suffering severe culture shock

I’m back – and I had a wonderful time! How funny is that?? Las Vegas is, without a doubt, the most bizarre place on the planet. I’m not too sure what I was expecting, but I loved it. I was throughly enchanted by the surrealness of it. It was, seriously, like living in a gigantic theme park for four days. Nothing is real!!! Everything is shiny and glittery and glitzy and lit up and fake and SO TACKY that it is just mindboggling! There is a miniature version of New York, there’s an Eiffel Tower, there’s Venice complete with singing gondoliers and an indoor canal, with a painted sky that’s just realistic enough to kind of freak you out, there’s ancient Rome that also has the painted-on sky which gets darker and lighter, and at one point a huge full moon came out. A Klingon got on the monorail I was riding, just stood there by the door for several stops, and then got off. There are indoor cities full of shops. There is a volcano that erupts several times nightly, a very impressive waterfountain and lights show, and in a lagoon outside our hotel a band of pirates fought strippers…umm, sirens….nightly as well. And of course every hotel complex has flashing, whirring, clanging slot machines stretching to the horizon. It was VERY sensory-overload-inducing.

Okay, sharing a room was no fun, but it could have been way worse. (As I reminded myself several times, instead of having my own great big bed in a nice hotel, I could have been, say, living in the Astrodome with 10,000 other people, so quit being a whiney baby.) My roomie wasn’t quite as clingy as I feared, and I managed to escape everyone several times – once for the entire day – and wander around alone. So that saved my sanity, enabling me to hang around my traveling companions without coming unhinged. Slightly-Less-Clingy-Than-Expected-Woman and I did hang out a couple of nights together, because two of our party were gambling fiends and the third kept having early nights. I don’t think she was quite as taken with the glitz and weirdness as I was.

Not-Too-Clingy Roomie and I also went downtown one night, which was also bizarre in a completely different way – apparently this area had gotten very seedy at one point, and they kind of renovated it, but it’s full of street people and sidewalk artists and isn’t so new and fancy but is perhaps even MORE lit-up than the Strip is. My monorail guide refers to it as “Vintage Vegas”. It still has the slot machines that pour money out all over the place when you win – the hotels on the Strip give you tickets, which just doesn’t seem like it would be nearly as gratifying. There was even this really strange light show sort of thing set to music that was projected onto an overhead canvas that appeared to run the entire length of the block. And scads of tacky souvenir shops.

I did have one awful thing happen, though – my camera broke!!!! My PENTAX BROKE!!! It was horrible… I was going down the stairs at one of the monorail stations (on my Alone Day I bought a pass and rode it around because the Strip is WAY longer than it looks like it is – I STILL walked 9 miles each of the first two days and FOURTEEN the last one) and I heard something fall on the steps. I looked down, and there was the little rewinding…ummm, thing bouncing down the steps. I don’t know what that thing is called, it’s the round metal piece that has the lever you use to rewind the film. But it had come off, and there it went, bouncing down the stairs. Naturally, I didn’t shout out, “THAT’S MY CAMERA…THING!!!” because I’m just not one to scream out on the monorail stairs, and I seriously thought I’d be able to catch up with it. Never for a second did I dream that some idiot way way down at the bottom of the stairs would pick it up, glance at it, and THROW IT IN THE TRASH. Without missing a beat. I mean, my GOD. When he picked it up I was still trying to rush past everyone on the stairs, and I just figured he’d glance the fuck around and I could catch his attention. But NO, right into the bin it goes. I even thought, “oh, SURELY he just sat it on the EDGE of the canister!!!” But no. He threw away my camera thing.

And then I thought, well, I’m sure I can just turn the little thing by hand – a metal thing was sticking out where the little round piece with the lever screwed on. So I turned it and turned it and turned it and cut my hand and bled all over the place and turned it some more and finally just had to open the back of the camera to see if it had rewound all the film because I couldn’t tell at all what was going on – and of course it had not, and I ruined the entire roll, and then the pointy bit and all the stuff attached to it just sort of fell inside the camera.

I was so completely devastated that I’m starting to question my emotional attachment to my camera – it was kind of like having my ARM cut off. Thank GOD I had the Lomo, and I’m pleased to say that it actually did very well. I ended up using 400 speed film it it – usually you use 100 in them – and I’m REALLY happy with how those came out. It may be fate, 100 speed is very hard to find. It also may be fate since we’ve been talking digital cameras for awhile now…. maybe it’s time. That was horribly traumatic, though. I have no idea what it will cost to fix it – there’s not even a repair shop here, the closest one is apparently in Asheville.

Well, I’m suffering from lack of sleep, I think – and the Day From Hell today, as I tried in vain to catch up – so I’ll leave you with a few camera photos and a promise to catch up with reading and noting this weekend. Yes, I even took camera photos – I already have my ten zillion Lomos developed but haven’t scanned any yet. So:

Paris!

Caesar’s Palace! A very very VERY tiny sample of Caesar’s Palace, believe me.

I think this was in the Ballagio, a hotel beside Caesar’s Palace and perhaps even fancier. Less weird, at least, and more highbrow.

Lions! I can’t even remember where they were now. We also saw Siegfred and Roy’s tigers, all cooped up in a cage.