the last time i was in las vegas

I have been waxing existential as I contemplate the last time I was in Las Vegas.

It was October 2010, and for the first time I was visiting the pleasure paradise in the middle of the Nevada desert without my family, but with four single, of-age sheilas.

May I say it was a much different experience.

The second night, after avoiding going to see the male revue "The Thunder from Down Under," I strolled solo up and down the infamous strip. (An aside on my thoughts about "The Thunder from Down Under": The girls really worked hard persuading me to attend by assuring the the men kept their underwear on and that they guys liked being looked at just as much as the ladies loved ogling them. They convinced me to buy a ticket, but even with the ticket in hand I was scheming about how to get out of going, which I did by offering to watch-over a hung over companion who had to bail out of the taxi on the way to the show because she was sure she was going to hurl (which she did, but we did make it to a nearby bathroom before the chunks flew). And sure, I probably would have found the muscle-bound Australian hunks delightful to stare at, but I just feel that objectifying men is just as bad as objectifying women, and therefore, found it the height of hypocrisy. So, I got the sicky a taxi back to our hotel, but I chose to stay out under the brigh neon lights of the city.)

But back to this walk I was taking down the strip. I was staring at the high-rise hotels and the imitations of nearly every major destination in Italy (The Venetian--Venice, Ceasar's Palace--Imperial Rome, The Palazzo--just your general Italian theme, The Belaggio-high-class Lombardian society (although they do have a great little Siena-themed cafe) and having been to these places I was massively unimpressed.), and just found the Las Vegas Strip the epitome of inauthenticity. Because going to the New York, New York Hotel/Casino is nothing like the real city (bagels aren't as good, people aren't as crazy), and I will not go belabor the fact that although the fake San Marco's Square is a stunning work of forgery, it lacks the aura of the real place (oh, Walter Benjamin, why do you haunt my life?!). I also will not rant excessively how Caesar's Palace is more of a tribute to Bernini's Baroque Rome than Caesar's Imperial city.

But I will say, I really wanted out of there. I wanted to be real. I started doubting every person I met, especially the man who claimed to be a millionaire from Dubai (I actually didn't speak with this fellow, but some of the other gals were telling me about him). It was a horrible state to be in. I find a Vegas with the slogan "Just be yourself, and have a good time," more appealing than the current Vegas "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."

Perhaps, the highlight of this solitary walk (which really wasn't solitary I was part of a steady stream of tourists from all over sauntering along the sidewalks) was seeing a middle-aged Hispanic man with a cowboy hat standing near an outdoor escalator playing his accordion. I gave him all of the change in my pocket because he felt like the most real thing on all of Las Vegas Boulevard.