RAT The Mirage

[josh@whirl-i-gig.com]

The Mirage

Las Vegas, NV

By the time I'm sober, we're in Vegas.  Elvis is everywhere-each one of him is authentic, and not quite real. I catch sight of Homeless Elvis stumbling down Paradise and Elvis-the driver, the one who picked me up back in Memphis and carried me this far-throws open the passenger side door.  We give Homeless a lift down to the Luxor, where he plans to scurry like a rat into the pool and freeload a bath off the Sun God.  I see why he considers this town his home.  The place is all flash.  Ten thousand bravado performances, from the light show at the Bellagio to Chicago, The Musical; from Kenny Rogers live to the Pied Piper of the Excaliber who strums his folk guitar for the kids every hour on the hour all day long.  The Wheel of Fortune (TM) slots, the poker players' bluffs, the craps dealers teaching suckers how to roll a pair of dice, the longing in the stares of the strippers when they catch your eye-it's city as theatre and if you set foot in this town, you join the cast of the show.  And who's the audience?  That eye in the sky (there's one every two feet) and whoever the wiz is behind it.  Las Vegas-like opening night-feels as real as it gets, but everyone knows it all a Mirage.

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Previous Dispatches
http://www.manwithvan.com/roadrat7_19a.html
http://www.manwithvan.com/roadrat7_19b.html
http://www.manwithvan.com/roadrat7_17.html
http://www.manwithvan.com/roadrat7_16.html
http://www.manwithvan.com/roadrat7_15.html
http://www.manwithvan.com/roadrat7_14.html
http://www.manwithvan.com/roadrat7_12.html
http://www.manwithvan.com/roadrat7_5.html 
http://www.manwithvan.com/roadrat7_2.html
http://www.manwithvan.com/roadrat6_8.html