The Strip was a huge theme park where childhood fantasies were given material forms. I strolled with the crowds from one hotel to another, happily ignoring the traffic, the work and the future. My favorite? Bellagio. Look at the big pink flowers, the big red bug and the African crown crane who is acting out a Chinese idiom that I have been repeating to myself a zillion times in the past months.
In fact, what really took my by surprise: the abundance of water in this desert city. Fountains, water falls, canals, pools, ponds... From now on, I'd hear them whenever I turn on the shower.
If I do decide to gamble, this is going to be my seat.
8 comments:
The "abundance" of water in Las Vegas is actually a bit of a sore spot. Most of it isn't actually there and has to pumped in from reservoirs very far away, many in California. The net result is an overall water shortage for agriculture in the very parts of California where the water comes from.
And the crane is obviously operating in a Japanese idiom. Apparently you didn't notice the giant goldfish swimming nearby. Or, perhaps, are they living in a pseudo-(Americanized)-Chinese wonderland?
Man, look at that big lady-bug! Oh boy!
My sister was just in Vegas, maybe you crossed paths with her. She took 14 gigs of photos, because that's her thing. There definitely weren't any fake-Eastern 'idioms' in her pics, though.
Nicholas is right about the water. What a wonderful world we live in where looking at water - in the middle of a godforsaken desert - seems more important than using and sharing it for things like food.
dear, shame on you--you did not even gamble! Hey, if you have the courage to try to become an intellectual, you should have the guts to gamble--put your self there, let someone else decide your fate, and get disappointed. It is a fake world, a fantasy world--let's be nice.
I have to agree with you two for this time, dear M&N. One thing I did not mention was the mixed feelings I had when facing the wonders in Vegas. I was aware of Marx's insightful observations on the workings of the capitalist system. Believe it or not, I have been feeling guilty whenever I turn on the shower since my first trip back to my home village in China. What we have as a daily routine here is a wonder for my family back there. So what can we say? And do? I did shorten my time in the shower and tried other means as well to save water.:)
nicholas, why are you kidding me like that? Of course I saw the three big fish down there. They were part of the Chinese idiom I was thinking about. 临渊羡鱼，不如退而结网。now, what's your japanese idiom?
mike, does your sister have a website for her pictures? i am really curious what Vegas looks like in the digital eyes of a professional photographer.
beauty, you are ok? different people go to Vegas for different reasons. i respect your choice if you go there to test your courage as an intellectual. gambling takes many forms and one does not have to go to Vegas and sit in front of a slot machine to gamble. besides, it does not have to take an intellectual and a slot machine to test one's courage and experience the disappointments, uncertainties, and things beyond one's control in this world. if a slot machine in Vegas is the only passport to the country of intellectuals, i am happy to remain where i am.
I wasn't thinking of anything in particular, just that they always seem to be paired with each other in scroll paintings or photographs for guidebooks.
Strangely, though, it did make me think of a song from Showboat called "Can't help lovin than man" whose opening lines are "fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly / I gotta love one man till I die," which, when you think about it, sounds quite creepy.
Ooooh! Lots of things to cover here.
Billie Holiday did a version of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" early on in her career when her range was still at about an octave and a half, as opposed to about half an octave (plus smack-n-toback croak) on her last record for Verve. But Nicholas probably knows that already.
Your sparring with BofS over gambling reminded me of my year in Mainz, Germany as an undergrad, in particular when I visited Wiesbaden. I was in Wiesbaden to see a production of Mozart's "Magic Flute," but that's not what I want to tell you about (opera bores the living hell out of me). What I do want to tell you is that across the street from the Wiesbaden Opera House is the casino where Dostoyevsky gambled away his life savings before committing suicide, or whatever it is you do when you're an epileptic Russian novelist. But since you're a small, whimsically tortured Chinese graduate student, you'll easily avoid that fate. At any rate, I laid eyes on the building, and that means I get to brag about it irrelevantly here.
Anyway, Mainz and Wiesbaden are neighboring towns on opposite sides of the Rhein (which you'll remember from countless cheesy German songs you probably never heard). Mainz is, true to its role as a provincial capital in Southern Germany, Catholic through and through, whereas Wiesbaden is sort of like a northern German (i.e. Lutheran) city magically transported into the South. Thanks to this thoroughly 16th-century bone of religious contention, the Mainzers and the Wiesbadeners have an ongoing feud, which largely consists of stupid jokes at each others' expense. The Wiesbadeners think the Mainzers are boorish, confused, and provincial Papists who mostly sit in dung until they rouse themselves once a year for the harmless drunken fury of Carnival. The Mainzers think the Wiesbadeners are stuffy, elitist, priggish materialists (not to mention heretics) obsessed with ambition and status. One of the Mainzer jokes about Wiesbadeners goes like this:
Two Wiesbadeners meet in the street, and the one says to the other, "Hey, that's a beautiful tie you're wearing. How much did you pay for it?" His friend says, "Oh, about 80 Euro." The first replies, "Pffft, that's awful. I've seen that tie in a boutique where you could have paid three times as much!"
The feud has continued in this thoroughly unfunny vein since Catholics and Protestants let off butchering each other during the religious wars of the Reformation era.
Slot machines are only a passport to intellectualism if you happen to be Baudrillard. And he is, like, SO dead now.
My sister's (fairly impressive) photos can be found on the following page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kicey/
Though her Vegas photos are classy, she specializes in documenting the various forms of rural weirdness in (and against) which the two of us grew up: witness her recent series on bizarre sculptures she found in the woods outside Hazleton, PA, a small town noted largely for its rabid racism and colorful advertising. She's also working on a series of photos documenting the bizarre signs a shut-in schizophrenic woman (again in rural PA) paints on her house to broadcast her paranoid musings to the world.
I am just such a Chatty Cathy today!
Hey Chatty Cathy, your story about the Mainzers and the Wiesbadeners fits this case so well. Did you make it up?:)
I checked out your sister's fantastic pictures the minute I saw your post and meant to list all my favorites, but was forced to give up that plan because of my two-week long cold and the extremely long list of favorites...
cheers!
Which case is it, dear Liansu, that my irrelevant Germany anecdotery fits so well?
I was glad to find my sudden loquacity ('is that even a word?' says Nicholas) had some pleasant effect for you. But it was probably just the overwhelming effect of my sister's photographic oeuvre spilling over. This won't be the first time she's outshone me: sensual delights are really much more directly compelling than my intellectual jackassery.
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