The First in a Series of Digressions: Day 1 of a Vegas business trip

Las Vegas is probably not the most fucked up place in the world. I mean, there's Pyonyang; that's got to suck big time. And then there's Myanmar, Somalia, the Gaza Strip, Iraq--indeed, the world is full of fucked up places, all much, much more unpleasant than Las Vegas. But Las Vegas may be the only place that is so intentionally fucked up, and all purportedly in the service of making a visit here more enjoyable. I am dumbfounded by this place.

I'll give it this much--there's nowhere else on earth like it, leastwise not that I've ever visited. Everything is big and bright and loud; the word "garish" was probably coined here. It's as if someone dropped a beach resort in the middle of the desert, then fed it a steady diet of architectural steroids to turn it into the Jose Canseco of cities. The trip to my hotel took me past many gaudy casino hotels, including the Venetian and Palazzio, both Frankenstein monsters of Italian architectural styles, and Caesar's Palace, which evokes the Roman Forum (a Hard Rock Cafe nearby is styled after the Roman Coliseum, clearly an homage to Caesar's). The folks who built this city had a thing about Italy, apparently. In comparison, my hotel--Treasure Island--is an exemplar of design restraint. It merely looks like a miniature golf course.

I detect a certain gambling theme throughout this city. A bank of slot machines greets you as soon as you deplane. No need to wait until you've collected your luggage to start losing money, right? This arrangement also offers departing vacationers that one last chance to win back everything they lost on vacation, or to give back what they've won. From the second you arrive until the second you leave, the opportunity to gamble is never more than a few hundred yards away. As I hit the button in the hotel elevator to get to my 14th floor room, I can't help shouting "C'mon, lucky 14!" My fellow passengers are not amused. I suspect they're Vegas regulars and that they've heard some variant of this lame joke many times before.

The hotel is another disappointing revelation. Someone once told me that everything in Vegas is cheap because the idea is to lure you out here with low prices so that you will spend all your money in the casinos. Imagine my surprise, then, when I was told that Internet access in my room would cost me $15. "A day?" I ask incredulously. "Well, we don't call it a day, because it's for 24 hours," the check-in lady replies, and I fear that my head will explode; I have apparently lived my entire life misinformed about the length of a day. I ask if there's a workout room. "Yes," she replies unenthusiastically, and I know what's coming next. "You have to pay to use it." I later find out that it costs $20. A day.

I take a walk though the lobby and see that Wayne Brady is performing tonight, but he likely won't choke a bitch during the show, so I'm not going. Elsewhere on the strip there's Blue Man Group, Cirque du Soleil, Barry Manilow, some acrobats performing to Beatles music, Rita Rudner, Bette Midler, Donny and Marie, and George Wallace, whom a large sign proclaims "The next Mr. Las Vegas." The picture of Wallace is so evocative--in pose, in clothing, in facial expression--of Bernie Mac that I suspect Bernie Mac must have been the previous "Mr. Las Vegas," and they're hoping most vacationers won't know the difference. "Yeah, and we saw that funny black fella, he was good! Not as good as the blue guys who spit paint, though!" Man, when Rita Rudner is your best entertainment option, things are rough. Where the hell is Rickles?

Strip eateries are dominated by celebrity chefs. Mario Batali is EVERYWHERE, as is Wolfgang Puck, and others are nearly as ubiquitous. I eat lunch in a section of the Venetian done up to look like a piazza, complete with a fake sky that, due to jet lag, I confuse for real. "Are we outside?" I ask hazily, and upon being informed that we are not I realize that I really, really need a glass of wine. The restaurant is a virtual copy of Batali's Otto in Greenwich Village, except that everything on the menu is approximately 30 percent more expensive. "Sweet mother of God," I realize, "I've finally found a place more expensive than Manhattan." A glass of aglianico, thankfully, takes the edge off. At least until the opera singers, jugglers, and harlequins arrive in the "piazza" to give a joyless, completely over-the-top performance. I hear they do this every hour, all day long. I shit you not. Now I know why everything's more expensive here than in Manhattan. It's because it's "better."

I am ready to write this city off entirely when, as luck would have it, I win $100 in a slot machine, and my attitude improves considerably. A few more wins like that and I'll be able to cover my Internet bill for my stay!