The city is famous for "The King Of Rock’n’Roll", Britney Spears was briefly married, Robbie Williams has sung about the view - Las Vegas plays the main role in so many films and songs. In days gone by as well as today...
Robbie Williams is right: This view is unlike anything you've ever seen. There's New York with the Empire State and Chrysler Building on the left side. Take a short look on the right and there you'll see the Eiffel Tower and its petite peak reaching to the sky into the gray clouds.
The Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino at the southern end of the Las Vegas Boulevard (better known as "The Strip"), it is one of the penultimate dreams of Las Vegas. It was opened five years ago. The Venetian, Paris and the Palms followed. But Robbie Williams has never been there. But he spent some nights in Mandalay Bay, even though the hotel staff does not remember him. Robbie Williams, in any case, has written two songs about the famous hotel and casino: "Road to Mandalay" and "Me and My Monkey". "Me and My Monkey" is a kind of allegorical road pop song in which the first-person narrator visits Las Vegas and its neon signs - together with a pistol and a stoned monkey. The first place they visit is their hotel room on the 33rd Floor of the Mandalay Bay.
Robbie Williams is right: This view is unlike anything you've ever seen. There's New York with the Empire State and Chrysler Building on the left side. Take a short look on the right and there you'll see the Eiffel Tower and its petite peak reaching to the sky into the gray clouds.
The Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino at the southern end of the Las Vegas Boulevard (better known as "The Strip"), it is one of the penultimate dreams of Las Vegas. It was opened five years ago. The Venetian, Paris and the Palms followed. But Robbie Williams has never been there. But he spent some nights in Mandalay Bay, even though the hotel staff does not remember him. Robbie Williams, in any case, has written two songs about the famous hotel and casino: "Road to Mandalay" and "Me and My Monkey". "Me and My Monkey" is a kind of allegorical road pop song in which the first-person narrator visits Las Vegas and its neon signs - together with a pistol and a stoned monkey. The first place they visit is their hotel room on the 33rd Floor of the Mandalay Bay.
Robbie Williams - Me and My Monkey
To visit Las Vegas it's best to start at the northern end of the "Strip". For the sake of the shock. In the north there's the run-down Las Vegas.
At Circus Circus it actually looks pretty similar as it is described by Hunter S. Thompson in his journalistic novel "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" in 1971: "The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos . . . but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space." Okay, maybe a bit exaggerated: The Circus Circus, opened in 1968, is merely the run-down family hell of Las Vegas. I got dizzy looking at the psychedelic carpet pattern - and look at the guests: Their clothes come from "A-Team" (men) and "Dallas" (women), their stomachs from McDonald's.
But the Circus Circus is one of the most profitable houses in Las Vegas. A cathedral of the White Trash. With an indoor roller coaster.
Diagonally opposite, the Sahara is even worse: In "Ocean's Eleven", the original film from 1960, the Sahara is (besides the Riviera, Flamingo, Desert Inn and Sands) one of five casinos that had been mugged by the "master thieves" Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. in only one night.
The Hilton International is right behind the Sahara. Elvis destroyed his own myth for years by singing every night at the Hilton and showing his irresistible ruin to a huge public who was addicted to the endless and, in this case, tragic entertainment of Las Vegas.
Now the Hilton has its own Elvis impersonator. His name is Trent Carlini - and his performance sounds just like his name. Ridiculous.
The only leftover of "the King", which remembers the visitors of his former presence, is a kitschy statue in the entrance area of the casino. Las Vegas has no time for nostalgia. And no money. What is profitable will still exist or be expanded in the future. If the business is broke down - the blaster will be called.
Rien ne vas plus.
No comments:
Post a Comment