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By now I figured my wife would be done shopping. She is not a power shopper, after all. Not one of those women who lives to shop. But apparently the number of footwear options at this place was when I raised her on the wireless I learned she was still at work, so I told her I'd meet her at the Starbucks on the ground floor. I bought a Wall Street Journal - the front page had a story about the reasons newspapers were having hard times - and headed towards Fashion Show.
Most of the people in the Starbucks were foreigners, except for a couple whose attire shrieked Northeast; she was tan-blasted with wet hair and an exposed midriff (belly-dangle? check!) and he was dressed entirely in white. The baseball cap, the warm-up suit, the shoes, all blindingly white, except for the gold trim. The warm-up suit had a gold zipper down the front and useless gold zippers at the cuff. He looked like human vanilla. He looked like a man from a future where people had lost the knowledge of such arcane, ancient devices as "belts" and "shoelaces." He looked like an idiot, to put it bluntly. Plus, dude, it's after Labor Day.
I started to read the article about how newspapers had met thier nemesis in the form of the internet, but then I remembered that I was getting a pretty good wireless signal in Vegas, and read the internet on my iPhone. I read wikipedia articles about all the casinos. Then I read the newspaper.
And that was Vegas. Well, not all of it, but you get the idea. Oh: I’d mentioned the bartender who took pity on us. The second night I decided to spend the winnings of the day before, and we settled down at the Oculus Bar in the middle of the clangorous casino. The machine didn’t have a straight five-card option, but presented us with an annoying array of games. I asked the bartender if they had a five-card machine, because this thing wanted me to play three hands at once, and I was baffled. He checked the other side of the bar, noted that the simpler machines were all occupied. I held out a twenty to pay for the drinks, and he waved it away. Something about us said ABSOLUTE NOVICES who would possibly lose all our money, and he wanted us to have a moment of generosity by which we could remember Vegas. I thanked him and tipped him and found a machine that suited my needs.
We lost all our winnings. It took a while. We had a grand time doing it.
Below: a streaming video of the glories of the Strip, set to Resphigi’s “Fountains of Rome.” Enjoy, and I’ll see you at buzz.mn – and back here Monday with a new site ready for 08.
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