At least, so far it has. I appear to have picked up a cold in Las Vegas--I blame Kyle, who was getting it on Sunday--and it has turned my sinuses and my throat into battlegrounds.
So, for me, it's work and sleep and not much else for a few days.
Over at the Bellagio, the Christmas decorations weren't up yet, but the lobby had added this statue to its amazing collection of Chihuly glass.
Regardless of how much sleep I can get--and last night it wasn't much--there's something about morning flights that makes them awful. I don't sleep well before them, I never feel right prepping for them, and then it's morning and I'm on a plane.
Enough whining. Aside from that general issue, today's flights were as perfect as they could have been: comfortable (in first class), early, and with (not good but) tolerable bandwidth.
Best of all, I'm now home.
I'd write more, but it's late, and I'm tired. Today's features included...
A simple but tasty lunch from the Bouchon Bakery in the Venetian. Their ham-and-cheese baguette is delicious.
A fair amount of walking, as usual, including time in the Bellagio. Alas, the Christmas scene is still under construction.
More work than I should have done.
The WOW (World of Wonder) show at the Rio. I should probably write a review of this one, but for now suffice to say that I enjoyed it, but it's nowhere near Cirque's level.
A lovely dinner at Craftsteak, which is as reliably good as always.
Now, to rest!
I'm now in Las Vegas.
First-class flights were wonderful.
Walked about 4.5 miles today, a surprising amount in airports.
Shake Shack remains the best chain burger.
The people watching here remains amazing.
Blue Man Group makes you happy and leaves you smiling, even as you wonder why.
Loud drums are wonderful.
Wake-up comes in the sixes, which is a horrid time for me, so I'm keeping this short. When I next write, it will be from Las Vegas.
In the meantime, enjoy this song, which has been on my mind since I watched the first episode of the second season of the completely insane and wonderful Preacher TV show.
What's not to like in this tune?
The 59 people who died from a crazy man's gunfire in Las Vegas, the days of their lives broken forever, never to be repaired.
The over 500 people injured by that crazy man's gunfire in Las Vegas, their skin broken, their bodies broken, with luck most to recover there, but how much this breaks their spirits and hearts we cannot yet know.
The thousands of people in the concert, scrambling for their lives, their lives also at least a little broken, at least then, maybe forever.
Our country's heart, broken again by senseless acts of gunfire-fueled violence.
A gunman who must have been so badly broken once, if not many times, to wreak so much damage on so many. I cannot sympathize with him, he does not deserve that, but he must have been such a mess to do this.
Less than a year and a half ago, the horror, the breakage, was in Orlando. Naming more examples feels pointless, in part because we in America have so many.
Our national psyche, increasingly broken by these acts of violence and by the divisiveness that is more and more our most outstanding trait. We are so broken that we learn of these tragedies and shake our heads in sorrow and shed our tears and then brace for the next one, knowing another will come all too soon.
I don't have any answers, though I wish I did, but I do know that we need to make figuring out how to stop this violence a priority. We cannot allow ourselves, each other, our country to stay so broken.
My colleagues and I dined tonight at Thomas Keller's lovely Bouchon in the Venetian. The bread and butter are so good that I could almost live on them, but instead I opted to add the steak frites, a dish in which the steak is good but the frites are better. I made them better still by asking to have truffles on them--a standard offering of the restaurant.
Wow, was it good.
I was walking this morning from my hotel to the convention center, moving along well, minding my own business, and enjoying the people watching. At a bus stop ahead of me, a woman was dancing. She was about four foot nine, maybe two hundred pounds, and wearing skintight bright white tights and stretch top. The white fabric extended to her wrists and her ankles. On her feet were white shoes, and she wore short white socks. Her hair was bleached white, and it poked out from under a pure white ball cap. As I drew closer, I saw that she was in her late sixties or early seventies, and though she was dancing, she wore no headphones or ear buds; the music she heard came from inside.
She flirted with each man who passed by, and she offered each a chance to dance.
I went wide and opted not to accept the invitation.
Part of me wanted to know her story; part of me still does. Part of me, though, feared that even hearing it might draw me into a rabbit hole I have neither the time nor the inclination to visit.
As I walked away, I glanced back over my shoulder, and though she was then all alone, still she danced.
Neither less than four hours of sleep nor a snowstorm at O'Hare kept Kyle and me from making it home, so I'm happy to be back--and exhausted.
I'm going to do the minimum I must and then crash. Sleep sounds so very good right now.
I had intended to write about the day, but when I realized I'd have only four hours in bed before I had to get up to head to the airport, I abandoned the blog and crashed.
Perhaps I will catch up Sunday, or perhaps I will fall asleep again. Such are the mysteries of my life lately.
For a long time, I wouldn't even consider going to this show. As much as I've loved all the Cirque performances I've attended, and despite the fact that I liked a great deal of Jackson's music, I was so disturbed by the child molestation charges against Jackson that I avoided everything to do with him. Finally, I decided on this trip to give it a try.
I am very glad I did. The show is a magical piece, a loud, booming, tech-heavy tribute to Jackson's music that manages to end on an uplifting message.
In the usual Cirque style, it mixes music and various acrobatic performances. It's by far the most tech-intensive of the shows, and at times it risks losing its hold on you when you realize that you're just watching a very big music video--but then the live action resumes, and all is well.
The show's title refers to the ending message, something we need more than ever in Trump's America: that regardless of color or any other differences, we are all one.
To my surprise, I strongly recommend the show and look forward to seeing it again.
By the way, for those wanting more about our Vegas trip, between walking a great deal each day and keeping up with work, I'm having to write short entries so I can get enough sleep. I'll try to provide more trip information in later entries.
I assure you my intentions were good.
I've been in the splash zone at both O and La Reve and never really gotten wet, so I figured being up front at another Vegas play would be fine. Consequently, when we decided to check out Evil Dead: The Musical--what's not to like about a musical version of a cult classic?--and the best tickets were for the "splatter zone," I chose them for us.
I should have paid more attention to the lines about "gallons of blood," but I assumed that referred to the show, not the audience.
Not long before showtime, a host led us to the front row, which was covered in plastic, and handed us white, logoed t-shirts, which he then insisted we wear. Only we two and another guy were in the front.
As the show was about to begin, from way off to my left came a spray, presumably from a super-soaker of some sort, of red liquid with the consistency of Kool-Aid. I was instantly wet.
From then on, the show consisted of moments of entertainment mixed with stretches of failed attempts on our part to avoid the jets of fake blood coming at us from the left and, in one case, from the stage.
We left the theater chilled to the bone, sticky, and soaked. We took off the t-shirts but still had to walk through the cold night and then across much of the casino floor of our hotel to get to our room.
We have a pink towel from trying to wash the still-pink clothing we were wearing.
We both think the show was reasonably entertaining, but neither of us can be sure, because we spent so much of it trying in vain to avoid getting wetter, stickier, and colder.
Good intentions are no match for a determined splatter zone team.
So what kind of Vegas party animals are Kyle and I?
Well, on our first night in Sin City, we walked more than a mile each way to go from our hotel to dinner and back, ate two small plates each at a decent Italian place (Lago), enjoyed small cups of gelato at our favorite gelateria in the Bellagio, and watched the last episode of The Ultimate Fighter in our room.
Oh, yeah: we talked, I worked, and we read.
What wild and crazy guys we are!
is not just the name of a song that Jim Steinman wrote and Meat Loaf sang, it's also a good description for much of the Las Vegas strip.
Consider the case of the MGM Grand Hotel's lobby this past Thursday night. The hotel must push its mascot, the lion. It's chosen gold for its Christmas main color because nothing says subtle like gold. A huge UFC fight card is going to take place in its arena in two nights, but right now, the rodeo is in town, and cowboys are everywhere.
What then is a lobby designer to do?
The answer, in Vegas, is simple: all of it.
I went to bed late and felt horrible as I crawled into the sheets. I felt worse when I got up for good less than five hours later. I've lost most of my voice to drainage, and tomorrow night is our big annual work celebration, at which I must speak, so I have a very short time to heal fully.
Consequently, I'm crashing.
Over the coming days, I hope to catch up on my Vegas report.
I have so much good stuff to write about today, but I'm exhausted, and I have to get up very early, so I'm crashing.
Sorry about that.
More later.
I slept late today after a very late bedtime, and I enjoyed every bit of that sleep.
After some work, we headed out for a light lunch and a lot of walking, some of it through the shops in Caesar's. Walking was a good thing, a bit of exercise in a trip with plenty of calories.
Dinner took our group of now four folks to China Poblano, a Jose Andres Mexican/Chinese fusion place. The meal was good, though not exceptional. That said, I sure would be happy to have one of these restaurants back home, where it would be a stand-out.
This evening, we went to see Rock of Ages, a play that was on Broadway, toured, became a movie, and now is an installation at the Venetian. The play was very different from the movie, which I had very much (to my surprise) enjoyed, but I also had a grand time at it. Like the musical, The Commitments, which I saw in London, the music and the sheer energy of the cast made this show a ton of fun.
Tomorrow, UFC fights!
Kyle and I, and soon others, are here in Las Vegas for our annual trip for his birthday and some UFC fights. I tweeted a few of the key moments from my flight, so check there for what I enjoyed experienced.
We both landed in the late afternoon, so after dropping our stuff in the hotel room, we headed to dinner at Jaleo. The food there was as delicious as always.
Next on our plan was the Cirque show, Mystere, which we've seen before but still quite enjoy. It was, as always, wonderful.
We walked back to our hotel and along the way stopped in the Bellagio for some gelato, another Vegas tradition.
I'm exhausted, so that's it for today.
I quite shortchanged you in my recent Las Vegas trip posts, so I thought I'd make a few amends by sharing some of the photos I took while there.
I'd mentioned that our room--the party room, as we came to call it--had a window into the shower from which you could watch from the comfort of your bed as someone cleaned off. Here's that very shower, with Lisa graciously posing inside for us.
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