Oh, Vegas. I went to Vegas with a bunch of girlfriends to celebrate one’s birthday. It was a complete trip. I left LA on Friday with a plane full of wannabe-celebrities including far too many models. The guy behind me in the Southwest line was rattling on and on on his phone about getting limos for this and tickets for that and making himself sound really self-important for one of the models in hearing range. She realized this and was rolling her eyes at this guy the whole time. Finally, she started talking to a perfectly normal looking guy, much to his shock. It’s Southwest. What multi-millionnaire flies Southwest to look important? Anyhow…

Got on the plane. The guy next to me shared his goal: to get as inebriated as possible without getting incarcerated. Of course, he didn’t use 5 syllable words. I was amused. I practice yoga breathing to remember that i was going to Vegas for my friends, not because i liked Vegas. Of course, framing it as an anthropological exercise *really* helped.

So, i spent a lot of time people watching and talking to folks. I watched a woman try to pick up 4 different johns of exactly the same time. One gave her a room key. I was impressed. He was nervous. I watched a pimp-daddy wedding party and a lot of midwesterners on their big vacation. The best were the kids – they were sooo in awe of the dazzle of Vegas – big eyes, lots of pointing. I was staying in the Luxor and the deck outside of my room looked down on the whole scene. Great for people watching. Another one of our party was in the same zone, finding out about teen curfews and culture growing up here. Perfect, considering the recent NYTimes article on American Dreamers: the Lure of Las Vegas. It really is a good people-watching town.

And it really is where regular America comes together in weird ways. Although i was not on a specific voting mission, i had quite a few political conversations by engaging people about the Patriot Act and the various anecdotes i heard about all Vegas visitors from the holidays being considered terrorist suspects. I used that to launch into discussions about where the country is going, what it means to have freedom. This was particularly easy given that in the land of sin, people are all about maximizing their freedoms and even the local papers/news covering Reagan’s death were talking about how much more conservative the Republican party is now. I love getting reactions equivalent to: “Huh. I hadn’t thought of it that way before…” Oh so much fun. Changing political views one person at a time.