Bright Light City Gonna Set My Soul On Fire

Man, so much stuff is going on all over... crazy! Alright, here's my "round the Larry-world in 80 seconds" attempt for Vegas.

1) Vegas was great. It was so much less and so much more tacky than I expected!

2) I actually only saw one Elvis impersonator. I know... sad.

3) I looked and looked, and I saw lots of signs and advertisements, but I never actually found the Holiday Inn made famous in Gram's Oooh Las Vegas.

4) Similarly, I bugged everyone I could about the phrase "Crystal City" in relation to Vegas from Gram's song. No one had any clue what I was talking about, and I got all those crazy stares I'm so used to. I really think he just made that up to summarize the lights and neon of the city.

5) I'm only $10 down. I was up $200 for a while playing slots, but then I realized that slots were no fun, so I started playing roulette. Roulette is way more fun, but I'm way less good at it, so I bottomed back to $0 for a while. (Well okay to be honest, I'm better at roulette than that... I spent a lot of my winnings on liquor!) Then I was up and down, up and down. I'd have been Even Steven except that I got bored at one point waiting for my friends and lost $10 on a slot machine. Damn slot machines.

6) Best gambling moment -- waiting in the Hard Rock Cafe to get into Nobu, which has great damn sushi by the way, I highly recommend it. While we were waiting for our reservation, I played a penny slot. I went from $10 almost straight to $0.11. And then on that last roll, I went to $60.11. Yep. Slot machines rock. ($60 of found money buys some damn fine sake, though!)

7) Best casino I visited -- from the outside: the Luxor. It looks like a freakin' space pyramid. It's a solid black glass pyramid, with "inclinators" up the side. At night it's got white lights that crawl up and down the edges and huge bright light up top that you can see for miles. It looked pretty damn cool from the airplane on the runway.

8) Best casino I visited -- from the inside: Caesar's Palace, baby! Ate a few meals there, all amazing, did a little gambling, looked at some damn pretty women. Hard Rock was the close second, way younger crowd.

9) Vegas in three words -- roulette, booze, and cleavage.

10) Go see a Cirque du Soleil show. I don't care which one. I saw Ka, the new one, and then Mystere, the first one built in Vegas. Damn. I don't care who you are, or what kind of music you like. If you don't enjoy a Cirque show I'd check that empty spot where you normally keep your immortal human soul -- you must've lost it.

11) I was offered, but hard as it was, I had to turn down purchasing a $250 ticket to go see Celine Dion. I know how difficult that must be for the HickoryWind.org readers. But there's only so much... perfection... I could take in a single weekend, I guess. (Seriously, I was offered, and I turned em down!)

12) Definitely check out the fountains at the Bellagio, like they did in Ocean's 11. It's truly beautiful, and the music was great while I was there... some opera-like show-tune that I'll be damned if I don't know but couldn't place. That's the kind of thing that drives me batshit!

13) Official Vegas playlist of 2005:
* Oooh Las Vegas by Gram Parsons. Forget that Cowboy Junkies version!
* Sin City by Beck and Emmylou Harris, written of course by Gram Parsons, et al. This is the best damn version of this song ever!
* Viva Las Vegas by the Goddamn King, baby! Amen!
* A Little Less Conversation again by his Highness, Elvis. Make sure you get the juiced up "JXL Radio Edit" version from his #1 hits album, although the similarly souped up version from the Ocean's 11 soundtrack would suffice in case of a Nuclear Armageddon. Give this version to all your electro-dance-freak buddies who "hate" Elvis and see what they say.
* Woke Up This Morning by A3. That's right -- the Soprano's theme. I was feeling my inner gangsta.
* Casino Queen by Wilco from their first album, A.M. Damn I love this song! ("And my wife that I just met, she's lookin like a wreck...") It's definitely one of my all-time favorite Wilco songs, and that's saying a LOT! ("And the dealer keeps on jokin' as he takes my last token...") Listen to that fiddle! Underdone, yes... but perfect... sits right underneath that raunchy electric guitar, yum!

13) I'm in desperate need for some Rat Pack stuff in my Vegas mix, but I'm woefully under-resourced in that department. Time for some shopping. I think I'll rent the original Ocean's 11 for some inspiration.

14) Fun fact: I had exactly two beers this weekend. I had a "beer" in that I was feeling dehyrdrated after the flight and so when the group of nine I was with splurged for a limo from the airport to the hotel Thursday night, I drank a mostly-water Bud Lite "beer-like substance." I also had a pale ale at the Monte Carlo Brew Pub Sunday night. Everything else I drank was either water or liquor. Wait, I had one glass of wine, and one pumpkin-spiced latte from Starbucks. (Decaf!) This is just fascinating isn't it? Glad I could share!

15) Don't think I could do Vegas twice a year like most of my friends do, but I definitely think it could be a once a year thing. I was fairly conservative on the gambling this being my first time and all, but next time... screw that!

Whew... that's plenty enough to bore you.