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November 23, 2003

Geeks in Vegas

(more pics)

I’m back from ApacheCon in Vegas now. The dude in the star trek uniform is Ken Coar, one of the directors of the Apache Software Foundation. I noticed when I looked at his site today that he has a link to the National Rifle Association on it. It’s a bit disconcerting that he’s aiming a phaser at my head.

You know, thinking about the whole American 2nd amendment Right-to-Bear-Arms thing, maybe the reason the U.S. spends so much on its military (6 times more than any other nation on earth) is that its citizens are so well-armed. The whole point of the 2nd amendment, as I understand it, is so that U.S.citizens can take up arms against their own central government if they find themselves as oppressed as they were under the British. Naturally, if you were a central government, you’d be a bit paranoid about making sure you can protect yourself when and if the peasants storm the gates of the castle.

I can’t say I’m a big fan of Vegas. I think it’s the biggest little mini-mall in the world. I hate mini-malls. The entire place is designed to suck money out of the pockets of the foolish and gullible. It’s evil.

That said, I did manage to have some fun while I was there, probably not as much as I should have. I think I disappointed a few friends who were expecting me to lose every dime I had on the tables, get married to a showgirl, stay in Vegas and get a job as an Elvis impersonator.

There was, of course, the officially sanctioned fun. I.e. various hosted drinks at ApacheCon with the other apache geeks, some dressed as Star Trek characters, some not. I failed in my one big mission as far as these occasions were concerned. A friend from work had insisted I track down Nat Torkington and have a drink with him. Apparently he’s a hilarious foul-mouthed kiwi. Unfortunately, we only had one very brief conversation, the night of the Star Trek madness. It wasn’t enough for me to categorically identify him as a Kiwi and he used no foul language that I noticed. We made very tentative plans to go for a drink the next night but that didn’t happen. My fault mostly, I suspect. I let myself get sucked into going to the Stratosphere.

The Stratosphere is a 1000 foot tower that resembles the Seattle Space needle or Calgary’s Husky tower. What’s special about it is that there are amusement rides at the top. We went on two of them. The X-Scream which is scary, but not particularly fun; it just dangles you off the edge of the tower and jerks you around a bit – nice view though. And the Big Shot which is one of those rides that shoots you straight up a tower, stops suddenly and plunges so you get kind of a free-fall effect. That one was fun and also a bit scary. You can’t really see the tower beneath you on this ride so it feels like you’ve just shot up the side of the tower and the ride has broken away and you’re falling towards the IHOP a thousand feet below. Very cool.

Afterwards we went to a bar for a couple of drinks and some abuse by a hairy bartender. I bailed early due to residual jet-lag.

I did spot the mysterious Torkington the next night but I sensed some kind of weird Alpha-male tension between us and couldn’t bring myself to approach him. I suppose at heart I’ll always be the pathetic shy loser I was in high school.

I felt a little uncomfortable the whole trip, to be honest. If only I had managed to befriend someone who knew the town early on in the week. I noticed a billboard for Shania Twain by the MGM Grand. I should have given her a call. I figure we’d have an instant bond. After all, we both planted trees roughly the same time in roughly the same area (near Timmons, Ontario). It’s possible we were on the same crew. Hell, I bet we’d actually had long conversations around the campfire late at night. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that we actually slept together and I just can’t remember it now. Surely such a virtual past would be good enough for a bit of a tour around Vegas and a couple of backstage passes.

Oh well, next time, perhaps. Now I feel guilty that I didn’t even go to her show.

Mark and I did make it to one Vegas show: Mystere which is one of three shows Cirque du Soleil had in Vegas. The one I really wanted to see, O, was sold out. The other was an intriguing kinky adults only show called Zumanity but I talked to some people who had seen all three and they didn’t like it much.

It was the first time I’d seen a Cirque du Soleil show. It was fantastic. I love acrobatic performance stuff. It’s probably one of the reasons I’m a dance groupie. I’d been meaning to see a Cirque show for years. There was a guy on one of my treeplanting crews who was going to train with them back then (early nineties, I think). His name was Alvin Tan. I recall that he planted with his shirt off a lot. Man, he was fit. I remember I had a female foreman who seemed to spend a lot of time delivering trees to him and checking his land. He was a great guy. I wonder what happened to him. My wife still has a caricature he drew of me back then.

I checked the credits to see if he was in Mystere but no luck. He might be in one of the other shows. If I ever have to go back to Vegas, I’ll have to check it out.

Posted by YandaMan at November 23, 2003 6:37 PM
Category: United States