Viva Las Vegas: A city of contrast

We travelled from Zion national park and instantly the scenery changed from lush to brush desert. Then we arrived in Las Vegas. I broke 3 laws within half an hour of entering Las Vegas. I took a photo in a casino and Hannah took a picture of me playing on a slot machine, that’s illegal to the power of two! I also entered a liquor store, an offence in itself in America. Pah, the law remains ignorant thus far!

Here is an extract from a Flog I wrote at the time, it’s rather entertaining reading back…..though awfully opinionated I must say….must have been the Nevada heat (‘my blood’s always been too thick for Nevada’ H S Thompson) anyway, here it is:

This place gets my skin right up straight away. There is something instantly suspicious and uneasy about it. The facade is the most important than the substance, just like Hollywood, yet here there is a vicious edge of greed. Sucking in the weak and baffling all with its concrete composites of flashing shit. Water is sold illegally by immigrants out of suitcases on street corners. Alcohol and greed are taxed over the counter at agreed rates with the government. Shifty preachers stand on street corners, awkwardly refreshing our memories of the warnings and guidance the Bible provides (see Photoblog)

On approach Las Vegas did have an impressive Skyline. A space needle, a pyramid with sphinx, a statue of liberty entwines with a rollercoaster like some tacky theme park. They even provide free drawn maps of the city, much like any big Theme Park. You can see where a film like Westworld would draw inspiration. The Eiffel tower, not full size, ‘towers’ over a crowded St Mark’s Square. I saw both in real life last summer, but these are all half-hearted attempts to capture something of the quality. This is the second attempt to copy Venice I’ve seen in the US. But these are weird. Like a celebrity look-a-like at the local Tesco. At first glimpse the brain tells you it’s the real thing, but your rational brain says ‘no way’. These forms fail to do more than provide a hint of the original in the shape of shops and casinos. They guide you into the money and away from the exits.

At night, like some rare and sordid bird, Las Vegas changes and its colours are displayed in a sexual dance of temptation. Amazing and baffling at once is also the sheer scale which is hard to take in. For example, a huge volcano made of water and light is edged by flame throwers. Amazing to watch, for a few seconds, while it is still new. After that, cheap and seedy like a prostitute in a window in Amsterdam. I expect they’ll try and remake that City next….it would fit in.

Las Vegas is cool though, don't get me wrong, but its this whole snake in the flower thing that corporate America has with all its customers. All the casinos acting like you are needed and they want to entertain you, when all they need is one person to loose it and fund the next hour’s electricity bill. They are like some kind of hideous mutated Venus fly-trap. They create false and attractive scents for the fly-like punters who they then grip in an inescapable claw which squeezes their money out, powering the perpetuation of their cause. It is a chain reaction started by greed and maintained by a faceless, mindless self-perpetuator .



A perfect illustration of the place was the all-you-can-eat I went to. I never see these places as challenges, more of obligations to consume EVERYTHING I possibly can, without wasting it naturally. Now remember, I went to the best all you can eat in Tacoma ( a cause of the Log Blog….) and this place was a million miles off that standard. From the first bite it was clear that all the food was ash. The apples were crunchy water and the only decent food was the unfarmed fish.


My conclusion about Las Vegas is that it needs some kind of wave of destruction. It sounds harsh, but it hasn't been built to last. I really can’t see it thriving in 500 years’ time. For a start it is dependant on the Hoover Dam, which has a time limit on it for sure. Once that blows, it will be a ghost town, too pointless to replenish, left only with skeletal steel girders poking up and deep underground, ransacked vaults filled only with worthless paper and rotting sewage. That’s how I see it. This place has nothing new to offer except excess on a level trumped only perhaps by Dubai. Vegas can only imitate. It is America’s biggest Remake. Bigger than any of the crap Hollywood is repumping out. It is perhaps the embodiment of an endemic quality found among many of our generation.

Generation 2.0: Remake.
That's us.
We can do it better!

But how?


In Las Vegas it’s with Concrete and bribes.

The whole mentality of our generation…jealous of past success yet perhaps scared to try anything too culturally radical. As a result we just try to do the same again, feeding off unoriginal thought that wasn’t THAT great in the first place.


We can do it better! I’ll remix the songs of the past, plaster over progress in the name of progress yet blanket out character in favour of pre-fab concrete mixes.

Yet this all said…In many ways Vegas is very futuristic and offers a glimpse of a future no city could realistically justify. It has money to burn so can do what it likes. For example, you can only cross some roads by escalators. Everywhere looks like one of those computer generated promotional videos made by architects. Yet in contrast there are flyers advertising prostitutes everywhere on the floor, scattered after being thrust them by over-weight sweaty Mexicans. The people tell much about the city too. You see people of all shapes and sizes. Some like they have a spare tyre and others look like skeletons with boob jobs. At Caesar’s palace they placed Bacchus at the centre of their decorative piece with Orpheus at the edge entertaining and Venus distracting. I doubt many would be pretentious enough to read into the classical connotations, but I felt the figures were very apt.

Make up to die for?

I’ve been home for a while now, but before I could fly home I had to get through LAX security first-very lax. Travelling during the ‘orange’ level just made the security staff twitchy. And don't get me started on the Bush administration's threat level.

The following is an extract from a live ‘flog’ I did in the airport on my phone which I subsequently added to:

It’s orange today and was red yesterday. It’s like a weather forecast for imagined disaster.

They have army personnel lining up with gloves searching our bags. It's quite a sight. I originally thought they were going on our flight, rather excessive intimidation I thought.
I tried taking a photo of the process and got quite a few (see my Photoblog for the best…)
I was stopped by a man in a suit who informed me I couldn't take photos.

‘Why’ I asked politely, ‘just out of interest’ and all.

‘Because you are showing them how we do businesses’ He said.

‘Exactly’ I thought to myself but knew better than to argue with a man who was most likely from the CIA and held my proverbial ticket home in his hand. Though, I now was a witness to the business of intimidation through security.

‘Always remember who is benefiting’ said Hunter S Thompson once.

Business.

It’s like the old Dickensian question, who wins the court case…..it’s always the lawyers!

It is very similar in an environment of fear. Who benefits? Those selling and supplying private security and the governments quietly introducing ‘security taxes’ and stock markets and other baffling economic thingamajigs I’ll never understand.

The comment the guy made about showing how it’s done…like somehow ‘they’ wouldn't know how to search a bag.
It was a real ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality. Like it is a war….on terror.
Well, the only terrorising I have had is from the security forces and the media. I like to think Mi5 and CIA and all that are genuinely warning us about things and preventing etc….I’m sure they are….but a little part of me questions the Public Relations aspect of it all.

The flaw in the war on terror is difficult to articulate. How can it be a war on terror? Terror is an induced state of mind. Does this mean anyone who claims to be a terrorist is covered by the Geneva Convention as they have had war declared on them? Or is the war against our own fears, promising to stamp them out. It certainly is not this, for who can say they are relaxed on the tube even before the 7-7-05 attacks? This is a war like no other in our modern age, fought on ideals like WW2, but against an enemy which is largely a creation of our subconscious and existing in it too. It is the McCarthy witch-hunt of our age and yet somehow much more sinister. It is against people who not only make us question our lives and systems; they claim WE are the infidels. How dare they? We have plenty of morals, as long as they don’t disturb the economy TOO much. I believe the soldiers at the airport served an interesting Orwellian dual purpose. They served not only to perpetuate our terror (acting more as a visible flexing of power than anything practical) but also as our protectors. The enemy is largely imaginary. How do you have combat with an imaginary enemy?

You dress up people in combat gear in airports to and look for it in people’s bags, searching through lipsticks and makeup, where it might just be hiding.

I have been typing this into my phone for a while now. Three people in ‘Men in Black’ style suits are now talking to each other while looking at me. Hannah is staring them out while I write this in my phone.

They probably think I’m a spy now. I'm about to get probed, I can feel it coming.

It’s an interesting experience seeing this process. It is a real display.
I may get to feel it soon as well as see it….

My Opinion on Personal Freedom Vs Personal Safety


There is no way to stop people dying…on a long enough timescale the survival rate is zero someone once said. Bear this in mind.

There today seems to be a similar acceptance of terrorism. The idea it is an unpreventable inevitability, vaguely predicted by ministers with sniffs of intelligence which have been guffed down their phone lines.

There is no way to prevent terrorism.

From the perspectives of Governments, organised terrorism is in some ways easier to detect and use to frame people.
But what's happened to the individual Nutter we used to hear so much about, especially from the USA?
The guy that god told to do it (who didn’t have a turban or is not called Bush) or the people who had voices in their heads (same sort of thing really…)
It can't be long until one crazy person acts alone and unexpectedly.

We see it with guns, knives and even with doctors.

Be it a planned, gradual and slow slide into the areas of thought which justify the random killing of others or a blinding flash or irritation which causes a reflex of horrific violence.

So really there is no way to ever be water tight. How ever many civil liberties are stripped, sliced and trimmed. Yes, organised terrorism is a more persistent and efficient means of guiding people into thoughts which justify the killing of others but it is not random. It is just a group of like-minded people who feel, for whatever reason, that violence is their only means of effective resistance. Be it Guy Fawkes, Gerry Adams, Bush or Osama.

But on top of this there will always be the freaks.

I'm not saying the billions of pounds spent on surveillance are wasted, but people should just remember that they are the trawler nets of society, to fish out the obvious problems. However there is no such thing as a perfect system. Thank goodness.
Nothing should have an unchecked power.
Even those powers which can save lives.
Sometimes it is necessary to draw a line and say; well if I die I die.
Civil liberties are more important than life or death.
These are the things that make life worth living and what we are all fighting for in some way or other.
Be it from behind a desk in MI5 or a cave in Pakistan. We all try to guard what we have. The rights of Our lives are too precious not to protect.