I was in Las Vegas for a few days, staying at the brand-spanking-new Cosmopolitan hotel. Here’s a photo of me hard at work in the Queue Bar on the casino floor. Do not be fooled by the photo — I promise you, I am plotting our future with my business partner, and the the drinks and the cigar and the video gambling are brainstorming devices. I highly recommend this bar, by the way, because we hit it every day we were there, and one way or another, they found ways to not charge us for the $14 drinks. And Las Vegas is one of the few remaining civilized places where one can get a drink because, again, please note:  cigar. Most other places one is asked to huddle outdoors like a night watchman. We so thoroughly enjoyed ourselves the afternoon that this photo was taken that we blew off dinner for more drinks, almost missed our plane, and over-tipped the town car driver.

Two nights before we actually did get something to eat, but given that we’d already been to a catered business reception (and there were three more the following night), we didn’t quite sit down for a dinner meal. What we really wanted were oysters. So we dropped into Sage at the Atria, the other, conjoined, new casino in Las Vegas.  Here’s what I had:

A rabbit amouse bouche. (My partner asked, “What are the little crunchy parts?” I said: “The bones.”

Oysters with red peppers in tequila with garlic.

Smith’s Nut Brown Ale, from England.

Panna cotta with mixed berries, strawberry champagne soup and black pepper meringues.

Caramel chocolate soup.

I anticipate that the jaded among you might look at these photos and say, for instance, “That just looks like hot chocolate.”  But no, it is caramel chocolate soup. It’s soup. And those aren’t just berries in a bowl with a shortcake substitute. No. That is a panna cotta with mixed berries, strawberry champagne soup and black pepper meringues. If you note nothing else, note the soup. My dining companion thought some of these admixtures, such as the tequila with the oysters, exotic. But really, no more exotic than some of what I grew up eating:  turtles, rattlesnakes, and eels. (And some of it in the form of soup.)

While in Las Vegas, I was also invited to take a tour of Zappos. I’ve never ordered from Zappos, but you may have. Many people do, because they average $12,000,000 to $16,000,000 in sales every day. Here’s what the nerve center of Zappas looks like (and before you look, I pledge to you, these are actual photos of the interior of a multi-billion-dollar operation).

I know. It looks like what’s left over after a three-day neighborhood rummage sale. Zappos’ culture insists on relentless hilarity. Fun, fun, fun is the order of the day, but the relentless “fun” to me seemed like hive mentality:  “You WILL sing/honk/dance when you hear the bell/whistle/horn.” I was there for about an hour and it was like trying to think straight while you’re in a pinball machine. See the woman in the lower right? See how her attitude seems to scream out, “I’m trying to focus here”? I kept thinking, “If I worked here, I’d have to leave the building to get anything done.” Hey — it must be working great for them. But sometimes some of us need four walls and a door we can close.

Finally, I wanted to mention that I got to see another Cirque du Soleil show while I was there:  “O.” While I wished there were more story — or, even, any story, one that explained the various costumes and characters I was getting teased with, without my having to buy the program to learn what that story was — the feats of acrobatics, strength and diving were awe-inspiring. The tickets were $185 each, a price I might have been willing to entertain except we’re getting ready to make a very very large purchase. But then someone at one of the receptions offered us a ticket (he had two and needed only one), and then someone at the Bellagio will-call had an extra he was selling for only $140, so we saw the show for just $70 each and, as luck would have it, both of our seats were in the same row and close together — and those seats were fifth row center. Pretty amazing seats for a pretty spectacular show, one where three people dive simultaneously from a three-story height into what had just a minute before been a sealed floor and is now a pool of water you didn’t realize was deep enough to catch them. Well worth seeing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 12th, 2011 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.