{"id":232,"date":"2004-05-15T21:41:09","date_gmt":"2004-05-16T01:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=232"},"modified":"2005-12-31T16:12:49","modified_gmt":"2005-12-31T21:12:49","slug":"viva-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/viva-2","title":{"rendered":"Viva"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few months ago<\/a>, I wrote, “[Las Vegas] is actually an alien theme park of planet Earth. Which helps explain both the laser beam [from the top of the Luxor] AND the proximity to Area 51.”<\/p>\n

In The Nation<\/em>, Marc Cooper writes about Vegas as the new capital of America<\/a> (figuratively speaking, of course: y’know, the way various cities have been emblematic of various stages of our history). He writes:<\/p>\n

What a turnaround it has been for once lowly Las Vegas–and for the nation around it. Barely fifteen years ago, the august Citicorp was queasy about publicly admitting that its major credit-card processing center had been relocated to an unincorporated suburb of Las Vegas. A deal with state authorities allowed the banking corporation to postmark and camouflage its mail as coming from “The Lakes, Nevada” instead of from sinful Vegas. Today, that same neighborhood sports several high-end casinos and luxury hotels. And Citicorp’s own credibility, in the aftermath of the great Wall Street accounting scandals, ranks somewhere below that of a midtown three-card-monte hustler.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few months ago, I wrote, “[Las Vegas] is actually an alien theme park of planet Earth. Which helps explain both the laser beam [from the top of the Luxor] AND the proximity to Area 51.” In The Nation, Marc Cooper writes about Vegas as the new capital of America (figuratively speaking, of course: y’know, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Viva”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-3K","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3044,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/vegas-baby","url_meta":{"origin":232,"position":0},"title":"Vegas, Baby!","author":"Gil","date":"December 10, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"What do you get when you combine a sportswriter awaiting his buyout, baseball's winter meetings, two big-budget teams and Las Vegas? This epic post from Dan Graziano, soon to be formerly with the Newark Star-Ledger.","rel":"","context":"In "Las Vegas"","block_context":{"text":"Las Vegas","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/las-vegas"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1764,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/leaving-for-las-vegas","url_meta":{"origin":232,"position":1},"title":"Leaving (for) Las Vegas","author":"Gil","date":"November 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I haven't been to Vegas since January 2004, when I helicoptered into the Grand Canyon and was stage-side for a Tom Jones concert at the MGM, but I'm 70 minutes from boarding my flight to this year's ISPE conference in the Unreal City! This trip should be less eventful than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Las Vegas"","block_context":{"text":"Las Vegas","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/las-vegas"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3928,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/notes-from-vegas-at-the-copa","url_meta":{"origin":232,"position":2},"title":"Notes from Vegas: At the Copa","author":"Gil","date":"May 13, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"(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\u00c2\u00a0 or midseason basketball), most of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Las Vegas"","block_context":{"text":"Las Vegas","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/las-vegas"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3823,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/notes-from-vegas-white-stripes","url_meta":{"origin":232,"position":3},"title":"Notes from Vegas: White Stripes","author":"Gil","date":"April 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":593,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/nerd-vegas","url_meta":{"origin":232,"position":4},"title":"Nerd Vegas","author":"Gil","date":"July 19, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"You can't have a Comic-Con without an awards show! Occasional VM contributor Tom Spurgeon just posted his diary of the Eisner Awards night at last week's Con.A lot of the jokes are really industry-specific, so you might not laugh as much as I did.9:32 -- Sean McKeever wins Talent Deserving\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":125,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/whats-new-pussycat","url_meta":{"origin":232,"position":5},"title":"What’s New, Pussycat?","author":"Gil","date":"January 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Normally, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I've decided to reveal some aspects of this trip. First lesson: Tom Jones still Has It. Second lesson: The sports book at the Venetian has free drinks, but it's NOT good to say to yourself, \"It's only 10:30 a.m. here, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Football"","block_context":{"text":"Football","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/football"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}