March 10, 2008
Listen
Sandra Tsing Loh points out that Las Vegas is not the most environmentally-friendly city.
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Life. Today's topic: Not Leaving Las Vegas. Part One: Two Year Deployment.
I know you hate Las Vegas. And I know the reasons why. It's not hard, is it, to trash Las Vegas?
"It's cheap. It's trashy. It's horrible."
"The reason I will not go there, ever in my life," continued a friend of mine – who I will add is very spiritual. Very enlightened. He has a bumper sticker on his Prius that says: "Beef. It's what's rotting in your colon." Isn't that nice? Didn't you enjoy hearing that? And you're welcome. But no, don't thank me, thank Doug. Anyway.
Says Doug, "The reason I will not go to Las Vegas, ever in my life," and hold your breath for a new bad thing about Las Vegas, a veritable news flash, "is that it's a completely manufactured city. Nothing in Las Vegas is natural. Nothing there should be there. It's like Dubai. It's not real. And ecologically, it's a nightmare."
I won't bore you with the carbon credit analysis he now went into on the pyramid of Luxor alone. Not just the pyramid, the thing that shoots out of it. For just one minute a night, you know how much energy it burns?
Or the Bellagio fountains. Just one of the 200 jets, that go on every 15 minutes. Did we mention Circus Circus? Soon we heard they're going to blow up the Tropicana.
You might as well call Las Vegas, that frying pan in the desert, Carbondale. Carbonville. Carbontown. It's just a whirling dark tsunami of catastrophically accruing negative carbon offset credits.
To which I say, with all due respect, our family does not have the luxury of hating Las Vegas because we're moving there! That's right! At least my husband Mike is. He's a guitar player, his guitar god orders came in, and he is being stationed in Las Vegas for a two-year deployment. While recruitment levels are high among showgirls and trombonists, Las Vegas was apparently short on guitar players, so my husband packed up his guitars, his wa-wa pedals, and his ukulele – it's the Bette Midler show – and off to the desert he went.
Because it's a hard life for musicians, and their bands of brothers. To make a living, if not in Las Vegas, you have to live in New York, where you're schlepping your gear in cabs or up fourth floor walkups. Los Angeles, or, yes, Nashville. Perhaps even... Branson. Although, do you even call that music? Ba-dump-bump!
Portland is lovely, but there is no Strip. Fresh-roast coffee and poets, yes. But there are no acres of factories of live entertainment. And that's where they have the best medication for those injured on the job. Three words: Choreographer pain pills.
But how would Las Vegas be, I thought, for our children?
