Monday, December 1, 2008

Thanksgiving in Las Vegas: A Very True Story

Some argue that the road to Las Vegas is dull and dusty, a stretch of nothing between Los Angeles and sin. But for Lindsey, Anthony, Louis and Vanessa, the attractions began just outside the borders of dogma, with many hours still to press on before the redemptive glow of the Strip. They found the theme and origin of their Thanksgiving weekend on the side of the road at a very famous, and yet somehow still culturally foreign idea.
Nestled deep in the C-major Ohm of the lavish casinos wearing their walking shoes, marveling at the gifts of design and aesthetic Vegas offers for free, there was no better state to enter than metamorphosis. When Willie Wonka loans his lamps to the Wynn, ancient Rome frames modern fashion, when you can see Paris from New York and Egypt from Camelot, when your way across the street is up and over a lightsaber graveyeard or under a Michaelangelo, your own truest, most fantastical shape emerges. Anthony lent his body to a wine bar hovering fourteen floors up while his mind walked a labyrinth of poetry.Lindsey dove into the city's ether, and where others had drowned in cacophony or sunk into unconcscious muck, she could float, she could breathe, she could see.Louis grew to incredible heights and embedded himself in the circuitry until he was one with the light.
Vanessa became a lion.
Four transformed members of the Rebel Alliance, arms linked and minds locked together, stormed the Imperial Palace with pens and songs and texts and dances. Electric, poetic, aquatic, and fierce, they drove the long way home in solidarity with a world whose distinctions, dichotomies, and categories (especially Real vs. Fictional) had been exploded by the temporary river running under the hotel. No elevator, no tram, no landscaped walkway, no velvet rope, no mirrored wall, no parking lot, no "public" or "private" space will ever be the same again.

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