One of the leading signs of the degeneration of Venice into millennial Disney World is the predominance of tourist items manufactured not in Venice, not in Italy, not even in Europe. Most of the tokens that the ravening hordes take with them from Venice these days are manufactured in China. Those exact same tokens - masks, glass, precious antiques - are available at the Las Vegas Venetian, from the exact same sources in China. You can buy fake souvenirs in the real Venice, or the same fake souvenirs in the fake Venice. It is Phillip K Dick's prescient short story, We Can Remember it for You Wholesale (later bastardized into the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Total Recall) brought to life.
Blue Man Group has descended on the Venetian. The walls throughout the public areas are covered, about twelve feet up, with blue handprints. But they aren't real handprints. They aren't stencils either. They are decals printed on clear plastic, which sort of works for a while. But some of the walls are dirty, some are painted with easy-clean surfaces, and the adhesive that was used on the back of the decals is not so good. So now, here and there, blue handprints are gently peeling away, here lifting a finger or two, there waving lazily in the artificial breeze like a ghostly butterfly wing.
"It's just like the one in New York", an excited guest exclaims. We are walking through a low temple bower past pools carved out of stone, fresh rose and hibiscus petals floating in the surface of the water. Beyond, a giant Buddha gazes across a smoky room filled with hundreds of well-heeled tourists, determined to make the most of their extraordinary luck landing a reservation at this exclusive restaurant. I guess that we are all lucky that Buddhists tend to take less offense than Muslims at their Messenger being reduced to a commercial prop.
It is the Tao at Las Vegas, the latest manifestation of the city's transformation from Sin City to Disney World for grownups. The outposts of the rich and famous - the great chef signature restaurants, dance clubs, health spas - have all established outposts in the neighborhood sized lobbies of the top-tier casinos. You no longer have to go to Tucson to get a hot rock massage out at the Canyon Ranch Spa, or battle New York traffic to check out the latest DJ at Tao. You just come here, get an only slightly inferior experience for the same price, and walk down the hall instead of flying across the country for your next extraordinary experience.
The lights are flashing on the dance floor, the disco tunes are pumping, the open-bar liquor flows freely, served by ethnically diverse smooth-skinned men and perky women wearing conference tee-shirts for the occasion. A cadre of minimum wage employees roughly the same age as the party crowd clean up constantly and wander by every few minutes with plates of "Kobe shooters", essentially a White Castle hamburger on a stick.
The crowd is overwhelmingly male. The liquor doesn't seem to make people any better at being social. A few people sit alone or in pairs in the multiple alcoves around the edges of the club, more clump in clusters around the few unaccompanied women who happen to be there. Most stand around the bar or edge of the dance floor, a drink in one hand and a burger-on-a-stick in the other. After a very long time, a lone woman starts dancing on the dance floor, and is immediately surrounded by five men, each of them determinedly dancing with her instead of alone or with each other. I recall an interview with the diva porn star Asia Carrera about gangbangs, about how the presence of a single woman gives groups of straight men permission to freely engage in behavior that would otherwise be flat-out gay.
Personally, I'm really glad that whatever happens in Vegas stays there. Three Manhattans, half a dozen burgers on a stick, and I'm out of there.
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