I don’t know what it is about trade show season, and Vegas in particular that makes me want to get up on my soapbox and bitch (okay, I know) but sometimes I just can’t help myself. One of the problems with Vegas is that there are no “regular” sized soapboxes. Everything here is either really really big (who’s gotta ladder to get up on a soap box?) or really tiny. It’s a city in the desert (hot, dry, you know, you’ve seen pictures), with giant fountains, absurdly large swimming pools, a pirates bay and (best of all) little signs in your hotel room that let you know that you can help them be “green” by not asking them to wash your towels or sheets. You know, cuz it’s a waste of water. It is a place that it clearly in tune with sustainability.
To me, that’s such a perfect instance of the lost feeling of Vegas to me. It feels like a person who has lost their way. They’re not really sure what to do. They started down a road and that road just isn’t leading them where they thought they would go. In the beginning there was this great feeling (like being a rock star) everyone thought their path was so cool, they themselves thought it was cool, then one day the ugly truth started to rear its head. Shit changes, people change and keeping up an act is really fucking hard work.
What lost little Vegas can do much easier than a lost little person is the old, “out with old in with the new” gag. Dump the geezers who started the whole thing, tear down the monstrous irresponsible casinos that they lived in, and replace them with young dudes with new ideas of how to take your money, and brand new monstrous irresponsible casinos that live up to a much more “modern” idea of what something like that should be. Complete with little cards to remind you just how much they care about…well, everything.
They really do care. How could they not? It’s Vegas baby. It’s bricks, mortar and foundation is love.
Just like the old Lennon and McCartney tune, “love, love, love.”
Or conversely as my man Ad Rock said, “Well just plug me in like I was Eddie Harris/ You’re eating crazy cheese like you would think I’m from Paris/ You know I get fly, you think I get high/ You know that I’m gone and I’m-a tell you all why.”
If you’re here, see you in the booth.
And now some gratuitous pictures.
