Viva Las Vegas

There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- William Shakespeare

This place runs on hard money, electricity, and the American breast - both the external organs that befuddle us and the yearning that thumps within for more, endlessly more. Women twirl from a giant chandelier that rides on a track on the ceiling while spine-shaking techno beats from the speakers. The casino air is thick with lights, electronic noises and the stench of Benson and Hedges. Behind the overweight and often-impoverished patrons a wall of flat-screen TVs undulates with the silhouette of a woman's torso engulfed in flames. That a nearby illuminated sign announces Carrot Top at the Luxor only adds more unhallowed menace to the proceedings.

You cannot be more jaded than Las Vegas. The bald sexuality and unapologetic love of money deny you any smart sophistication. You can make all of the comments you like about the monument to human vanity that has erected itself in this Nevada valley - and the response is the same indifference that can be seen on the faces of the casino girls that serve you your drink at the $25 minimum table while knowing where your eyes are bound to fall.

Only America could have invented this place, and only in the West. For all of the shimmering sin there is a queer innocence to the place, as if "family fun" quite normally involves a woman clad in peacock feathers dancing above your table while you eat your burgers and fries. The dry southwest heat seems to have sucked the irony clear out of the place, and the jaw-dropping scale of the artifice in the casinos makes mockery irrelevant. No other country on earth has the money, power, and audacity to keep tearing it down and building it bigger. If you’re Green it’s a slur against nature, and if you are fundamentally religious it’s an affront to God of all varieties. Every Puritan sawhorse that we associate with founding America (“Waste not want not.” And “A fool and his money part ways.”) – These are answered by Vegas with sick, bloodshot laughter.

More updates as time permits. I’ve got a stakes game in a few minutes.