The Bachelor Party In Vegas

A few notes on last weekend’s trip to Vegas:

1) I really enjoy getting the morning craps lesson from the casino for two reasons: a) there are a lot of bets that can placed on a table, and it’s useful to receive a refresher course, and b) the casino usually drops the minimum bet way down for a half hour after the lesson, in order to keep players around. In our case, the Excalibur dropped the minimum bet from $10 to $3, which makes a huge difference, as I generally like to play with a stake at least twenty times the minimum betting unit. Craps is a very social game, and this particular session was no exception - we stood next to some vocal North Carolina fans, and across the table was a man who splashed chips everywhere while loudly demanding cigarettes.

2) The Daniel Boulud Brasserie at the new Wynn casino. I liked this restaurant. Boulud specializes in unpretentious French food, executed well. I’d go into more detail, but this isn’t a yuppie foodie blog, so go elsewhere if you want to see what vapid rich people are conspicuously consuming. The main attraction at the restaurant is the Lake of Dreams waterfall show on the patio outside. On an evening with good weather, one can sit with a drink before a waterfall and lagoon encircled by a thicket of tall pine trees, everything mood-lit by a shifting palette of colors. Every half hour, the lake comes to life with a different art installation. The shows include everything from a giant dancing kite to a giant animatronic frog lip-syncing “What a Wonderful World”.

3) Ka. This is the Cirque du Soleil’s Asian-inspired circus act, which is notable for both its $150 million rotating and spinning stage, as well as its notable inclusion of an actual (albeit muddled) story, a first for the Vegas institution. The show is breathtaking for the first twenty minutes, but the pace is relentless, and eventually overwhelms. The acrobatic highlight of the show is a set piece in which the heroes are pursued by ninjas swinging and flipping across a vertical rock face. But I found myself taken by the quieter moments of the show: the dream-like illusion of performers swimming beneath the surface of the ocean, and a virtuoso display of shadow hand puppetry, projected large upon a screen.

4) At the Hard Rock Casino’s nightclub Body English, my friend Matt found himself with an involuntary loss of motor control, due to an ill-advised number of shots, and found himself suddenly needing to pause the festivities in order to return to the room and change shirts. His brother Sam found the idea of a celebratory hiatus unacceptable, and came to the rescue, literally offering the shirt off his own back. And so the two brothers doffed their shirts. Inside the nightclub. Many heads turned, and giggles ensued. This may very well have been the first and only time I have ever heard a bouncer raise his walkie-talkie and bark, “Security! I need some muscle on the floor! Right now!” We were already on our way out, so I will never know how that particular conflict might have been resolved.