When I bite into your York Peppermint Patty, I get the sensation that I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO PAY $15/DAY FOR WI-FI!
Heading off on a semi-annual sojourn to Las Vegas at week's end, I'm excited at the prospect of two things:
- Staying at a far higher class of establishment than I normally frequent, thanks to the recession and four comped nights at The Palazzo.
- Trying to experiment in "trip report" podcasting during the days I'm there via my iPod Touch, the Voice Memo App, and any wi-fi connections I can find. LOVE that Posterous is going to make this process so simple!
In my 5th post to the lovehatethings blog over a year ago, I pondered the incredible waste that goes on in Las Vegas in an attempt to sound unsure about whether or not I could justify the gluttony... it was, mostly, tongue-in-cheek even though the over-the-top nature of the town is legendary.
In that post I opined:
They've got a lightbulb that planes can see from Los Angeles. They've killed thousands of trees a year to produce laminated cards that seedy characters whack on their leg, advertising silicon-laden escorts that'll do the macarena or the Dirty Sanchez. They've totally thrown scale to the wind by creating hotel/casinos that are measured in square miles and when the MGM Grand's 5000 rooms seemed insurmountable, the Venetian built a second tower (The Palazzo) to bring its total to a mere 7000!You can lose your 20, 50, or 100 dollar bill in the time it takes to steal a glance at the scantilly-clad cocktail waitress that is bringing your free mojito as the blackjack dealer draws a 5 on her 16 after you've doubled down your 11 and pulled a 9. You inhale the second hand smoke from an entire carton of Kools while walking 10 feet through the Gold Spike's penny slot aisles. You can play golf at an 18 hole course ON THE FREAKIN' STRIP while over the property wall homeless Las Vegans beg for change.
So as I prepare to return back to Vegas for another summer excursion, I thought I'd do something different. If everything goes as planned you'll be able to follow my special "lovehatevegas" podcasts on at least a daily basis. Hope you like them. I'm guessing there may some short blog posts as well, or at least as long as the mini Touch keyboard will allow.
If you love Vegas, like I do, hopefully you'll find something in the updates that resonates and allows you to have some good memories. If you've never been to Sin City, maybe you'll find something in the podcasts or blog entries that spurs a desire to go. I don't mind being considered a shill for Vegas. Even if you're not a gambler, You've got to go there at least once.
Thanks to everyone who follows lovehatethings. Keep your eyes and ears open starting Sunday!
On my disbelief at the MJ Memorial Lottery and the irreverent wonder at hotel breakfast bar enthusiasts.
We often turn to each other and snicker upon hearing of the entreprenurial opportunist who sees Jesus in a Ruffle and sells it on eBay. We often split our sides at claims of Christ on a cracker, the Virgin Mary Rice Krispie square, or the incidental rendering DaVinci's Last Supper on a mold formation in month old cottage cheese. The sad truth is, it's quite obvious the person selling the product is not a "true believer". If so, how could these latter-day Merchants at the Temple bring themselves to sell what could very well be akin to the Ark of the Convenant?
Even those that consider themselves religious refuse to get caught up in the divine delectables, the holy hors d'oeuvres, the beatific breakfast sausages that draw so much closing story fodder on nightly newscasts while every "Dan Anchorman" wannabe echoes a couple of light chuckles as they go to the wide shot of the Action 5 News Team enjoying the joke. But someone's not laughing, because, on eBay, people are actually bidding on this stuff.
You may think yourselves above such digestible miracles, but even in your Doubting Thomas ways you may be an active participant in a cult-like subset of the Church of Food.
Are you padding down from every hotel/motel room you've ever stayed in, before you've checked out, showered, or sometimes even dressed, to share in the bounty that is the complimentary hotel breakfast? At what cost in time and effort are you willing to buy-in to the word "FREE" while skittishly glancing around the sunroom to observe those shoving individually-wrapped muffins, sickly bananas, orange juice concentrate, and dishwater coffee down their sullied maws.
People will sacrifice hours of needed sleep and waste up to an hour meandering amidst the soma-like trance fields that are the hotel breakfast nooks. They'll bitterly complain later in the day that their road trip driving sessions are going too late into the night, forgetting the cultural Mecca they participated in that same morning at tiny round bistro tables made cozy by the warm glow and hum of microwave ovens.
But nowhere is this devotion to ritual so evident than people who will line up for hours waiting their turn for the malted Belgian waffle iron to be free. These are people who would never go out and just buy a freakin' Eggo once in a while, but instead shamble wearily in the queue, like breadline comrades in Iron Curtain Warsaw. They mutter obscenities under their breaths at the mother who spends double the necessary time explaining the process to her four year-old while trying to soothe the crying jags at not being able to fill a bowl with a generic Froot Loop substitute and throw them around the room. They secretly wish death upon the doddering senior who has to peer intently to decipher the instructions before calling over a companion to ask them what to do next. They seethe with rage at the person who isn't immediately present at the waffle iron upon the completion of their batter press session - to tired to yell, too polite to open it and steal it, to exasperated at the 38 minutes they've been standing in line while their partner has the kids packed up and is honking the horn outside the window, they grimace and direct elaborate sneers of disdain worthy of someone who molested a child.
This is what we've become. We want our ten cent portion of waffle mix SO BAD that we are willing to waste far more valuable time to attain it. We'll gladly spend $20 extra for a hotel room that doles out $5 worth of high fructose gluten in the morning. We're willing to shave hours off of well-needed sleep to rush down to mingle with the Morlocks so that one day we will be able to tell all our friends how worthwhile an experience our travel breakfasts were. Not that far from the devotion of the eBay divine potato chip purchaser, where they've traded money for a chance at getting closer to their creator, you've traded time to stuff your craw.
In the end, they'll have a chip that looks like Jesus... or more likely the Shmoo, while you'll have a twelve hour window to get to the next motel so that you can befoul the bathroom with what passes as pungent remnants of a "healthy" breakfast, grab a five hour sleep, and be ready to be down in the foyer for 9am the next morning, or at least before the last stale croissant is put away.
In the name of the Fritter, the Bun, and the Whole Wheat Toast, as it was in the beginning, finishes by 9:30am, checkout at noon. Alpen.
P.S. Across Canada on Canada Day, all Mandarin Chinese Buffets served free meals. Nice gesture. Kudos to the owners. And the cult descended:
"The restaurant's first customers for its Canada Day (Wednesday) buffet lined up at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday night, say staff who saw them then and let them in the next morning. Yesterday afternoon, a line of several hundred people wound around the plaza. Many of the 1,600 people who ate there yesterday waited for several hours."
Some people waited overnight, over 12 hours, in a concrete parking lot for a buffet that costs $16.99 - largely middle-class people, forgoing the better part of a day for a free meal.
Pretty self-explanatory. If you want to know everything the budget traveller could ever need, cheapovegas.com is an awesome site. Breaks down hotel/casinos by cheapest eats, sleep, gaming, attractions and other deals. It also has a pretty nice selection of maps that are directly linked back to the properties themselves.
Although many of the changes in Las Vegas have slowed down due to the economy, there is still constant building down the strip. This site will allow you to view pics of the on-going status of all of the new mega-resorts going up (or blowing up) around the city. There is a fantastic color-coded map that's broken down by the umbrella resort companies. Again the map is all linked up and even shows all the proposed ideas for which proposals have been submitted. You can really see how Vegas will look in 10 years.
When you want updated reviews of new and existing properties vegastripping.com is the place to go. Although the layout is busy, the category breakdown and tools (including RSS feeds for deals) give quick access to a ton of information. Even includes a section on how to play some of the most common games.
For a bunch of quick-to-read updates on almost all of Vegas' hotels, restaurants, and shows, ratevegas.com has reviews going back to at least 2000. For most of the major properties there are several current reviews. They even boast an iPhone app that you can use to submit reviews while travelling up and down the strip... as though there wasn't anything better to do while in Vegas.
For all of you Social Media types, fivehundybymidnight.com has now done over 200 weekly podcasts all about the changes going on in Vegas and takes great pleasure in ripping the websites of some of the big resorts. They also drop some knowledge on recent entertainment announcements of shows and other news concerning construction and everything else going on. A great on-going resource to listen to if, like me, you love the city and want to keep up on the changes through earbuds instead of tedious reading.