Getting Back to Real

The irony, I suspect, was lost on none of us who had gathered in Las Vegas to talk about - learn about - the economic ravages that have scorched, Sherman-esque - across the country these past several months. Here, in this movie sound stage of a city built of equal parts imagination, excess, and hubris, we shared data and stories about an economy sired by virtually the same trinity. I suspect the conference had been drawn there by the lure of cheap flights and rooms, but the juxtaposition was oddly, humorously, eerily poignant.

It was my first trip to Vegas - a city, as it turns out, more like an amusement park on steroids than a real community; a mythology more than a story.

The first day's sessions behind us, Doug and I ventured out into the human swell. Quintessential tourists, we stared, we gawked, we got lost, we asked directions; we wedged our way forward for a good view of the Bellagio's fountains;

we strolled through the artificial fog past Cleopatra's ship inside Caesar's Palace, and gazed up toward the tip of the Paris Hotel's Eiffel Tower. If we had somehow managed to miss the mobile billboard's provocative advertisement of "Girls at your Door," the gauntlet of hired hawkers on most street corners passing out cards advertising the same pressed the point. Just for the record, we declined.

Partly, I suppose, because it had been a long and demanding day; partly in recognition of the fact that the next would be the same, we did the almost unthinkable: we turned in early.

Now on the plane home, I realize that my brief experience afforded inadequate samplings of the city. It would be vastly unfair to paint the town with this trip's broad brush. That said, I'll not look for opportunities to return. The commercial claustrophobia made it hard to breathe -- everything, from sight to sound, taste and touch a trinket, commoditized, glamourized and merchandized. It will be nice to taste, again, real food and breathe, again, real air and not have to wonder if the stars overhead are merely well-camouflaged bulbs.