Vegas, Baby!

Las Vegas is the glimmering city of skyscraper hotels, buffet lines, cash advance loans, wedding chapels, and 12 clean OnTrac boxes. Thanks to an awesome opportunity afforded us by West Coast Drop Boxes, LLC, who we have been in partnership with for over a year now, we got to visit one of my favorite destinations. Thanks to amazing friends Keith, Mary Jo, Josh, and Jessica Jeffery, we got to do it without the kiddos.

Where do I even start? How about where every person in Vegas starts their day...at the buffet line. There is no other place that qualifies as a melting pot quite like the buffet. At the breakfast buffet I celebrated, I saw a mix of every creed and color taking in the festival of fat and cholesterol. 90 year old women smoking through their tracheotomy, children in awe of the ceiling-high pile of pastries, Joe the Plumber, Joel the Pastor, Snowflake the Pole Dancer, and Guido the Loan Shark all excitedly gathered around the large "chef" slicing huge slabs of roast beef and ham at 8:00 in the morning. I learned a lot from this experience. First, I learned that buffet veterans have a strategy. They whisper to each other in line, use high technology to scout the food layout for the day, and look at the rookies like me in front of them to strategize how they're going to leave me settling for the mystery foods that look questionable and taste even worse. But for $4.56 (after my 15% discount and a swipe of my players' card), I was left satisfied, smiling, and diabetic.

The casino is one of my favorite places. First, I enjoy sitting down over a good game of blackjack. I will occasionally take home a few bucks (this was not one of those occasions), but always get to meet new people and taste the sweet nectar of watered-down Diet Coke while contracting lung cancer from second-hand smoke in the 2 or 3 hours I play. There's no better place to people-watch, though. You have the excitement of the craps table, where 250 people cram around a table screaming at a pair of dice and throwing chips all over the place. Even after a good hour of playing faux craps at the Hoeft's house last month, I still have no clue how to play that game. There's the Keno area where mellow old people smoke their pipes, drink their coffee, and stare at a TV screen. Then there are the slot machines, where the sound of faux coins excites the senses and tells you that someone's gonna break the bank any moment when, in fact, the sound is that of some very large woman winning $2.13 on the penny slots. Woo-hoo!

The strip is amazing. I could do without the flyer-slapping pervs who stick pictures of naked women in your face. I could also do without the moving billboards with pictures of nearly naked women riding next to you on the street. Finally, I could do without the large, multi-colored billboards telling me that naked women are inside their buildings. I think I understand. But the lights, the hotels, the sounds, are all very cool...especially the fountains at Bellagio.

For all the talk of economic turmoil and suffering, Vegas doesn't appear to be hurting. New and higher hotels are going up, with construction happening into the night. I didn't see any "going out of business" sales at the Mirage or Mandalay Bay, and I didn't see any "Gentleman's Club" (a strange term for a place where men act like anything but) boarding up their windows. Oh yeah, they're already boarded. Anyways, the point is that even in economic struggle, a city built on vice will probably be the last to suffer because our vices often come first. And when our vices get in the way of taking care of our responsibilities, we can hit the cash advance store and go back into the casino to chase what we've lost.

As for me, I still think Vegas is a fun place. It ranks a solid third behind Kansas City and Antelope Acres on the cool places for me...although I think glitzy A.Acres is going to take a step back now. Vegas, baby!!!