Viva lost Vegas

I am in a shuttle with an Ethiopian driver who talks like Bill Cosby headed for Las Vegas Boulevard. Disappointingly it is not a gonzo Red Shark headed for an appointment with the American Dream and assorted fear and loathing. Rather it is an unassuming white van that has seen better days driven by a chap who tells me with an accent that wouldn’t be lost on The Cosby Show, “Everything’s big here in Vegas.” Oh, then, as if directed by Cecil B. De Mille, the Hooters building starts to jut out from the horizon.

It is my first time in Las Vegas, Nevada. My editor asked me to cover the launch of Microsoft’s latest OS software at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at the Las Vegas Convention Center. I am booked at the Hilton for three nights, and then it is off to Seattle to visit the Microsoft Campus.

Hours ago, I was at the NAIA queuing up for the long flight for Toronto and then Vegas. One of the very courteous and respectful airport employees (sarcasm intended) asked us passengers to take off our shoes for the security check. I overheard a Filipino woman very loudly address her son with a made-up American twang, “Son, release your shoes!” The kid had a quizzical look. “But, Mommy, shoes can’t fly.” I am not making that up.

The flight took an eternity, mainly because there were only five movie channels on the personal monitor. And one of them featured Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher… With swimming… And overacting.

Another was a football movie, which of course ends with a touchdown. Why can’t a Hollywood football flick climax with a slow clap or Freddy Krueger rising from the grave yet again?

After a period of un-sleep, I saw Vegas and its lights that never go out.

All I know about the city I’ve read from Hunter S. Thompson’s book (my bible when I started writing for The STAR) and learned from Chevy Chase in that landmark movie National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation. Thus, I imagined Las Vegas to be like an unreal city, maybe akin to the set of a Martin Scorsese movie where the protagonist endures the usual plot arc: the rise and then the fall and then the inevitable Joe Pesci assassination.

It is such an amazing journey from the airport to the hotel when you spot replicas of the Great Pyramid, Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, and the streets of Venice. If I had a Samoan lawyer like Raoul Duke, he would tell me Las Vegas is built like ancient Rome — albeit with slot machines and Celine Dion. I wonder what could drive a person to suicide more — losing all his savings on blackjack, or hearing My Heart Will Go On and suffering last-song syndrome forever.

Boulevard Of Remodeled Dreams

I am on a bed at the Hilton, looking at the sun rising in the desert through the hotel window and listening to Tori Amos sing Sleeps with Butterflies on AMTV. What a Zen-like moment: the Cornflake Girl singing one of her best songs ever (along with Silent All These Years and Past the Mission) in a style she purloined from Kate Bush.

The show is called Breakfast with the Arts, which features interviews with visual and performance artists as well as musical bits. I prepare coffee and pick a nice spot on the sofa only to see Duran Duran back from the dead replacing Tori onstage. Whoopee. Time to go out, I tell myself.

I decide to check out Morpheus Gallery on Reno Avenue, which distributes H.R. Giger limited-edition prints, sculptures, books and various collectibles. I hail a cab and meet a gabby cabbie named James Nowlin, who gives a running commentary on the different buildings we pass on our way to Morpheus.

“What you’re seeing here is old Las Vegas,” Nowlin says, pointing to the area near the Wynn Hotel. “This is where all the originals are — like the Riviera, Circus Circus, and Stardust Hotel, which will be replaced by a three-tower, 5,000-room hotel and casino. It will be opened by 2010.”

Everything here in Las Vegas has been changed, he adds. It’s not the same as when the cabbie first moved here 21 years ago from Phoenix, Arizona. Nowlin, a bulky guy with a mustache that looks as if it belonged to a character in Easy Rider, gives a litany of the must-see shows in Vegas: Love at The Mirage, Le Rêve at The Wynn, Zumanity at New York New York, the Blue Man Group, The Phantom of the Opera, of course Celine Dion at Caesar’s Palace, and lots and lots of comedy acts (such as Penn & Teller).

“People need to laugh after losing their money,” Nowlin informs me with a chuckle.

Gimmicks, he says, are an integral part of Vegas. “It’s all about attracting people to your hotel. You have the warring ships at the T.I. (Treasure Island) and the volcano at The Mirage. The Venetian has its gondolas, Circus Circus has its, uh, circus, and Caesar’s Palace is just Caesar’s Place. It’s been that way forever, only five times bigger.” (But what chances do battleships and volcanoes have against Celine Dion with her caterwauling that could make Armageddon seem like a zarzuela?)

I point to a bar with an unlit neon sign. Is that a strip club?

“You bet. This is Sin City, brother,” says Nowlin with a laugh. “There are equal opportunity clubs here — downstairs are female revues and upstairs are the male revues. Everybody gets a peek.” He informs me that some of the dancers don’t even live in Las Vegas. They live as far as New York and fly to Vegas for the work.

We pass by the MGM Grand and the Tropicana Resort & Casino. “You got the Luxor on your right, which is an engineer’s nightmare, but it’s one of the most interesting buildings ever made.” I bet people get the desire to be mummified after blowing everything on the craps table.

We get to Reno Avenue, but Morpheus Gallery is closed on Sundays (I find out from a guy who looks like Kane from Alien), so I ask Nowlin to take me to Tropicana hotel instead for the “Bodies” exhibition.

“You are sick, my friend. I don’t know why anybody would want to see corpses,” he says in between giggles.

I get off at Tropicana and the nice cab driver climaxes his talk about old Vegas, new Vegas, and what would forever be Vegas.

“Las Vegas is a piece of visual candy. Be careful or else you’ll get a case of eye diabetes.”

I Sing The Bodies Electric

My girlfriend asked me before what would I rather see: British artist Damien Hirst’s installation of sliced cows preserved in a tub of formaldehyde, or the “Bodies” exhibit. Tough question.

“Bodies” features — well, you guessed it — real human bodies preserved through a revolutionary technique called polymer preservation in which human tissue is permanently preserved using a liquid silicone rubber. The end result is a dry, odorless, permanently preserved specimen that reveals “the mysteries of the human anatomy.”

“Have you ever wondered what’s underneath your skin?” asks the “Bodies” chief medical director Dr. Roy Glover in a press statement. “After seeing the exhibition you will finally know.” Reminds me of what Hirst said about humans taking great pains to care for their complexions when they’ll all turn to skulls and skeletons in a hundred years’ time.

The tagline says it all: The body never lies. At the 20,000-square-foot exhibition space a living person will get to see the skeletal, muscular, respiratory, nervous, circulatory, reproductive, urinary, endocrine and digestive system of once-living persons.

Inside there are bodies made to pose as if they were playing football and basketball to highlight the workings of the muscular system. There is “The Thinker,” which displays the brain — the hardest organ to preserve because it can shrink significantly during the process. The magic liquid preservers use: cold acetone. Finding that out gave me a cold shudder.

In the circulatory section are bodies with exposed blood vessels, which resemble red twigs. In the respiratory section is a lung blackened by cigarette smoke. Beside it is a glass box full of cigarette packs left by spooked visitors. Smoking is not cool, according to the voiceover: “Walking around with black lungs is not cool.” In the digestive section is a glass tub with a row of small intestines, colon and pancreas that remind me of the barbecued chicken innards at our favorite eatery in UST.

In the reproductive/urinary section is a body that was spliced to make it appear it was giving itself a “high five” like Borat. In the fetus development section is a set of conjoined twins. The most interesting piece for me is the body with its skin peeled off and spread out inside a glass container. Shocking and beautiful at the same time.

Someone tells me a specimen was reportedly stolen from the “Bodies” exhibition in Seattle. Weird. Immediately I am reminded of Weekend at Bernie’s where the actors dress up their murdered boss and party with the corpse for a weekend. Maybe thieves dressed up the body (with a jacket, a cap and a pair of shades, perhaps) and walked it out of the exhibitions hall — like Bernie Lomax in that Andrew McCarthy flick.

It turns out that what was stolen was a plasticized human kidney. I kid you not.

The “Bodies” exhibit is an eye-opener. It allows people to “learn about their own bodies and, ultimately, teaches them how to take care of their health and make positive lifestyle choices.” My conclusion is that we human beings are more than the sum of our body parts; our souls cannot be dissected or mounted in a glass case. But the design of the human body is truly astonishing.

It is God’s own artwork, after all.

In the evening, we watch Le Rêve at the Wynn Theater. It is a show by former Cirque du Soleil creative collaborator Franco Dragone, which is about “a small collection of imperfect dreams.” (Dragone created nine shows during the early history of Cirque du Soleil, and is responsible for the hit O.)

The first thing to dig about the show is the stage — a concentric one that fills up with water in one moment and then becomes a platform in the next, and where good and evil battle over the soul of the dreamer. The second one is the domed ceiling where aerialists dangle from — sometimes they dive into the waters below, sometimes they are raised into the overhead void. Angels, devils, bald musclemen, blonde-wigged dancers, water, earth, fire, smoke, flora, fauna and the entire forces of the cosmos interact in those “wet” dreams in one watertight performance.

Le Rêve is easily one of the best shows I’ve seen in my life. (And I’ve seen enthralling spider-fights and canal boat races in my old neighborhood in Blumentritt.)

I try my hand at the slot machine at The Mandalay and win $67. Instantly a woman in a skimpy outfit carrying a tray of beer, soda and scotch approaches me. “Some refreshments,” she offers. I do a reverse Chevy Chase and quit. This, evidently, is my gambling system. I spend the rest of the night enjoying my Bud and watching people lose.

As soon as the slot machines stop ringing, the drinks stop coming.

Leaving Las Vegas

It is my last night in Las Vegas. I am catching a midnight flight to Washington, and my companions talk me into watching Zumanity at New York New York. The plan is to leave our bags at the hotel concierge, watch the show, get a cab to take us to the airport, and tell the cabbie to put the pedal to the metal. Which sounds really mental. Reminds me of Duke driving Dr. Gonzo to catch his flight out of Vegas and making crazy swerves in Fear and Loathing.

Zumanity showcases the “adult side of Cirque du Soleil.” Lots of exposed flesh in this one, but the jaw-dropping choreography is still present. In the show we meet some really quirky characters in costumes created by Thierry Mugler: the she-male who is the master/mistress of ceremonies, the Botero Sisters composed of two fat French maids, contortionists Gyula and Bolormaa, etc. But the girls (plus two or three buff guys) in the audience go gaga over Bronco, a muscle-bound dude with blonde hair, removable gigolo jeans and a phony screen name.

A midnight bath of milk, prosthetic protrusions, adhesive-taped boobies, rubber blow-up dolls, and an orgy scene with audience participation — these are some of the elements of Zumanity. The elderly mom the actors recruited from the audience turns out to be a horny devil-woman herself. Even her “orgy mate” is stunned as she fondles and licks away. Even Bronco looks on in horror.

After the show, we do our gonzo dash to the airport to catch our flight. I make it with 30 minutes to spare. Slot machines are situated enticingly near the boarding gates, so I dig up a few dollars. Drat! I end up losing $60. The house strikes back as always.

I board the plane out of Las Vegas. A sucker has left the building.