Viva Las Vegas!

Ha, what else would you title the Vegas blog? We just got back from dinner and seeing a tribute show that was at the Stratosphere Hotel. That has an amazing tower thing with the most mindblowing view of all of Vegas. Michelle's friend Anna arranged some vouchers for us to pick up there and we went up the tower last nite and tonite we went to a tribute show that featured Elvis, Michael Jackson, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and some country guy whose name I forget. It was for the most part quite very good. Michelle and I had a debate as to why Britney's impersonator was so incredibly bad, and I think we agreed that britney herself is so incredibly bad that an impersonator would also have to do a lousy job. So if the idea of a tribute is to be as accurate as possible, then singing in a breathy voice with a host of backing tracks and appearing for the most part to be miming is about as accurate as you can get on that front.

Elvis naturally opened up with Viva Las Vegas and he was pretty good. He bragged that he won some award for most likely to be confused with a guy that's been dead for 30 years, but we were only concerned with his song and dance. Didn't do 'Suspicious Minds' which was a shame, but they generally only did 4 tunes a piece, so you can't have it all.

Christina was a great likeness... both in voice and appearance. Lady Marmalade a highlight for sure, and costume changes galore. Can't scoff at that!

Michael Jackson appears to have had a degree of surgery and really immersed himself in the part. His dance moves were dy-no-mite and yeah, he had it going on. I guess I liked Elvis and Christina the most, but Michelle's allegiance was pure MJ. Where's the Smooth Criminal bitch?

So we arrived in Vegas at about 2PM yesterday - that was November 12th. The key word for me here is excess. Everything is way way way over the top. The strip itself is not that long and though everything seems really close, it takes forever to walk anywhere. The hotels here are so obscenely big and just seem to go on and on... One of the most overwhelming being Caesar's Palace. This has Roman statues, waterfalls, and all sorts of crazy architectures. Amazing.














Michelle had a bit of a fall on one of the escalators. It wasn't moving and she tripped because I was too busy marching to the Emperor's theme... idiot that I am. Nice wound though... sure you'll agree.
The weird thing about Vegas too is that it's chock full of mundane and ordinary people. We get stared at all day, and people are hardly shy about it either. That's one thing I really liked about LA... no one seems to care what you look like. There are some really strange kinds of people and no one seems to be bothered by it. Not the case here. Weird that such a queer sort of place could draw such a mundane sort of crowd to it. The mind boggles.

We are staying at a hotel called Treasure Island. This place is truly awesome... both in size and in quality. Our room is amazing and we have a killer view of the strip. Honestly like nothing I've ever seen before. That's the other crazy thing about Vegas... it's so much bigger and overblown than you can imagine. And in the immortal words of Han Solo, "I can imagine quite a lot!"
We have a cabaret show on the cards for tomorrow nite, and some general touristy kinda stuff planned. Looking at more of the hotels and so forth. We went in search of the volcano at the Mirage, but we discovered it would be a 40 minute wait, and it turns out we can see it from our hotel room. So all's well that ends well. The Mirage is where Sigfried and Roy consort and there's a nice statue out front of them. Vegas keeps many a statue builder in gainful employment to be sure.

Oh, we saw authentic pink flamingos today. There's a hotel on the strip called Flamingo and yeah it has this sanctuary styled thing with real life flamingos. Awesome! It also had loads of koi fish. Like any given episode of Miami Ink he he he. That was a great one.
The sad thing about all the hotels here is the fact that they are pretty much devoted almost exclusively to slot machines and gambling. Like watching a bunch of drones droning around these sparkly machines hoping their tragic lives will somehow be improved by winning. Vegas, or Lost Wages as we heard it called is pretty well sustained by those drones, and when you see the lavish buildings and interiors it's disturbing to imagine how much money gets poured into these establishments. If you could see how busy this place is on a Monday/Tuesday nite, that in itself is an indicator of the immense draw this place has.

There's more to Vegas than gambling... like Yoda says, "...it's what you take in with you." We didn't come to gamble and are having a swell time... it may seem a little ironic that we find the gambling thing to be a little sad, but... We even hit the decks for a bit of poolside relaxation. Unexpected, but not unwelcomed.
So New York is coming up soon and we're both really looking forward to that. The fallout from LA is that I thought it was a 7/10 while Michelle rated it 3/10. I got an email from a friend of mine who summed it up perfectly... ha, he thought of it exactly what I did and as he is a bona fide American, I think his opinion is entirely the best one! Thanks Tyler!

OK, I'm off to watch this volcano erupt.


Jason