Weeeee're baa-aaack
Nov. 12th, 2007 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
featherynscaleWhat happens in Vegas allegedly stays in Vegas, but I fail to see how that's at all entertaining to anybody. Anyway, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kittenpants got back to good ol' Flyover Country about 2 a.m. on Saturday, and are all back in our own beds (and offices) now.
I managed to survive the Vegas experience without any anxiety attacks, claustrophobia, need to retreat to a corner and hold my head and rock, or anything like that. I also managed to do this without staying drunk for the duration of my visit (which is how I functioned last time I went to Vegas). I consider this to be a victory. Brain re-wiring is going along well.
Overall, the trip was alternately amazing and awful. Highlights in each category are below the cut, if you're interested.
Amazing: Lucky Cheng's drag cabaret.kittenpants and I came in early, and were seated right next to the stage, which is always doom when you are female-looking creatures at a drag bar. Luckily(?), a bachelorette party came in a bit later, and absorbed all the stray fucking-with that was floating about in the room. (If you do not go to drag shows, you may not be aware that there is a hierarchy of who gets fucked with. Straight vanilla women who are out on social occasions where one is required to be 'shocking' are at the top of the ranks.) The show was excellent, and the ladies were lovely. We were particularly fond of one Miss Conception, who did a sort of David-Bowie/punk android number. You just don't get punk drag here in Kansas City. Don't know why.
Awful: At one point, we were walking back to the hotel, and found our way blocked by a number of police cars with their blinkenlights on. We were directed away from the sidewalk and took an alternate path around an intersection, which contained one sprawled-over motorized wheelchair. Apparently there had been some sort of taxicab v. wheelchair interaction. Any injured parties had already been removed from the scene, and we hoped that the person from the wheelchair was okay, but commiserated about the fate of the taxicab driver as well, because that is special hell material, right there.
Amazing: Cirque du Soleil. I mean, everybody knows that already, but really, wow. We saw Ka and ZUMANITY (both of those sites probably make noise), both of which were fucking stunning. At Ka, we fell in love with the bad guy (shit, doesn't that always happen?), a lithe, tattooed blue-haired fellow with a penchant for building complicated steampunk death machines (and who just wanted to impress the girl, really). The real star of that show is the stage, though -- the whole thing works on this amazing platform on complicated lifts and tracking that moves in virtually every direction, at several points tipping up to stand perpendicular to the stage so that the acrobats can rappel down it, or climb it, or use it as a sort of human pachinko board. Also, a lot of things blow up or catch on fire in this show, which doesn't hurt its ability to hold my attention.
At Zumanity, we fell in love with everyone generally, particularly a pair of gentlemen who did this brilliant stage-fight in a cage that seemed to be commentary on cultural rejection of men who love men, and those men's internalization of that rejection (brilliant -- they approach each other, briefly caress, and then one knocks the other down or pushes him away, climbing the cage walls and this whole beautiful ornate fighting dance, and then finally, having beat the shit out of each other, coming together for a serious sort of kiss. The whole theater full of people practically fell apart). And it's an amazingly diverse show, all sex-positive and friendly. About the only thing we didn't see was BDSM, and the site indicates that there is usually a strap-suspension number in the show, but that didn't happen when we saw it (it seemed like there was introductory material for something of that nature, but then they went on to something else). We did get a breakdancing satyr, though, which is not something you see every day.
Awful: The TAO nightclub, in the Venetian, which is tremendously upscale and beautiful, has ads all over the strip which feature the back of a curvy woman covered in Chinese calligraphy like tattoos. It is a very beautiful club, and a very beautiful add, except for the tagline, which is something like "Always a happy ending".
Special Bonus Awful: For about two hours on Saturday, I was hanging around the MGM Grand, shopping and waiting forkittenpants to come round so we could pick up show tickets, and I kept walking past a bank of slot machines. Sitting at the slots was a woman in a wedding dress, full 'special occasion' hair and makeup, all by herself, chain-smoking and drinking cocktails. She had to take up two slots chairs, arse in one, dress train in the other. She was there for at least two hours. Was she left at the altar, and now drinking it off? Was she there hoping to snare a similarly hard-drinking groom? Was she just waiting for the rest of the bridal party to get out of the salon? I'll never know.
kittenpants got back to good ol' Flyover Country about 2 a.m. on Saturday, and are all back in our own beds (and offices) now. I managed to survive the Vegas experience without any anxiety attacks, claustrophobia, need to retreat to a corner and hold my head and rock, or anything like that. I also managed to do this without staying drunk for the duration of my visit (which is how I functioned last time I went to Vegas). I consider this to be a victory. Brain re-wiring is going along well.
Overall, the trip was alternately amazing and awful. Highlights in each category are below the cut, if you're interested.
Amazing: Lucky Cheng's drag cabaret.
kittenpants and I came in early, and were seated right next to the stage, which is always doom when you are female-looking creatures at a drag bar. Luckily(?), a bachelorette party came in a bit later, and absorbed all the stray fucking-with that was floating about in the room. (If you do not go to drag shows, you may not be aware that there is a hierarchy of who gets fucked with. Straight vanilla women who are out on social occasions where one is required to be 'shocking' are at the top of the ranks.) The show was excellent, and the ladies were lovely. We were particularly fond of one Miss Conception, who did a sort of David-Bowie/punk android number. You just don't get punk drag here in Kansas City. Don't know why.Awful: At one point, we were walking back to the hotel, and found our way blocked by a number of police cars with their blinkenlights on. We were directed away from the sidewalk and took an alternate path around an intersection, which contained one sprawled-over motorized wheelchair. Apparently there had been some sort of taxicab v. wheelchair interaction. Any injured parties had already been removed from the scene, and we hoped that the person from the wheelchair was okay, but commiserated about the fate of the taxicab driver as well, because that is special hell material, right there.
Amazing: Cirque du Soleil. I mean, everybody knows that already, but really, wow. We saw Ka and ZUMANITY (both of those sites probably make noise), both of which were fucking stunning. At Ka, we fell in love with the bad guy (shit, doesn't that always happen?), a lithe, tattooed blue-haired fellow with a penchant for building complicated steampunk death machines (and who just wanted to impress the girl, really). The real star of that show is the stage, though -- the whole thing works on this amazing platform on complicated lifts and tracking that moves in virtually every direction, at several points tipping up to stand perpendicular to the stage so that the acrobats can rappel down it, or climb it, or use it as a sort of human pachinko board. Also, a lot of things blow up or catch on fire in this show, which doesn't hurt its ability to hold my attention.
At Zumanity, we fell in love with everyone generally, particularly a pair of gentlemen who did this brilliant stage-fight in a cage that seemed to be commentary on cultural rejection of men who love men, and those men's internalization of that rejection (brilliant -- they approach each other, briefly caress, and then one knocks the other down or pushes him away, climbing the cage walls and this whole beautiful ornate fighting dance, and then finally, having beat the shit out of each other, coming together for a serious sort of kiss. The whole theater full of people practically fell apart). And it's an amazingly diverse show, all sex-positive and friendly. About the only thing we didn't see was BDSM, and the site indicates that there is usually a strap-suspension number in the show, but that didn't happen when we saw it (it seemed like there was introductory material for something of that nature, but then they went on to something else). We did get a breakdancing satyr, though, which is not something you see every day.
Awful: The TAO nightclub, in the Venetian, which is tremendously upscale and beautiful, has ads all over the strip which feature the back of a curvy woman covered in Chinese calligraphy like tattoos. It is a very beautiful club, and a very beautiful add, except for the tagline, which is something like "Always a happy ending".
Special Bonus Awful: For about two hours on Saturday, I was hanging around the MGM Grand, shopping and waiting for
kittenpants to come round so we could pick up show tickets, and I kept walking past a bank of slot machines. Sitting at the slots was a woman in a wedding dress, full 'special occasion' hair and makeup, all by herself, chain-smoking and drinking cocktails. She had to take up two slots chairs, arse in one, dress train in the other. She was there for at least two hours. Was she left at the altar, and now drinking it off? Was she there hoping to snare a similarly hard-drinking groom? Was she just waiting for the rest of the bridal party to get out of the salon? I'll never know.