City of (burnt-out) Lights

Kirsten and I went to Las Vegas last weekend, to celebrate my cousin's graduation from culinary school (He went to Le Cordon Bleu Las Vegas, a branch campus of what is apparently a very good culinary school). Anyway, wrapped around Steve's graduation were a couple of shows, some gambling, and some photo opportunities.

Or at least, there should have been.

In reality, it was a pretty miserable trip. At least, by comparison to what it should have/could have been.

When we landed in Vegas on Friday afternoon, the rain was pouring down. In buckets. Sheets. It had gone past cats and dogs to sheep and marmosets. And of course the luggage coming in wasn't covered, so our bags were pretty damp when we got onto the shuttle to travel to our hotel.

We stayed at the Riviera, which I think was a mistake. It was 80 dollars a night on the strip - and now I know why. Our room had a beautiful view of an elevator lobby across a gap...and it wasn't that nice of a lobby. Just below that were the HVAC pipes for, apparently, half of the building. Stacks and stacks of pipes. So we had a beautiful view of drunk people and infrastructure.

There was also a construction site across the way, but I won't complain about that, because it's progress. But damned if they didn't work all night - popping rivets, hammering, and apparently also forming a bad garage band, from the sound of things.

And it's not as if we were really able to catalogue this for your viewing displeasure - Kirsten's digital camera was damaged at some point in the trip. The viewscreen got crushed, which of course makes taking pictures harder, since it's nice to know what you're photographing. Kirsten was also crushed. She actually wept over it, since she of course wanted some photos from the trip. We wound up buying a disposable camera, and I made a try of using the digital (the lower lefthand corner of the viewscreen wasn't totally illegible). I'm not altogether whether the pictures would have come out better or not, but it was really a bummer.

But enough bitching. There were some good points to the trip. Enough that we weren't turned off to Vegas as a whole. Obviously seeing family was nice, and seeing Steve graduate was pretty cool (he's 26), since I think there was a legitimate worry among the family that he'd never make it beyond his high school diploma.

The shopping is pretty cool, even for guys. Dudes with women in their lives, I highly recommend Agent Provocateur. Kirsten also recommends it - apparently in addition to being ridiculously gloriously dirty stuff, she could barely tell she was wearing lingerie at all.

Guys without women in their lives, I highly recommend the newest Agent Provocateur catalogue, featuring Maggie Gyllenhaal. Rawr.

Anywho.

We did also see a couple of shows - first, we saw Ka by Cirque de Soleil (or as the guy in the seat next to me kept calling it, "Cirque So-lyle"), which was really good and probably worth the 200 bucks my mom spent on Kirsten's and my tickets (she bought herself and my grandmother tickets, too). I didn't think I'd like it because I usually connect CdS with things like dudes riding motorcycles in giant steel spheres, which of course gets old. But since it told a story and had swordfighting and electric guitars, it was all good.

We also saw Spamalot, the Monty Python musical. Awesome. Singing, dancing, Holy Grail, frenchmen, flying cows, blood-thirsty rabbits....nothing better. Best. Musical. Ever. Hands down.

I realize this is a ridiculously-long post, so I'll cut it off here. Part ][ will come soon - the casino reviews!