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.
Last time I was here I was writing a book about American subcultures, counting my pennies to make my advance go further. I stayed at a slightly raffish weekly hotel called the Holiday Royale. Now I’m back making TV, I’m at the marginally more salubrious Embassy Suites. The best part about the Embassy Suites is that they are showing World Cup matches on a big screen in the breakfast area. It is oddly disconcerting hearing American commentators. They stress the second syllable of ‘Gerr-ard’; they say ‘nothing to nothing’ instead of ‘nil-nil’. Stuart, my director, says he heard one say, ‘We’re 15 minutes into half number two’. The matches are shown on network TV, so is America finally falling for the beautiful game? Actually, no. The consensus is still that it’s too slow and low-scoring. An editorial in USA Today proposes changing the rules so that ‘long-range goals’ are worth three points and penalties only one. Other possibilities mentioned: playing with fewer men, and making the goal bigger. The hubris of reforming the world’s favourite game is striking. Is it a more anodyne version of the naivety of trying to transplant US-style democracy to the Middle East?
Las Vegas is in the middle of a $20 billion building boom. For the most part, these developments will cater to up-scale visitors. Among those planned: The Palazzo ($1.8 billion), the Encore ($1.7 billion), the Fontainebleau ($1.5 billion). Statistics show that visitors to the city are now wealthier, younger and spending more. There is also a new trend for residential towers. Donald Trump is building one. Still, old habits die hard. Just past the Venetian — where classical music pipes out across trees and artificial cascades — guys are handing out cards for sex clubs.
Al Gore is a guest on the Larry King Show. He is promoting a documentary about global warming called An Inconvenient Truth. The last time I saw Al Gore on TV was in 2004 when he was bearded and full-bodied and fulminating wildly against the Bush administration. People used to joke that he was wooden. Then they said he’d gone loopy. On Larry King he cuts an urbane figure. The beard is gone. He is jowly, thoughtful, eloquent — perhaps a bit too eloquent. I suspect America has a problem with public figures who use subclauses when they speak. Larry King has shrivelled noticeably. With his prognathous jaw and his combed-back hair, he looks like an ageing silverback in shirt and braces. Gore says he opposed the war in Iraq. Will he run again? He says no, but doesn’t rule it out completely. ‘I don’t expect to be a candidate …I haven’t made a Sherman statement, but I’m not trying to be coy …no intentions, no plans.’ A few days later I read that in the last year an online casino has shortened its odds against Gore winning the 2008 election from 70–1 to 20–1. For a moment I consider placing a bet, then I think about it. Gore beating McCain? I suspect we’d have to see some serious global warming — with tropical-style lambada parties in northern Greenland — before that happened.
There is a large high-tech convention in town. I have to move hotels. From my new room, I can see the spreading valley, the Strip, the new building works and, beyond, the arid brown mountains that ring the city. It is these mountains that make you forgive Las Vegas its excesses. Whatever is happening here — the rampant development, the capitalistic free-for-all — it feels safely contained by its physical geography. That night my taxi-driver turns out be, of all things, French. He is 50 or so, from Nice. He had just got divorced and he was here for six months to improve his English. Is he popular with American passengers? What about the war? ‘Zey have forgotten about zis.’ He likes the weather, he says, as we motor along Paradise Road past the casino signs and the convenience stores. ‘But we are Europeans. Over ’ere zey have no eestory. Zey have no soul.’
Louis Theroux’s The Call of the Weird is published in paperback by Macmillan.
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