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Las Vegas After Death Valley's sere beauty, why not a wallow in modern Babylon? A friend of mine explained the reason to visit Las Vegas: it gives you insight into the deepest, dreariest desires of the American people, and indeed, all the world's wannabes. It could happen here! A Free Lunch!! Las Vegas is the High Holy Place of America's Fear of the Dark, and so before experiencing night in the most over-lit place on the planet, better find out where all that electricity comes from ... and so off we went to Boulder Dam -- er, what the politicians like to call Hoover Dam.

photo credit: Bureau of Reclamation

I'm still enough of a tech-junkie to get a thrill out of Boulder Dam's massive middle finger extended at the mighty Colorado River. I was astonished to see how many others also come to worship at this shrine to technology. Sadly, post 9-11, we true believers can no longer don hard hats and get behind the scenes here (and so, in a very real sense, the terrorists won.) In fact, traffic is snarled for miles around because only passenger cars can drive over the top of the dam, and only after going through a military style check-point.

Once at the dam, one gets to pay $5 for parking and then another $10 each for a quick ride down in a crowded elevator to view, from a great and unimpressive distance, the generators in the hall on the Nevada side. I expected the earth to be quaking with their throaty roar, but they just sit there and hum modestly. As noted above, their output now barely supplies Las Vegas's profligate requirements. dam, intake towers, and Lake Mead

Nevada-side generators I was nevertheless impressed by the fact that the scale and immediacy of this thing is so huge that I couldn't take a proper picture and so had to borrow a government publicity still from the Marilyn Monroe era.

We checked into one of the most miserable hotels ever, the Stratosphere (hereinafter called the Craposphere) and as soon as we'd showered the Death Valley grit off, we got outta there to sample the local culture. "Doge's Hall" at The Venetian Apparently, this is not commonly understood. The streets were packed with walkers, and the management has branched out with shows, upscale shopping malls, and museums, but gambling is the common denominator.

The Strip at dusk Las Vegas has invented itself, over and over again, starting from a foundation of greed and a firm and apparently verifiable belief in the notion there's a sucker born every minute. We heard one local explain, "you don't think the hotels got this beautiful by giving money away, do you?" ceiling at the Bellagio

And it seems to work for us as a people. The women are dressed in their best, and everybody's eyes are glittering, and not just with the ambient flashiness, either. There's something sexy and forbidden about this place that appeals at a deep, atavistic level.

view from our room

In the gambling halls, the din of the slot machines is augmented with manic elevator music that jams any judgment that has survived the incessant invitation to booze it up. There are no clocks or windows -- time stands still. Human needs besides drinking and gambling (and, for some, whoring) are speedily, cursorily, and gracelessly taken care of, so the marks can get back to the important work of losing their shirts. We watched the proceedings in sober, bemused horror, while declining to contribute to the juggernaut, then returned to our cheerless room. Driving away early the next morning -- bloody mary, 99¢ -- Rochelle said, "I'm glad I've seen it, but let's get as far away as we can, quick!"

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