Vegas: A Retrospection

VIP bottle service: $3000

Tips to the bouncer and waitress: $400

Pretending you're a highroller, if only for 1 night: priceless

Flying into Las Vegas is a strange experience. From the air, the Nevadan desert looks almost Martian, a desolate array of craggy peaks jutting out of scorched red rock. Surely nothing can live out here. This God-forsaken hell is just a fly-over on the way to Cali. Then you look out the tiny plane window and far below you see what must be a lake. Water? But if there’s water… Looking across the aisle and out the other side of the plane you see what resembles a series of motor homes, at least from 30,000 feet up. But didn’t the pilot tell us to prepare for landing? Where am I flying to…You look back out the window, and then you see it. Vegas. Rising up out of nowhere, Las Vegas is a literal oasis in the desert. It’s no mistake there’s a hotel called the Mirage, because if the pilot didn’t know any better, and I flew Allegiant Air so who knows, they easily get confused and fly right on by. I must have drank too much today. And who would blame them? It’s Vegas, baby!

As Sarah Palin would say, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig, or something like that. (I try my best to ignore her). After the millionth slot machine promising a million dollar jackpot, at some point the glitz and in your face glamour begin to feel like some sort of alternate reality. And that’s when it’s time to pack up your things and fly home to your quiet cul-de-sac where you don’t stay out to 5 in the morning drinking $600 bottles of vodka or wake up at 10 the next morning to do it all again. (Not saying we did all that…) Because when Vegas rears back and opens wide, and you can either go all-in or call it a weekend and escape with the dignity and checking account still intact, you gotta what you gotta do. It’s an ugly monster, that Vegas. But boy is it fun.