Viva Las Vegas #1
Viva Las Vegas? #1
January 8, 1992
Well, I’ve lost my virginity—after two husbands and five kids. I’ve been to see the fat lady as they used to say at the old time carnivals. In fact, there were about a million fat ladies.
We’ve been to Las Vegas for the first time.
Impossible as it may seem, we’ve gotten to be this old and this experienced without ever partaking of this sublime experience. I hope it never comes back.
We went to Las Vegas expecting to see SIN in all its many guises. I expected to be beguiled by evils, so to speak. At the very least, I expected drunks in the streets and a carnival atmosphere. No one prepared me for hoards of seriously intent quarter pushers, people with the deep expressions of chairmen of the board facing hostile takeovers. No one laughs while gambling. It’s do or die, guns along the Mohawk with these people.
I didn’t except everybody to be middle aged. The women in matching hot pink sweatsuits with bejeweled and sequined tops, the men in logo-bedecked work caps saying Peterbilt and Tuff-Shed. Large-hipped couples in matching satin baseball jackets with Las Vegas written in silver script on the back.
And foreigners, Zillions of foreigners. Doesn’t anybody in America speak English anymore? We were sitting at dinner one night and of the either tables I could see in front of us, only two were English speaking. The rest were Indian, Arabic, Spanish and the ubiquitous Japanese.
This is always a surprise nowadays when you leave Utah and go towards California. Forget the Gold Rush and Disneyland; California is now the new Japan.
What’s creepy about all of these, people, foreigner and just plain stranger alike, is that they present this bizarre, slightly off-center look at normal American life. It’s like a child’s picture of American life gone beserk with glitter. None of its classy or dignified, just glassy-eyed families tugging each other around this giant adult version of Showbiz Pizza.
Let’s talk about food. The operative work for Las Vegas food is “soft.” It you like what you ate at the hospital the last time you had a coronary by-pass; if your idea of a vegetable involves whipped cream, then you’re going to love the food at the Las Vegas buffets.
The Las Vegas buffet is famous. It’s all you can eat and it’s supposed to be cheap. It’s not as cheap as they advertise, but it does bring new meaning to the notion of all you can eat. All you can eat of WHAT? If you mean marinated artichoke bottoms and every known type of cream pie and marshmallow salad, you know, you really have trouble eating all you can eat of those things.
Las Vegas is also home of that popular school lunch favorite, “mystery meat.” Surely, somewhere there is a Nevada State Department of Agriculture Bulletin mandating exactly what you can serve at one of these because out of the five different places we tried, every single one served the same things. Or maybe they just tasted the same.
So, by now, you’ve probably guessed that I really didn’t like Las Vegas. As my nine year old said, “I feel like we’ve landed on the moon.” There must have been something that we liked.
Hoover Dam was good. Built during the 30s, it’s a remnant of a time when people felt good enough about what they were building that the hallways 760 feet below ground are poured terrazzo tile with Art Deco, 30s type decoration every few feet. Even the doors are beautiful sculptured aluminum. The ladies’ room (a subject I hold a certain expertise in) had wonderful marble floors and walls. The casinos could take a lesson from the ladies’ room at Hoover Dam.
We visited the chocolate factory—one of the most advertised “family attractions”—and after the hour if took to find it, that free piece of candy looked pretty good. We missed the marshmallow and cigar factories however.
And we liked the “live” volcano outside of the Mirage Hotel enough to walk back in the rain at 9:30 p.m. at night to see it one last time. It has true glitz.
If you want to go somewhere relatively inexpensively that will get you completely away from any vestige of your normal life and leave you dazed, bemused and slightly dazzled, you’ll want to try Las Vegas for your next vacation.
If you want to relax and have a good time, go camping.
January 8, 1992
Well, I’ve lost my virginity—after two husbands and five kids. I’ve been to see the fat lady as they used to say at the old time carnivals. In fact, there were about a million fat ladies.
We’ve been to Las Vegas for the first time.
Impossible as it may seem, we’ve gotten to be this old and this experienced without ever partaking of this sublime experience. I hope it never comes back.
We went to Las Vegas expecting to see SIN in all its many guises. I expected to be beguiled by evils, so to speak. At the very least, I expected drunks in the streets and a carnival atmosphere. No one prepared me for hoards of seriously intent quarter pushers, people with the deep expressions of chairmen of the board facing hostile takeovers. No one laughs while gambling. It’s do or die, guns along the Mohawk with these people.
I didn’t except everybody to be middle aged. The women in matching hot pink sweatsuits with bejeweled and sequined tops, the men in logo-bedecked work caps saying Peterbilt and Tuff-Shed. Large-hipped couples in matching satin baseball jackets with Las Vegas written in silver script on the back.
And foreigners, Zillions of foreigners. Doesn’t anybody in America speak English anymore? We were sitting at dinner one night and of the either tables I could see in front of us, only two were English speaking. The rest were Indian, Arabic, Spanish and the ubiquitous Japanese.
This is always a surprise nowadays when you leave Utah and go towards California. Forget the Gold Rush and Disneyland; California is now the new Japan.
What’s creepy about all of these, people, foreigner and just plain stranger alike, is that they present this bizarre, slightly off-center look at normal American life. It’s like a child’s picture of American life gone beserk with glitter. None of its classy or dignified, just glassy-eyed families tugging each other around this giant adult version of Showbiz Pizza.
Let’s talk about food. The operative work for Las Vegas food is “soft.” It you like what you ate at the hospital the last time you had a coronary by-pass; if your idea of a vegetable involves whipped cream, then you’re going to love the food at the Las Vegas buffets.
The Las Vegas buffet is famous. It’s all you can eat and it’s supposed to be cheap. It’s not as cheap as they advertise, but it does bring new meaning to the notion of all you can eat. All you can eat of WHAT? If you mean marinated artichoke bottoms and every known type of cream pie and marshmallow salad, you know, you really have trouble eating all you can eat of those things.
Las Vegas is also home of that popular school lunch favorite, “mystery meat.” Surely, somewhere there is a Nevada State Department of Agriculture Bulletin mandating exactly what you can serve at one of these because out of the five different places we tried, every single one served the same things. Or maybe they just tasted the same.
So, by now, you’ve probably guessed that I really didn’t like Las Vegas. As my nine year old said, “I feel like we’ve landed on the moon.” There must have been something that we liked.
Hoover Dam was good. Built during the 30s, it’s a remnant of a time when people felt good enough about what they were building that the hallways 760 feet below ground are poured terrazzo tile with Art Deco, 30s type decoration every few feet. Even the doors are beautiful sculptured aluminum. The ladies’ room (a subject I hold a certain expertise in) had wonderful marble floors and walls. The casinos could take a lesson from the ladies’ room at Hoover Dam.
We visited the chocolate factory—one of the most advertised “family attractions”—and after the hour if took to find it, that free piece of candy looked pretty good. We missed the marshmallow and cigar factories however.
And we liked the “live” volcano outside of the Mirage Hotel enough to walk back in the rain at 9:30 p.m. at night to see it one last time. It has true glitz.
If you want to go somewhere relatively inexpensively that will get you completely away from any vestige of your normal life and leave you dazed, bemused and slightly dazzled, you’ll want to try Las Vegas for your next vacation.
If you want to relax and have a good time, go camping.
Comments