Notes from Vegas: At the Copa

(Or just go to the slide show.)

I was not in a good frame of mind for my trip to Las Vegas last month. I’m not the sort to hang out in a bar alone, I don’t like gambling (except maybe for betting on football  or midseason basketball), most of my work-related pals weren’t attending the conference I was in town for, and Tom Jones was out of town. So I was pretty much on my own, but I didn’t have anything to do and wasn’t up for “going out.”

This made me weird and depressed. It wasn’t any sort of midlife frustration; it was just this sense of being totally in the wrong place. I missed my wife & my dog terribly (her more than him).

Fortunately, no matter how uprooted I felt, I was still able to appreciate some quintessentially Vegas aspects of Vegas. When I checked into my hotel, for example, I discovered that its headline act at the wonderful Las Vegas Hilton was none other than Barry Manilow! And he had his own gift shop!

During the conference, I talked with one of my less-close work-pals (a guy who works at a company that advertises in my mag, but with whom I haven’t had too many conversations with) about my sense of “eh, so I’m in Vegas, eh.”

He was staying up at the venue where the conference was, about 20 minutes from the Strip, and didn’t have exciting plans for his stay, either. He said to me, “Don’t worry about it. What do you like doing?”

“Hmm. I like reading, watching hoops, and not dealing with people.”

“Sounds good! Is there a game on tonight?”

There was. I spent that night with the awesome game 2 of Bulls-Celtics, followed by some Plutarch and some In-N-Out burger & fries (not animal-style, alas).

At the conference the next day, I told him that I’d had a pretty good night, all things considered, and that I had even better plans for tonight! During the drive up to the resort where the conference was being held, I’d seen a billboard for the Las Vegas AAA minor league baseball team. Turned out the Area 51s had a home game that very night!

Rather than subject myself to more woe-is-me-itude in my hotel room, I drove a few miles over to Cashman field (through the wedding district (!?)), bought a $14 seat about 15-20 feet behind home plate, picked up a beer, hot dog and pretzel (and some souvenirs), and watched a ball game with some locals and out-of-towners. I had a great time, relatively inexpensively, and got a whole new perspective on the pitcher-batter duel.

I didn’t have the stereotypical exciting/bleary/regretful/drunk Vegas trip, but I did have fun in my own peculiar way. And I brought back pictures with commentary!

What It Is: 5/4/09

What I’m reading: I didn’t read much this week, but I did manage to read Plutarch’s lives of Themistocles and Camillus.

What I’m listening to: The Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack. Anyone know if M.I.A. is any good?

What I’m watching: The Bulls-Celtics series. Game 7 didn’t live up to the previous 6 (well, 5, if you discount that blowout in game 3), but it was some entertaining basketball. I think this is more of a function of the dumbness of the coaches and some of the players than of the high level of play. The most rewarding part for me was the discovery that Stephon Marbury is now afraid to play basketball.

What I’m drinking: Not much.

What Rufus is up to: Getting affection from everyone he meets, including the local policeman who stopped us on our walk one morning to ask me about a neighborhood dog’s aggression. Oh, and taking another Sunday hike in Wawayanda.

Where I’m going: Toronto for a long weekend with friends, family, and cartoonists!

What I’m happy about: Getting away for the aforementioned long weekend.

What I’m sad about: Having to leave Rufus with people who haven’t taken care of him previously. Because I’m a neurotic mess.

What I’m worried about: The short timeframe for my June ish, which I’ll somehow need to finish while I’m in Atlanta in 2 weeks. Also, I’m worried that I’ll never get around to writing up the rest of my Las Vegas trip notes. Grr.

What I’m pondering: How I managed to amass an iTunes library of more than 43,000 tracks but not manage to have any songs by Barry Manilow.

Notes from Vegas: White Stripes

Last night, I took my car out to the In-N-Out Burger on Tropicana Blvd. Rather than return via I-15, I decided to drive down the strip, starting around Circus Circus and the MGM Grand. My hotel is at the far end of the strip, near the Space Needle building, the Stratosphere, and my conference is nowhere near the strip, so this was likely the only opportunity I’d get to drive through and try to pick up some impressions. I’m still working on processing it all, but I’m having a tough time of it.

I arrived in Vegas on a Saturday evening once, and the cab ride to my hotel was impossible due to strip-traffic. This time, there wasn’t much volume. I chalk it up to Monday night slowdown, rather than fiscalpocalypse.

The funny thing about having a car on this trip is that I never drove in Vegas before, so I never noticed that the streets don’t have stripes painted to demarcate the lanes. They have little raised reflectors, but no white lines. (This made my drive in from the airport — in which I had a blinding headache and the sun was just a few minutes from descending behind the mountains — kinda frightening.)

Anyway, the reason I’m writing is because I passed the City Center project during this trip. It consists of a bunch of sleek towers and a big-ass mall. I saw it around 18 months earlier during this trip. It’s been in the news lately because of financing problems; a fund in Dubai doesn’t want to cover to giant cost overruns in order to finish a luxury hotel/condo/casino/mall complex at a time when no one has money.

After seeing the silly jagged multi-planar design for the front (mall) of the Center, I’m hoping they pulled out after developing taste. Here’s an interview with the architect of this grotesquerie, Daniel Liebeskind, on how to rethink a mall or something.

Gambles

(Ah, just go to the slideshow.)

Made it back from Vegas safe and sound on Tuesday. The event was a disaster: the exhibit hall was so far from the conference sessions that few of the attendees stopped in to see us. I knew things would be bad when I picked up my exhibitor/press badge on Sunday afternoon.

I asked a staffer, “Where’s the exhibit hall?”

“Well, you can see it if you look out the window over there, behind the pool area.”

“Do I have to jump out the window to get there?”

“No. If you take the escalator down three floors, turn left, go through that section of the mall, make a left by the towel station, turn right as you get outside by the pool, then follow the covered walkway past the construction signs, you’ll be right there.”

“. . . Really.”

“There’s a map in your conference-bag!” the staffer added. It was, after all, a conference for engineers. I shook my head resignedly, checked my cell phone for the time, and started walking to the hall. It took 8 minutes on foot.

Over the next two days, the 300 tabletop exhibitors joked about how overwhelmed we were with foot traffic, and how we might run out of giveaways. One guy was reading through the Society’s upcoming events. “Oh!” he said. “Next year’s conference is in Boca and ‘exhibit space is limited.'”

“Yeah,” said another, “limited to the number of guys who actually bother to exhibit after this experience.”

You have lots of time to make these jokes when your exhibit hall opens at 7:15 in the morning. In Las Vegas.

We concluded that we’d have had a better chance of reaching the attendees if we set up the exhibits next to the slot machines and poker tables in the casino. But you go to Vegas, and you take your chances.

I mean, you take a chance that your hotel will actually have the non-smoking room you reserved. I lost that bet, and spent three nights unable to do much by way of breathing. Fortunately, I was able to, um, bask in the showbiz-itude of the Planet Hollywood decor. In this case, my room had several framed photos and pieces of memorabilia to celebrate the wonderfulness of movies and TV.

There was a photo from Batman Begins of Christian Bale carrying Katie Holmes, one of Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone looking worried in The Specialist (I’d be worried if James Woods was after me), one of Harrison Ford walking by a wall of servers, which I guess was from Firewall, that movie where he tries to convince a major corporation to move over to Linux.

And then there was a frame that held a piece of a Wheel of Fortune, and an issue of TV Guide signed by Vanna White. Because that’s Planet Hollywood.

Anyway: speaking of risk, I didn’t lose a bunch of money while there. I gave myself a severe set of restrictions on slots-playing, didn’t sit down at card table because it’s no fun to do without friends around, and had my faith in Peyton Manning (and six points) rewarded on a $50 bet. Despite having put so much work into an NBA season preview, I didn’t lay a single basketball bet.

On the way out of Caesars Palace to the airport, I remembered that I had a $10 betting slip in my wallet. I haven’t been in a casino in years, and didn’t know that they issue your cash-out with bar-coded slips that you can cash in at an ATM or use to bet more. Even if you only have 25 cents to cash out, you’ll get a slip (I tried it). Anyway, I put that in a dollar-slot, figured I’d hit 4 spins and leave. With $4 left, I hit for $25, and decided, “Well, that’s cabfare back to the airport,” cashed out, and hit the road.

As it turned out, my biggest gamble on the trip was at the airport. I got in around 11:25am for my 2:20 pm flight, and started my e-check-in. I figured I’d find a lounge and do some reading/writing, but the check-in screen told me that there was an earlier flight I could switch to: the 12:15. But it wouldn’t tell me what seat I would get.

Now, as a frequent-enough traveler, I have “Elite” status on Continental, which usually gets me a seat in the first row or two of coach. I figured that wouldn’t be the case with this earlier flight, especially since it looked like that flight would be boarding in 5 minutes. I decided, “I don’t care where I’m sitting; if I can get in at 8:15 instead of 10:30, I’ll be happier.” I confirmed the flight-switch.

It told me I’d be in row 40, seat F, and that boarding would begin in 5 minutes. At this point, I still had to go through security and then board the monorail that would get me to the right terminal. I made like O.J. (okay, “like the O.J. in the Hertz commercials”). I got through security quickly enough and, just before the monorail, I saw the departures screen and noticed that my flight was delayed till 12:50.

40F didn’t turn out so bad. There weren’t many people at the rear of the plane, and the 757-300 configuration had the restrooms up around rows 31-32, so I didn’t have a long line of impatient people standing by my seat.

So I Xanax-ed into relaxation, ready to leave behind Las Vegas, its commonplace spectacles and its idiotic conference venues. Aloft, I looked out the window to see the Valley of Fire. A series of astonishing views spread out below us: lakes, rivers, canyons, buttes. The gridlines of development were missing from this country, I thought.

And over the PA, a stewardess said, “In order to better enjoy your in-flight entertainment, please lower your window shades. Our movie this afternoon will be Hairspray, starring John Travolta.”

I think he would’ve approved of my decision to leave the shades up.

(Now go to the slideshow, darnit!)

Is that you, Streaky?

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus . . .

. . . and Siegfried and Roy are from Krypton.

This may be the greatest photo I’ve ever taken.

I was so close!

The flight got pretty bumpy about 90 minutes from LV. Fortunately, I was on Xanax, so I wasn’t as uptight as I usually get during flights.

That said, I DID think to myself, “Ferchrissakes! I have THREE GODDAMN PAGES of Middlemarch left! I will be SO pissed off if we go down before I finish it!”

De-LAYED!

Flight was delayed almost two hours because a passenger had a breathing device that wasn’t cleared to fly. One of the stewardesses was the first person to notice that the device might need to be checked out, which is a little late in the process.

Having seen enough of the passengers shamble up the aisle to the restroom, I’m convinced that we were actually loading up on extra fuel.