Vegas musings

Well I just returned from a quick 3 day trip from Las Vegas. It was my first time. I have tried to compile a list of dos and don'ts for any future travelers:

1) Don't bring a lot of money. Comps are the way to go. We were quickly informed by the casino host that if we spent 7 hours and over $682.31 at the slot machines, a buffet, replete with crab legs, would be ours. 100% free!!! It doesn't get much better than that, my friends.

2) Don't bring a girlfriend: there are, apparently, plenty of scantily clad woman, who advertise themselves via concise personals (I wish my cellphone was an 800 area code) on everything ranging from small leaflets, large fliers, graffiti, to mobile billboards, and they all would like to be your girlfriend.

3) Do bring your cigarettes. It's Vegas baby! You can smoke in casino bathrooms for God's sake!

4) Don't consider where your hotel is in relation to the other major casinos. Taxis go everywhere. And at $15 to go from the North end of the strip to the South, it's like they're paying you to cab it!

5) Don't worry about your English skills. Honestly, I spoke more Arabic and Swahili in my brief stint in Vegas than I had in the previous 9 months. Although, perhaps living in Texas has something to do with this fact...

No though, disregard this toungue-in-cheek list because I had a good time in Vegas. It was a little different than I thought it would be. I guess there is a seedy side to Vegas but we mostly spent our time in the more elegant places. Mandalay Bay is an especially beautiful resort/casino. And the wedding, the reason for my travel, was in an immaculate setting: Bali Hai. Really a serene setting for a wedding, and it was nice to have it outdoors. The weather overall was really nice: about 70 for highs everyday. I forgot what it's like to be in a desert environment though. Bring your lip balm! Chappiness ensues the moment you step off the plane.

Of course, having about $1,000 or more to spend on the tables would probably have dramatically changed my time in Vegas. That is, I would now be $1,000 poorer, but with so many stories to tell. All those ones that got away.

I did play a little poker, albeit for only about 30 or 45 minutes. $2 and $4 limit really gives people incentive to chase. So make sure you play accordingly, and not like me, which was very tight.

In other news, I have been rocking some new music of late, thanks to my new favorite website, la la. Well, the first is one I bought during my last trip to Best Buy: Ghostface Killah's fishscale. I have been pretty down on rap music lately. I have tried to buy stuff, and kind of liked it but just not really been addicted to it and ready to listen to it repeatedly. Somehow, Ghostface just pulled off the album that, at least for me, resurrected rap from it's goddamn grave. Intense, verbose, and immediate, fishscale really does live up to all the hype that surrounds it.



I also received a nice album by a band I had also heard hyped but whose album I hadn't yet purchased: The Mountain Goats. I was sent Tallahassee, an album released in 2002. I am really impressed with this band and their songwriting. Sort of folky, but without the subjects you might think of when you think of "folk." They have like 20 CDs out there and I hope to be sent another one of theirs soon. Delicate and introspective, yet really nicely crafted pop.

Another band I have really been liking lately is Low. I guess they have been around forever but I had just never listened to them. Then their latest album, The Great Destroyer, was on a lot of 2005 best-of lists and so I purchased it. It is good, and the album before it, Things We Lost in the Fire, is as good if not better (listen to "Sunflower" sometime). I guess some people describe Low's music as "slowcore," but it's really just beautiful songs sung with two phenomenally complementary voices. Anyway, I just was sent Low's first album, I Could Live in Hope, which is probably about as stripped down as anything I have heard. I've only listened once to the album, but I especially enjoyed the first few songs. It may be a little to stripped for me, but I guess repeated listens will be the judge.

Let's see...the only other thing that I finally got to listening to was Destroyer, Destroyer's Rubies. I listened to this one on the plane ride home. It's also a dense album, one the requires concentration to get out of it what was put in. Sitting in row 10, seat E, squished between two people on Continental #496, my mind was ready to escape to another place. Dan Bejar's literary landscapes were quite a treat. Songs sprawl, obscenities surprise, and the prose hypnotizes. Impressive indeed. Now if only I can listen to it enough to get to the point where it requires less than rapt attention...