilia Store on the strip! Four stories of M&Msiana! But not a Dulce de Leche M&M noplace. Fie. If you know how to get me some, drop me a line. You may be my new best friend.
  
• Hoover Dam It sounds kind of dull, but hey, it has been billed as the Eighth Wonder of the World. It’s the largest concrete structure on the face of the Earth. Its various architectural details—like its gift shop, the public restrooms, the flagpole-cum-memorial-to-the-builders, even the generator rooms—were all done in highest, most fabulous High Deco. Completed in 1935, you know. The giant generator room on the Nevada side had a massive terazzo floor with gorgeous stylized representations of graphic motifs from the local Native American peoples: Pueblo-Deco. I called one of my clients to confirm to her that indeed, the dam worked pretty much exactly as we had described it in the book we’d finished editing earlier in the week. She was relieved to hear it.
  
• Thank you, Cingular Wireless: my cell phone worked like a charm and I didn’t even incur roaming charges. Very odd to get calls from friends while I was standing atop Hoover Dam or on the casino floor at the Bellagio. Nobody ever believed me when I told them where I was. Cell phones also spell the demise of things like outrageous telephone bills at hotels, and make it really really easy to corral a buncha guys together when it’s time to meet somewheres (“Why aren’t you at the pool?” “I am at the pool. Where are you?” “We’re over by the other bar, the one nearer the swim-up blackjack table.” “Be right there. Order me something.”). What did we ever do without them?
  I can’t believe I just said that.
  
• Vegas from a Distance is spread wide and low, endless flat swathes of subdivisions and minimalls clinging to the desert floor like lichen. At its heart is the bizarre, extravagantly bioluminescent fruiting body of the Strip, leaping hundreds of feet above anything else. A persistent brown haze hangs over the whole thing, the smog of countless cars in from LA or Reno or Phoenix, the exhaust of dozens of cheapo shuttle planes landing every hour just three blocks from the Tropicana. A few high clouds loiter overhead: they do nothing to lower the 106° temperature, but the shadow they cast streaks the smog, shafts of darkness descending from heaven directly to the Strip like the malediction of God.
  
• Cesar or Bob suggested at one point that God was bound to wipe the city off the face of the Earth. I don’t know. Maybe it’s still there because He feels we deserve it.
  
• City of Moths They’re in the hotel rooms. They’re in the casinos, in the streets, in the shafts of the glass-walled elevators. Tiny bewildered things, perpetually lost in a night where the moon is shining from everywhere at once.
  
• Important Survival Rule Maintain a minimum safe ironic distance at all times. Between the kitsch and the crowds, this may be all that saves you. Be an observer, even an involved observer—never a participant. Cultural anthropology is your friend.
  
• I seemed to be the sole homo for fifty miles. Various others suggested that it only seemed that way because we were staying at the wrong hotel. If nothing else, the poolside boy-watching was atrocious, or at least it paled in comparison to the girl-watching available to my cohorts. Not my bachelor party, so there was nothing to be done.
  
• Pre-dinner blackjack tutorials in Pete’s hotel room, with drinks. There is a strategy to learn, one refined by university types with big computers, and it works. But only if you can cram most-if-not-all of it into your head. Pete is John’s younger brother, who is also getting married this summer. It was his bachelor party, too.
  
• Poolside, 11AM Tubby midwesterners slowly frying in their deck chairs. Somewhere, another rather doughy ex-football player is getting another tattoo.
  
• Everyone wants to know the tally. On the first night, I played blackjack for 2 hours and ended up only $10 poorer than I started. At various points I was up by as much as $50. A victory in my book. On the second night I blew through $75 in, what, 20 minutes? 25? And pulled the rip-cord. A few of our crew had been watching over my shoulder, and assured me that I had played every hand correctly and that the cards I’d been dealt had simply been disastrous. Good: that’s what I thought, too. Not enough to get me back at the tables, though. As it turned out, only one of us had a good run that night. That was César, who was clearly born to Vegas. Did well for himself, he did.
  
• The strip at night beggars description. You’ll just have to see it for yourself someday. The MGM Grand, across the street from us, is the largest hotel in the world. Inside it has faboo deco casino areas, midnight-blue and gold; from the outside, after sunset, it is an irridescent beetle-green behemoth.
  
• Bachelorette parties everywhere. So as to embarrass John, we engineered a capella performances for two different groups, one song each. This was at an outstanding (and relatively cheap) Mexican place at the Mandalay Bay hotel. The performances sucked, frankly. Those margaritas had been gooood. The bachelorettes went all starry-eyed anyway, because such is John’s power over the ladies.
  
• Pandering to the aforementioned bachelorettes: beefcake revues seem to be the latest thing. The hotels that offer them go to great pains to stress how they are for women. (See above.) One of the shows featured a bunch of allegedly Australian hunks in their underwear—the guys on the video billboards were cute enough, but I just couldn’t get past the name: Thunder from Down Under. Really unfortunate, that.
  
• César and Bob both earned the title of Nickel Slot Ho. The one-armed bandit, she sings an irresistible song. Once under her hypnotic spell, you lose your money, your house, your children…five measly cents at a time. César, of course, managed to hit a jackpot so big that the machine wouldn’t give it to him in nickels: a big flashing light summoned a casino rep, who presented him with $62.50 in more portable denominations.

Oh, and we also went to the Star Trek thing.

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