Oh, and by the way, we went to Vegas.

So my roommate and I abandoned the kitten and took to the skies for a trip to Vegas. Well, ok, so we didn’t so much abandon her as leave her in the care of M and C and E, all enlisted to feed her and change her litter and throw the mousie for her to fetch and dangle the kitten fishing pole and scritch the belly and brush the fur and generally spoil her rotten just like usual. But we did leave her behind for the longest time ever… to head (via Phoenix Arizona) for Las Vegas, Nevada.

Interesting place.

Vegas is very sparkle-y at night. I love lights — any kind of lights — and neon lights that are on until almost dawn are no exception. The Fremont Street Experience, Las Vegas’ answer to a Disney-saturated culture — totally flipped my switch. FSE is a 3-block long video screen, presented directly above the audience on a canopy, with hourly original multimedia show. Make that five different shows. There was one that was Vegas themed, one patriotic, one a visual history of the world (Evolution), and one a rock-and-roll montage. The fifth, and our favorite, was an Area 51 special, replete with Roswell aliens and a firey space battle. It rocked.

We took a little day’s jaunt over to Hoover Dam. I took a couple of pictures of the huge rocks and the green water. If anyone knows why the water is green (my hypothesis involved minerals — copper leaching into the Colorado River? What?), I’d like to know. That’s been bugging me since C and I were leaning over the side of the big stone walls looking down. At the water. And the big red ladder that rested against the side of the dam wall, obviously dropped from a great height. If anyone knows about the ladder, too, that’d be fantastic. I mean, it wasn’t even an extension ladder.

Vegas is a tricksey city. Time gets away from you, daylight creeps up on you. We only spent a little time on the strip itself, and only got to see a fraction of the nifty things there were there to see. The Paris, the Bellagio (but no fountains — perhaps next time), the Mirage. We wandered around, playing count-the-prostitute, and K collected call-girl trading cards. We caught a performance of Purple Reign, THE Prince cover band. It was fabulous. Everything there is shiny and produced, like a movie set. Until daylight… then it just looks a little grimy. We were far too smart to look at faux Prince in the daylight. It probably would have been frightening.

One thing I did discover — I’m not a gambler. It’s just not in my blood to bet large sums of money on the outcome of a [rigged] game of chance. And by large sums of money, I mean anything bigger than a quarter. For someone so frivilous with their spending money, I’m sure tight-fisted when it comes to card tables. Ah, well. At least we know I’ll never end up a out-of-work blackjack dealer (”I don’t do drugs or prostitute myself, and I only need seven dollars to pay my room for the night. You could be my kids!”) wandering Fremont Street in my ratty blue bathrobe.

We did continue the weird trend of attracting every particularly bizarre beggar in the vicinity. In addition to the Lady in the Fuzzy Bathrobe, there was the Aspiring but Terrible Magician, the “I was in Cambodia — Fuck you!” grizzled vet, and the Very Tall Man and his friend, who was probably a child, but very possibly a midget. Or little person. Whatever.

We basically stayed up and played nickel poker until we could no longer keep our eyes open, and then we got on a plane and came home. Vegas was a really interesting place to observe, but not nearly fully vetted in four days’ time. But, hey, I’ve seen the desert, naked mountains, and an assload of neon. Woo.


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