After all that business of announcing new eBooks, have a nice long rambly journal!
[edit: updated the journal a tiny bit, it is now augmented with handy links to relevant items.]
I was in Las Vegas, Nevada, this last weekend, thanks to the generous offer from my amazing aunt, Rachel. As a starving artiste I always thought the trips to Las Vegas, New York, England, etc. would come much, much later. Possibly on book tour or, if I was very lucky, when I myself was well-off enough to afford to live and work abroad. That last option is still very appealing to me.
However I am rich in one respect, and that is in supportive relations, who seem to have gotten it into their heads (bless them), that my work would greatly benefit from exposing its creator to Culture and Travel, and thus I have already gotten to see many of my dream locations somewhat ahead of my imagined schedule.
Las Vegas was never on that list. It is everything opposed to my chosen style of life (down-to-earth, small-town, rural, trees, dogs off leash, bike-friendly, car-free, quiet, dark), but it has, in my book, two things going for it.
One of them is a man named Penn Jillette. The other is another man (a little older) named Teller. Together they make a duo magic act that has performed all over the world and has, for the last decade and onwards, been in residence in Las Vegas. From my point of view this had both advantages and disadvantages. Advantage: Las Vegas is only a hop and a jump (a big one, over the Sierra Nevada mountains) from where I live. Disadvantage: they were in Las Vegas.
Changing gears for a moment: if you’ve browsed my site you’ve probably noticed there aren’t many pictures of me on it. Oh, there are pictures by me, but the closest thing you get to a portrait is the weird painted person making silly faces in the margins. This person is Kapi, the “Ostrich-Frog”, who was born out of watching hours of Cirque du Soleil on DVD followed by an afternoon in the bathroom playing around with face paints. I like using her as an online avatar in lieu of actual pictures because it prevents the illusion that you may learn anything about me by looking at my picture. Indeed, I think you can learn more about me by looking at Kapi.
Cirque du Soleil is about as different from Penn & Teller as you can get in show business. One is a pair of middle-aged, average looking guys in charcoal gray suits… the other is… well… hundreds of sickeningly fit acrobats in skin-tight leotards with sequins. Soleil also has the added advantage of having a dozen touring shows that, with any luck, might wind up in a city closer to me than Las Vegas. Might.
So when my awesome aunt Rachel invited me to come along to Vegas for a weekend to see a Cirque du Soleil show AND Penn & Teller naturally I jumped at it. Like an ostrich-frog jumps at… well, whatever an ostrich-frog likes to eat best. (Don’t know what this is. Should probably ask Kapi.)
What follows are garbled, fuzzy impressions of what happened next.
The flight does not bear speaking of. One day, when I am feeling more than usually masochistic I will compile all my flying hijinks into one journal. But that is not today. I am writing this on Monday night, while still feelings the repercussions of today’s air sickness. Let us leave it at that.
I don’t have to tell you what Las Vegas is, but I want to remind you: In a western, land-locked state in the United States of America, there is a desert. In the middle of this dry, barren desert is a city. But no ordinary city. This is a city made of neon lights and high-rise hotels, sprawling suburbs and massive water management systems. Gambling is legal here (though prostitution is still questionable). And people flock here. From all over the states. From all over the world. They come, they gamble, they lose money. Sometimes they see shows. These are some of the greatest shows in the world, I believe. Certainly, some of the best I have ever seen. The shows were the reason I went.
My aunt put us (her, me, my brother) up at the Bellagio, which I knew from being one of the three hotels George Clooney and Brad Pitt robbed in Ocean’s 11. My aunt says everyone else knows it for the fountain out in front.
The Bellagio is one of the swankier hotels in Vegas, and probably the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in in my life. I have stayed in nice hotels before, but they all had this strained, unhappy feeling, as if they were trying to be something more fancy than they actually were. The Bellagio wasn’t trying, it already was. From the mirror-studded horse statue in the lobby to the ridiculously over-priced snack tray in the rooms, it was class. How class? The plants were real. Think about that for a second: how many times have you been charmed by the sight of an indoor plant in a hotel only to find out that it was plastic? In the Bellagio, they are real. They are probably as terrified as the plants in Crowley’s flat (from Good Omens), and in fact I would not have been surprised if they hadn’t got Crowley to do the flora, but they were still real.
My aunt said, before we left on the trip, that the hotels were not just where you stayed when you went to Las Vegas. The hotels were the destination. And she was right. Evidence of this fact can be found in that after arriving on Saturday night it took us until early afternoon the next day just to get outside the hotel again. In this time we checked in, had dinner, saw a Cirque du Soleil show, went to sleep, had breakfast, and wandered aimlessly for a good two hours or more.
All in the same hotel.
Eventually we did get outside, where we ambled down the Strip past some decidedly not-as-nice hotels, and swerving carefully past the gaping dark chasms that opened like maws from the base of these buldings, in whose depths could be glimpsed, winking in deceptive welcome, the spinning colors and flashing lights of the casino. It was not hard to avoid, actually; the stench that rolled out from these openings (some hellish combination of cigarette smoke, urine, junk food, old make-up, stale cologne and crushed dreams) was enough to keep us away.
The purpose of this foray into the greater world was to visit the Venetian, which, according to my aunt, had a really cool room which had a ceiling made to look like a sky, and supposed to be built after the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. I was skeptical. You see, we have actually been to Italy, my aunt and I, and though we did not make it to Venice we saw a great deal of Lucca and Florence, equally authentic Italian cities. Not surprisingly, the fake Grand Canal in the Venetian did not compare favorably with the dullest, dirtiest back alley of Florence… at least as far as authentic charm went. In the capacity of over-priced stylish wares it fared rather better, though I believe even the smallest gelato shop in Florence had better sweets than what was being sold there.
It made me appreciate the fact that the Bellagio, while being built on a supposedly Italian theme, remains steadfastly U.S.A. Las Vegas. It is primarily a U.S. Las Vegas style hotel, with little nods to Italian accents here and there. In essence, it is not trying to compete with the real Italy; it is taking some of its stylistic cues from Italy, but it is using them to build something of its own. Which is, I think, better.
It was this same pretentiousness that put us off our across-the-street neighbor, the Paris, which suffered from the same problem of trying to copy a real city. As we walked through the restaurant district of the Paris (yes, there are restaurant districts within these hotels), under yet another fake sky, I turned to my aunt (who has been to Paris) and said, “Isn’t this just like Paris?”
“Oh yes!” she said, every word dripping sarcasm. “With all the people who speak perfect English? Totally!”
Of the hotels I shall speak no more. I think they have a big enough opinion of themselves already and I do not want to encourage them overmuch. Instead I will go back to something I mentioned earlier: the Cirque du Soleil show we saw on Saturday night. The show, which is in residence at the Bellagio (and the real reason we chose to stay there), is called “O”, and features a pool. That was what I was told. A more accurate description would be: a giant semi-sentient set built of hydraulic lifts which rise and fall, creating different shaped pools of different depths, with a mess of rigging and tracks overhead that raise and lower acrobats every which way.
We were seated in the middle, but far in the back. Because of this I could not see up close, but I could also take in the whole of the set, which was a little overwhelming. One of the things I enjoy about seeing a show live is that I can look at whatever I want, not just what the camera is pointing at. But even so I find most shows will channel the audience’s attention to one or two things. The important things. I have not seen any other Cirque du Soleil shows, but “O” is not like that at all. There are interesting things happening everywhere, all the time, at many different levels. At one time I found the main act to be a hair-raising trapeze duo, while at the same time behind and below them men in red suits were doing a sort of Irish dance and then all of a sudden there was a procession of characters across the front of the stage and then—where did that cellist come from? oh goodness did I miss the main trick?
It was altogether overwhelming. Not helping was the fact that the show didn’t start until 10 pm and I had had a rigorous flight and a bicycle ride that day. All this culminated in me nearly falling asleep during the clown act, more’s the pity. I think it is a testament to the amazing spectacle that is a Cirque du Soleil show that it managed to keep me awake at all.
There was a gift shop outside the theater (of course), and to this I kept returning over the course of the next day. I eventually selected three items to purchase (a mug, a t-shirt, and a mask) and I went to pay for them. Here something funny happened, and I mention it because it leads nicely into the next part of my trip.
I don’t know a lot about stage magic (fictional, “real” magic, I can go on abut for hours), and I am absolute rubbish at it. I am too honest, you see. It’s not just that I dislike playing tricks on people, it is that it is physically hard. Like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time. It is hard for me to lie to people. But I do know a few of the principles. One of these is misdirection: causing the viewer to look at a certain thing so they do not see the important thing that would give away the trick, thus creating the illusion that “magic” has happened. Misdirection is a powerful thing: Teller discovered that he could do the “cups and balls” trick with clear plastic cups, and the misdirection was so strong the audience still didn’t notice how the balls moved around or when they turned into potatoes or whatnot.
Misdirection is used all the time by con artists to get their victim to look away or become distracted at a key moment, allowing the con to get away with their scam. And, I have since learned, it can also happen by accident.
I had struck up a conversation with one of the cashiers about tourists, living in a tourist town, and the various pros and cons inherent therein. We had got on to talking about all sorts of things by the time she went to ring me up, and the conversation had drawn in her coworker as well. I got them talking about their families, how they came to Vegas, and so on. Eventually, once my things had been packed and paid for, I made my excuses and left.
It wasn’t until I got back up to my room that I discovered that I had successfully (and entirely without meaning to) distracted the cashier to the extent that she had forgotten to charge me for one of the items. I compared the receipt to the bag, and indeed found one item extra in the bag not accounted for on the receipt.
“You could just count that as your winnings,” my aunt pointed out.
But I decided to return, receipt in hand, and pay for the extra item. The cashier’s chagrined response to this was, “Oh, what a nice lady you are!”
Indeed. It is one of the reasons I am terrible with stage magic. Unless I do it accidentally.
What I find a little disturbing is that, despite this natural aversion to tricking people, I relate to Penn Jillette and Teller quite a lot. Especially Teller. From reading other people’s blogs and articles and books and such, I have come to the conclusion that everyone’s brain is different and runs on slightly different tracks. The people we often think of as having mental disorders simply have brains that are running on tracks so wildly different than our own we can hardly comprehend them. To a lesser degree we all have mental disorders compared to each other. Each brain has slightly different tracks, though for the most part these all run roughly parallel so we can easily imagine what it must be like for another person.
If we continue with this analogy, then I think Teller’s brain runs on tracks a little up and to the right of mine. There’s no political innuendo there, it’s just the feeling I get. But there are things he’s written that make me feel like the tracks have shifted, and for a few minutes we’re running side-by-side, neck and neck. Then he eats a live cockroach and the tracks diverge again. (I have never eaten a cockroach, but if I do, it will already be dead. Preferably cooked. With some nice Indian seasoning. We all have our little differences.)
Put simply: Teller has written things I wish I had thought up. There are only one or two other people who have done that. (One them is Diana Wynne Jones, whose tracks ran to the left and a little ahead of mine.) I also look up to him as a sort of role-model, being as he is a fiercely perceptive intellect trapped in a “cute, little” body. Though I can make no assertions about the quality of my own intellect, I can with a fair amount of confidence say that I am “cute,” if only because that is what everyone and their dog and grandmother tell me. UUUGGHH!
I like Penn Jillette as a character. It’s hard to judge the characters of celebrities because they often come protected by a publicity shell. So I judge the shell. I pay them the respect of looking no further than the mask they have provided. So to rephrase that: I like the public character Penn Jillette puts out. I like it because he seems, to put it bluntly, like a very nice man who is trying his hardest to be an asshole.
A few years ago I had to work closely with a real asshole. It was stressful, and to relieve the tension I would go on YouTube late at night and watch Penn and Teller videos. On one of these videos a string of those always charming YouTube comments had sprung up, discussing the asshole-ness of Penn Jillette, and to what degree it had grown large enough to swallow certain celestial bodies.
And I thought: “Wait a minute, Penn Jillette isn’t an asshole, my co-worker is an asshole! There’s a difference—what is it?”
Here’s the difference I found: real assholes have no concept of self-awareness. They have no idea they they are being assholes, that what they say and what they do is actively hurting the people around them. As soon as you realize you are being an asshole, you cease to be one. It may sound paradoxical, but I think it’s somewhere close to the truth.
Penn Jillette is one of the most self-aware characters I’ve ever seen. I think in order to have a public persona at all you need to have heaps more self-awareness than the average person, because you are living not just through yourself, but also through this construct of carefully selected qualities about yourself. Also, he is big enough (6’7”) that one must imagine he needs all that self-awareness not to be constantly bumping into things.
I’m not sure exactly where I’m going with all this. The Penn & Teller show was wonderful. Amazing. Astounding. It started at 9 pm and I was well rested. I never came close to falling asleep. Dafydd, my fuzzy red gay dragon from Wales, tweeted constantly. Penn even tweeted back at him. It was a good night.
As if their show wasn’t good enough, Penn and Teller go one further; they actually come out of the theatre and stand around signing autographs and taking pictures. And they stand in the way of the exit. None of this sneaking around to the back door and grabbing the stars as they try to escape into the night. “We know you want to see us,” they seem to be saying. “So here we are.”
They stand separately, so the crowd splits. There are no lines. No crash barriers. Everyone just sort of globs together in this gaggle, with a magician in the center with a clear space of about seven or eight feet working his way across the front row of fans. I saw one security guard (near Teller) who basically stood in the back and made sure no one tried anything naughty.
It was different from other celebrity signings I have attended. It was very casual, very relaxed. The crowds quickly dispersed, and yet it seemed the magicians took extra time with everyone to talk, answer questions, and take pictures. I didn’t realize the difference until later, but I think it was this: Penn and Teller know how to Manage people. This may sound obvious, given that they are stage magicians, but its something that a lot of famous, successful celebrities cannot do; they cannot Manage people without seeming to do so. (I could mention some by name, but I won’t.) This is because it is a hard thing to do. But I think it is a worthwhile thing to learn, and if you doubt that go see Penn & Teller and get something signed. You’ll see.
I brought Dafydd to the signing. People have varied reactions to him, so I was glad that Penn and Teller took to him right away. I was also glad for my awesome aunt, who was on with her camera and took such lovely pictures. I have mixed feelings about having my picture taken with celebrities, since it seems to imply that we got to know each other better than we actually did, but having pictures of Penn Jillette and Teller holding a stuffed, fuzzy red gay dragon plushie from Wales? Priceless.
Then it was Monday and time to fly home. We had breakfast in the Cafe Bellagio, which served the best all-American cuisine I’ve ever had. It was right next to the Conservatory, a square with a giant skylight which, at the time of our visit, was decked out with anamatronic dragons, fountains, and demonic porcelain children covered in chrysanthemums in honor of the Chinese New Year. Apart from the shows, and our blissfully quiet room, the Conservatory in the Bellagio was probably my favorite part of Las Vegas. It was certainly the one thing I did not expect, and it is a memory I will always cherish.
The flight home I will not speak of. Let it only be said that the anti-airsickness medication I took ahead of time was woefully inadequate and there was vomit involved.
Though I have no real desire to see Las Vegas again, the shows were so good I think I shall return there at some point. And for all the criticisms I and others have leveled against it I can say this: that although Las Vegas is a city of contrivances, at least it contrives to be entertaining.
It also has Penn & Teller live at the Rio. Did I mention?
Goldeen Ogawa shares other abstract aspects of Penn Jillette and Teller: she is an atheist, an autodidact, and is a fan of Piff the Magic Dragon. You can email a response to her at goldeenogawa@gmail.com or tweet her @GrimbyTweets. She will try not to misdirect or Manage you. She promises.
Dafydd Y. Ddraig Goch is a fuzzy red gay dragon from Caerphilly Castle, Wales. If you want to know what it is like to be grasped in the great hands of Penn Jillette and the (only slightly less great) hands of Teller, you can email him at dafyddyddraig@gmail.com and twitter him @DafyddEihun. Note: he only dates other dragons.
Kapi is not interested in talking to you. She is busy cooking cockroaches.
