Diary

1 July 2006

I arrive in Las Vegas bleary-eyed and irritable, having been awake nearly 24 hours. I’m greeted by the familiar airport slot machines and garish show posters, but something is different. Then I realise it’s the slot machines: they’re functioning but they aren’t making any noise — no electronic jingles, no tinny fanfares. Is it possible they ‘mute’ the machines at night? A rare example of restraint in the 24/7 city. On the escalator a college-aged kid in front of me spies an advertisement for Celine Dion’s ‘A New Day’. ‘Oh God, that makes me want to go to Caesars so bad,’ he says. ‘I don’t like her that much,’ his friend mutters. ‘I was being sarcastic,’ says the first. There is a mildly awkward moment, and I reflect that irony and jetlag don’t mix. Judging from the names of the shows, Las Vegas’s love affair with ersatz French culture is undiminished: ‘Le Rêve, La Femme’, and so on. I’ve heard that hostility to France at the time of the Iraq invasion led to a boycott of the French-themed hotel-casino Paris Las Vegas (part of the wholly non-French Caesars and Harrah’s group), but evidently all is forgiven.

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