enough vegas already

generally: caesars is so much nicer than the MGM grand. the MGM is a dump compared to caesars, man. it just feels tacky, whereas caesars is nice and faux-luxurious, like you expect vegas to be.

went to see the shows:

• ka, the new cirque du soleil show at the MGM grand. the auditorium is pretty impressive, like you’re sitting in the ewok village, with lots of trees and scaffolding and people climbing up and down and swinging around. the show itself is pretty great. without giving away too much, it’s got this incredible huge main stage that elevates, rotates, and then even tilts 90 degrees (and then continues to rotate), which ends up in a lot of rapelling-type acrobatics. it’s pretty fantastic to see. plus, one of the main bad guys looked like an evil brad robinson!
  
• penn and teller at the rio. also pretty entertaining, they put on a good show, doing several tricks while revealing the secrets to a couple of other older standard magician’s bits. penn does talk a little too much, although i guess that’s his shtick. i still can’t figure out how they did the last trick, though. the cool thing is they run out at the end of the show and meet you in the hallway so you can talk to them and get autographs, etc.
  
• le reve at the new wynn. this is the new show created by franco dragone, who used to be one of the creative collaborators in cirque du soleil, and directed ‘O’ and ‘mystere’, as well as creating ‘saltimbanco’, ‘quidam’, and ‘allegria’. it was titled a collection of imperfect dreams, which i guess is apt, because it felt a little disjointed and fragmentary to me. it was interesting to watch, sort of a cross between ‘O’ and ‘ka’ in that it was half aquatic and half aerial, but didn’t really seem quite cohesive: there would be people who fly out in elaborate costumes for just a minute just to show they were cool, and then fly back out to no purpose. perhaps i was annoyed to be there at all; i only agreed to see the show to prevent one of my guys from seeing dragone’s other creation, ‘a new day’, which is the celine dion show at caesars. because NO ONE SHOULD EVER GO SEE CELINE DION.

getting back to the room on friday at 7am to take a con call is not pleasant when you’ve been up all night. honestly. i don’t recommend it.

you know it’s time to go home from vegas when all of your clothes smell like stripper.

Posted at May 6, 2005 6:02 PM