Pointing at the Past

Because I'm totally insane sometimes in an OCD sort of way, I've spent an hour or two today updating two Musings entries from 2004:

5/21/04

Las Vegas: The Non-Gamblers' Experience

The Sublime and the Ridiculous: LV as a SF/F Destination

Blame John Scalzi and Joe Loong. John Scalzi wrote about people using moblity scooters to get around the Las Vegas Strip, which reminded me how much fun John (Blocher) and I had walking around the place three years ago taking photos. But when I looked at my two postings about it, I saw something Joe warned us about recently: an old AOL You've Got Pictures album was displayed as a Ken Burns style Woohoo slideshow.

I actually hate the old YPG albums (too small and never worked well for me and my dial-up) and love the Ken Burnsy thing. That's not a problem for me at all. I've even put a Ken Burns Woohoo on my church's main web page. But the tiny, grainy photos in that entry, taken three years ago with a Mavica and edited with whatever I had available at the time, are not improved by scrolling lovingly across an extra-large display of the dark, low-res images. So I've deleted one photo that was especially bad, edited full size versions of eight more shots and added them in. And yes, I left it Ken Burns style. Because I don't quite trust you folks to go take a look at the original entry, here is the revised slideshow:

Hmm. It won't display for me in this entry. Stupid dial-up! I'll be interested to know whether it displays for anyone else. It could be a slow connection issue, or it could simply be the way I copied and pasted it in here. (I did get it to display when I loaded the individual entry, so it's probably a connection speed issue. YGP gets impatient with the wait while the Journals product is still loading the other pictures on the page, not to mention the darn ad.)

But all this is a silly thing to do, isn't it? These are extremely obscure journal entries, virtually unknown to the search engines and remembered only by me. When I posted those musings about our Las Vegas trip in May 2004, I only had about two or three readers. Grainy pictures aside, I wrote what I still think is a really good entry about Las Vegas becoming a viable destination for fans of scence fiction and fantasy, but nobody ever saw it or commented. And this entire journal, Musings from Mâvarin, is virtually abandoned now. So why did I bother fixing up a three year old posting in a disused journal? Um, because I could, I think. And three years later, I still hope someone will read it and leave a comment.

Karen

Tags: Las Vegas, Woohoo, photo editing, AOL-J

The Sublime and the Ridiculous: LV as a SF/F Destination

All pictures by John Blocher, May 16-19th, 2004*

*Update, three years later: a By the Way entry reminded me today of this old AOL-J entry of mine, and I went looking for it. I still like the words, but man-oh-man, the photos look amazingly bad now, especially in the default Ken Burns mode from the recent AOL-J upgrade. So what I've done here is this: I removed the single worst photo and added new edits of eight more. Nothing can completely hide the fact that the photos were taken with a Mavica, and are terribly low-res and grainy by today's standards. After all, these photo files - the originals, mind you - were small enough that twenty of them fit on a single floppy disk. Still, newer photo editing and leaving the result as large a file as possible seems to help a bit. So here you are. Will anyone but me even see this? - Karen

*Update, Nov 2008: AOL Pictures is going away, so no more Woodoo. This is now a Picasa slideshow, which lacks the Ken Burns effect. Phooey.

In recent years, Las Vegas has, almost accidentally, transformed itself into a genre destination. Star Trek fans can run from the Borg, horror fans can explore Dracula's castle, and amateur Egyptologists can pose with a Sphinx or gaze upon the tomb of Tutankhamen. Fantasy fans can stay at a camped-up version of King Arthur's home, watch sirens cause trouble, or check up on some talkative members of the Roman pantheon. If you want to gamble, there are I Dream of Jeannie slot machines. Want souvenirs? Buy a tiny dragon, a full-sized sword, or your very own tricorder. Like motion simulator rides? There are at least half a dozen to choose from, more likely a few dozen.

How did all this happen? I have a theory about that.

I think it's partly an accident, partly a matter of market forces, and partly a demographic shift. In the past thirty years or so, the once-marginalized sf/fantasy fan has gone mainstream. Las Vegas, of all places, is well-suited to capitalize on that progression.

Let's approach this from the demographic angle first. My generation, the baby boomers, was born into houses full of bright plastics, watched Glenn and Aldrin on tv as well as Kirk and Spock, and played advent.exe on University mainframes in college. People thought we were weird as we read Lord of the Rings or wrote about Star Trek, but all that started to change with Star Wars, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and eventually the Internet. Science fiction no longer seems far-fetched, because we're living in the future ourselves. Fantasy no longer looks hokey, because ILM and WETA can do things nowadays that would have made Ray Harryhausen weep. People who watched the Enterprise on tv in the 1960s went to work for NASA later, or possibly for Berman and Braga. People who knew how to confuse Eliza ("IS IT BECAUSE YOU'RE A LITTLE TEAPOT THAT YOU CAME TO SEE ME?") later wrote games for Sega or Electronic Arts. And here's the kicker: the most important trade shows that unveil each new crop of tech gadgets, games and killer aps take place in Las Vegas.

Here's a short history of Las Vegas over the same time period. By the 1970s, the Rat Pack was no longer holding court, and organized crime was socially acceptable only in Puzo novels and Coppola movies. Las Vegas had a seedy, adults-only reputation, which was no longer attractive to most Americans. People with kids were far more likely to go to Anaheim or Orlando, or possibly King’s Island. Even that Las Vegas mainstay, gambling, became less of a draw as Indian casinos started to open around the country in the 1980s.

So Las Vegas reinvented itself as a family destination. Circus Circus was the first family resort, soon followed by Excalibur, and Treasure Island. And it worked. Excalibur had zillions of rooms, but they filled up every night. Hotels from the Sinatra era were torn down to make way for ever-more elaborate themed resorts: Luxor, Bellagio, The Venetian, the Mirage, New York New York, Paris, and I'm probably forgetting a few of them. Other hotels, such as Caesar's Palace and the Hilton, were upgraded. Caesar's got an indoor mall with talking gods and a changing sky. The Hilton got Klingons and the Borg. And after all, why not? Las Vegas used to be about the fantasy of show girls and high rollers, but that was a different era. Now it's about different fantasies, ones that appeal to the tech geeks and their families. These days, a chapel on the Strip can throw a Star Trek wedding for you as easily as an Elvis one. Kids can ride roller coasters, mall rats can ride a gondola between shops, and History Channel buffs can hear what a fictionalized Howard Carter has to say about King Tut.

It isn't all good. Those little chapels on the Strip still remind me inevitably of Marty McFly's Chapel-O-Love, and the Excalibur, let's face it, is silly-looking. Disneyland's castle is far more realistic and evocative, and doesn't half-deafen you with hundreds of slot machines. Still, Las Vegas has definitely gotten better at the themed destination business with each new resort or attraction. The Luxor in particular is as amazing as Excalibur is disappointing. Check out the pictures on this post for examples of each.

If you're a fan of sf, fantasy, horror and technology, and you've already seen enough of Disneyland and Universal for this year, Las Vegas is well worth a look. After all, they’ve built these hotels for us: the baby boomer and younger, technophile, genre-watching geeks.

Karen

Las Vegas: The Non-Gamblers' Experience

 Motion simulator attractions at the Luxor.  Photo by John Blocher.

I'm back.  When we first pulled into town, John really hated Las Vegas; but the themed hotels won him over.  We'll probably go again someday, but not for a while.  Gas, food and lodging on this trip were just about all we could afford, especially when you add in the attraction costs and the few souvenirs we bought. We couldn't afford to see Penn & Teller, Blue Man Group or the Tournament of Kings, unfortunately.  Mostly, we just walked around looking at the different theme resorts, and John took a slew of digital photos. 

The castle architecture and surrounding hype at Excalibur was mostly garish and silly, but at $49 a night we had no complaints.  John and I had a friendly discussion about which sword is Excalibur, the one in the stone or the one that came from the Lady of the Lake, or somehow both.

Star Trek: The Experience was very well done and a lot of fun, although John was a little creeped out by one of the sales clerks, who kept trying to sell us LEDs to fool the Borg.  Admission included two motion simulator attractions in addition to the museum, gift shops and themed restaurant.  The Klingon attraction was based on TNG, with a combination of live actors, real sets and video.  I liked it a lot.  The Borg one, based on Voyager and set just after the end of that series, was even better, despite the fact that I don't like the Borg much as villians.  That show was frenzied and very violent. Another highlight was the meal at Quark's, with its highly original, futuristic presentation of the food.

Luxor, with its Eqypt theme, was absolutely stunning, inside and out.  So were New York, New York and the Venetian.  We never got to Paris (the hotel, not the city), but it was amazing on the outside.  Treasure Island was well done outside, not so great inside.  We didn't see the outdoor ship battle at Treasure Island, called "The Sirens of TI," because high winds scuttled the performances.  Great ships, though.  Mirage was so-so inside and out.

There were several sf/f/horror motion simulator attractions at the different hotels, only one of which, other than the Star Trek ones, we got to do. It was a Doug Trumbull production at the Luxor, about a crystal obelisk in a hidden underground temple.  The story was silly, but it was fun anyway.  The Luxor also had a Dracula's Castle attraction that we didn't feel we had the time or money to do.  Maybe next time! 

And in case anyone is wondering, we didn't spend a penny on gambling.

Karen

See also: The Sublime and the Ridiculous: LV as a SF/F Destination - updated 5/26/07

Tags: Las Vegas, travel, Star Trek

Road Trip

(John posing by my Saturn in 2003. Photo by KFB)

On Wednesday, John and I will have been married for 25 years. That's more than half my life! I have class on Thursday, and anyway we're broke, so our anniversary trip will be a modest one, two nights in Las Vegas with a possible stop at Laughlin or Lake Havasu or both. We're not gamblers, so it will be mostly for the sights--fake volcano, ship battle, pyramid, knights, Klingons--you know, all that spectacle stuff Las Vegas has added in the past decade or two to make it more of a family destination. Maybe John will go see Penn and Teller while I'm reading about taxes!

Karen