Las Vegas - Wednesday March 22nd


You see Vegas long before you reach it; splinters of its trail scattered along the desert road from Arizona. Towns like Laughlin sit like shiny detritus strewn along the highway. Las Vegas itself sits in the desert like a crashed comet, radiating around the clock. Its hard not to stare at it when you crest the basin it lies in, it's hard not to think that there's something going on there that you want to be a part of.

We pull up outside the hotel after a long drive from Phoenix, everyone excited to be back. You know, you just know that something's going to happen in Vegas. It always does. Inside the casino it's no longer three-thirty in the morning, it's no time--casino time. There's still a few blackjack tables running and the Craps tables have dropped back down to their five dollar minimum from their ten-dollar minimum bet during the peak hours. I sleep for a while and then I go back down to the casino floor. There's so much going on there - it's not that I feel rested but I sure as hell don't feel tired anymore. There's a Starbucks and gift shops and you can eat at the Pink Taco, which is a mad name for somewhere, geddit? Pink taco - man, that's funny: the Pink Taco.

The floor is buzzing. Everyone's on, I mean ON, like the neon on the strip. I can't wait to get in amongst all of it. I throw my cash down onto the craps table and get $300 in chips back. I watch for a few throws to get used to the betting--the odds are crazy to figure out at first, but when you do it's the best. I start betting and the three years since I last played craps disappear. I love watching the dice tumble and bounce across the table, skip over the chips, collide with the felt and settle. A six, a nine, hard six, four and a seven and then we go again. A new shooter, a fresh chance. I'm a few dollars down but I don't care, I'll get it back. You know what it's like when you get a run on craps; everything changes so suddenly. You've got to come to this table thinking of the long game. Leave your blackjack for them that want a quick hit.

Everyone around the table is excited. The next shooter up is a woman. the only woman there. The guy bunched in next to me, he's fucking amazing man, he's been hollering at each shooter all night and giving out some crazy-wild vibes, anyway he shouts, "Give them to the babe with the boob tube," and everyone cheers. Under his breath he says--to our end of the table-- "C'mon, show us those titties, baby." She didn't hear and we all cackle and nudge each other because it's fucking funny. This is Vegas.

The boob tube rolls and craps out soon enough and she has this sour look on her face and we all kind of sigh because bitch if you can't be hot then at least look like you like it, y'know? The guy next to me, he's been cheering her all night, he mutters "Fuckin' A. If you ain't gonna' be cute then you coulda least made me some fucking money." I nod back at him. He's in a suit but he's got this wild tight-cropped hair and I think this must be one bad fucker. He's betting double the minimum.

Soon it's my throw. I love this. I've been trying not to bet too hard too early so that I've got enough cash left for my own throw. I pick two out of five dice. I know the whole table's watching me, so are the dealers, and I am damn sure that up in the sky there's someone in a control room checking me out.

Straight out I throw a seven. Everyone cheers and the pass line bettors get their cash back and I go again and then we're on. Somewhere along the line a waitress asks if i want drink and I order a cocktail and she's hot in her black tight shorts wth her tits sticking up in the tight leopardskin waistcoat. I think I should get her number because I am sure she was checking me out. Some other guy calls her baby and I make a point of remembering to tip her good so I get first crack at her but then I roll again and crap-out with a loaded table.

Later, I walk through the casino and check out the display cases, fingers tapping the room key in my pocket. The hotel has all this cool shit. They've got, like, Curt Cobain's guitar with all this hand-written shit on it. They've got Pete Townsend's guitar which is smashed up but it still looks rad. There's a guitar behind reception signed by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and there's all these drum kits set up everywhere. There's clothes too: Elton John's pink spotted suit, Kid Rock's shiny red suit and there's Christina Aguilera's leather chaps and tight little Stars and Stripes bra from the Dirty video (even though everyone knows Britney's got the rack - you can compare them because just next to it they've got that hot schoolgirl outfit Brittney wore in her video). They've even got a Paul McCartney guitar on the wall, which my brothers will be pyshced about - they like all that old shit like the Beatles.

On the way back to my room I see this lingerie store and I think it could be fun to hit on one of those watiresses and to pick up something from the store. I wake up in the morning with my pants unbuttoned and the TV blaring. From the feel of my sour tongue I'm sure I was wasted but it doesn't matter because I can go to the ATM again. I just don't give a rat's-ass about shit while I'm here. Not my job or my faggot boss, not my girlfriend, not fucking anything. I am going to rock and roll and I want to party and I'm going to get a fucking marguerita for breakfast and get back to the tables.



OR:

Las Vegas:

After a six hour drive through the desert we arrive to find our rooms aren't ready and the arrogant little muncher on reception speaks to me as though this were my fault and he's doing me a favour by not calling security. If it weren't for the cameras I would jump over the counter like I did that time in Paris all those years ago. But I'm older and wiser now and instead I wait impotently to get my rooms and swallow the bile. I content myself with wishing him a slow death in a truck-stop restroom. I go lie in the lounge of the bus and sleep fitfully for a few hours; waiting in increments of twenty minute periods for the rooms to become ready, feeling the sun heat up the lounge, last night's suit sticking to my back.

I'm the last to get inside at Noon. A nine hour delay. Not one fucking sorry from anyone. I get the feeling that I've just been given a demonstration between being a guest and being a mark.

After the show we go to gamble a little. I play craps and lose a little. I like the dealers at Craps Tables. I like how they're always trying to get you to increase your bets, max-out your odds. I know what they're doing but because I know, I think I am immune. I am not. I tip them every so often and they watch out for me--it was the first thing I learnt when I started playing craps. When the table is busy it helps to have someone watching out for you. Not that it stops you losing.

The waitress comes around and all these guys one after another call her honey and babe, it feels as though they're trying to sound bigger and more worldy than the poorly-dressed, crew-cutted ignorant jocks that they are. I wonder, not for the last time, how the waitresses here don't end up glassing the fuckers in the face for their condescension. Later a friend tells me he tried to be polite and he got the same vacant response the lairy jocks got. I guess waitresses last here by taking themselves out of the transaction. That, or you rust from the inside-out over time.

The only woman playing at our table throws and craps-out quickly. She looks pained to be there and I wonder if it's really that much fun for her; being at a table full of adolescent men all muttering about her breasts just the wrong side of audible. Luck wasn't a lady for me tonight, luck was a small round grandfather who looked like he taught classics or applied Math. This guy rolled for about fifteen minutes. I made back some of what I'd lost. No one is going to write a song about an elderly man being lucky. The pained woman in the tight black top got more attention and a lot less respect. Still, we all only function as extras to everyone else's Vegas fantasy when we're here. Any woman is available; every guy is the sucker you'll clean-out later on.

When a waitress walks past I check her shape out briefly--the uniform is tight and revealing and it works. For a moment I think dating a showgirl might be fun. I look up at the waitress's set face as she serves the drunks their cocktails, all I see is someone trying to pay their rent, not some hot minx who secretly wants slip back to my room with me for a private party. From the way everyone speaks to her I am certain I am in the minority.

In my room there's an advert for a store in the hotel called Love Jones. It sells lingerie. It's a business. The pictures were kind of hot from a distance but up close all the models looked dead like porn stars. I think they represent the sex in Vegas perfectly.

Walking back to my room after breakfast at 11:30AM the next morning I see a guy walking with a diagonal tilt because he's so drunk. He's trying to high-five all the old people he passes. He's about six-feet tall and dressed for the beach. The fucker should get out more. I mean, is that it? Is that the zenith of a trip to vegas? Staggering drunk through a casino trying to intimidate senior citizens to prove you don't give a fuck about The Man?

Peasant.

Vegas is too easy to ridicule. It serves a purpose, like the adult movies in business-class hotels do. It doesn't bear over-analysis.

In the Hard Rock Hotel they have glass cases displaying guitars and rock and roll memorabilia. There's a lot of crap that Elton John didn't want any more. There's a pair of trousers Sarah Mcglaughlin wore somewhere, a sock Gwen Stefani tried-on at The Gap one time. It's not memorabilia, it's detritus. There's the/a version of the schoolgirl outfit that Britney Spears wore in the "Oops! I Did It Again" video and Christine Aguilera's cowboy-whore costume from the soft-core Dirty video (Two of the first two images inside the casino are of borederline-underage girls being available for sex...).

There's a large display of Kurt Cobain's guitars and photos. It's anodyne, there's no rock and roll in any of it. There's a kind of fake martyred reverance attached to the display. A kind of corporate blessing over him - he's dead now and safe to stare at. The dead don't speak back. (But they can tell us about ourselves, although not here, there's too much static for reflection). This place is corporate rock n' roll for weekend Harley riders. Behind the reception desk there's a fender stratocaster signed by the Red Hot Chili Peppers - it's a mexican copy strat' worth about $150 and signed, no doubt, in a dressing room at the Joint because the management asked the band. If anyone out of the band touched it outside of signing it then my cock's a kipper. There's an acoustic guitar with a plaque saying Paul McCartney next to it. It's a right-handed guitar. There's a broken guitar from Pete Townsend to epitomise what Rock n Roll is really about (Pete hasn't smashed a guitar since the late 1960's that wasn't Pete himself in a pastiche of Pete himself...).

John Entwistle died upstairs here after taking Cocaine. He was found by the hooker/dancer/escort/special-friend he was with. I didn't see a plaque for him. It's not out of respect - Vegas doesn't do respect. It's because John Entwistle, dying a fifty year-old man in a such a desperate way, is too real, too rock and roll. And Vegas doesn't do real, Not while it's pimping it's children or picking the pockets of drunk conventioneers who think that for one fucking weekend they are living on the edge.

Sometimes Lord, I think you've left us alone for much too long.

When's that rain coming again?