Plastic Fantastic

It was exciting at first. Coming in on a red-eye flight from Denver, I saw the lights of Vegas creep up on my plane window and I felt the excitement well up in me. This is it, I thought. Finally. Vegas, baby. Vegas.

I decided the next morning to head out onto the strip and take it all in. I got so far as the Sphinx in front our hotel.

There were a dozen or so tourists out taking photos of it, and I stood there trying to figure out what was interesting about it. Usually, I'll take pictures of anything. But this, meh. I had no desire to take a photo of the big, fiberglass, day-glo blue trimmed Sphinx.

And that kind of sums up my general feelings about Las Vegas. Eh.

I feel like a failure for not loving it. Tell someone you don't like ice-cream and they'll think you're freakish, but they'll forgive you. Tell someone you're unimpressed by giant fiberglass Sphinxes, and Vegas as a whole, and they're likely to have you carted off by men in white coats.

Then they'll tell you all the reasons they loved it and why you're lame because you didn't: You didn't gamble enough. You didn't drink enough. You weren't with enough people.

But truly, the lights are the best part. If you've seen one casino, you've seen them all. They're like bowling alleys - smoky and sad with bad '80s carpet. Only they're worse, because you can't get out of them. I spent hours walking listlessly through casinos looking for the way out. Like department stores and malls, they're intentionally disorienting.

And the spectacle - or what I thought would be the spectacle - of casinos and pyramid shaped hotels, scaled eiffel towers, roller coasters and fake New York City skylines, all of it was so... plastic and ordinary. Dare I call Las Vegas boring? I dare!

I was trying to explain my feelings about it to a friend of mine last week when he asked me if I thought Vegas was as ridiculous and garish as the giant Jesus on I-75.

"Ridiculous! Are you kidding me," I said. "That Jesus is awesome. I'd take my picture with that fiberglass beauty anyday. Sheesh. I can't even believe I'm friends with you."