What I Learned in Vegas, Part I

The first in an occasional series of observations made during and after my first trip to Sin City.


There is nothing in southern Nevada but Las Vegas.

This is an extraordinarily difficult concept for those who've never gone to Vegas to understand. Particularly those who, like me, live near a major city and are used to the notion of what a metropolitan downtown should look like.

Las Vegas's dirty little secret is that, besides The Strip, there is nothing around. This is not an exaggeration. Upon flying into the Valley, if you able to look out the windows on both sides of the plane, you will spy sand and distant mountains on one side, while huge casino-hotels with mountains in the background are on the other side.

The example of New York City is instructive here. When one flies into Newark-Liberty, to the left is the most famous skyline in the world, and to the right is...well...Newark.

But the thing about the New York skyline is that the entire island of Manhattan is filled with enormous buildings, punctuated here and there with larger structures (such as, say, the Empire State Building). And Newark, while grody as hell, represents some semblance of what one might consider at the tail end of some crazy asshole's definition of civilization.

The skyline of Vegas, on the other hand, almost exclusively consists of one street. And sure, the Palms, the Rio, and the Trump Tower are just a few examples of buildings that aren't literally on The Strip, but when you get outside a few blocks radius of Las Vegas Boulevard, you find long flat stretches of single story businesses and houses, as if the suburbs are the city.

It's a lot like an old-school frontier town from early wild-west movies. Except that, instead of a general store, saloon, barber, and other such quaint businesses, you have enormous fucking bright shiny hotels. And then...nothing.

Whether nothing is better than Newark remains to be seen.

Not So Fast, Delaware...

I may have just given Maryland the what-for, but don't you dare think that your neighbor to the southwest will be shouldering all the blame for today's horrendous drive home. I saw some things on your roads today that would never have flied in the Garden State.

Firstly, I don't quite understand how so many people could be wanting to get back into Maryland, god-awful hole that it is, that the entire southbound length of I-95 in Delaware could be a parking lot. And this is not hyperbole or even slight exaggeration. I sat in a tiny bit of traffic leading up to the northbound tolls, but it was a fairly clear (kinda sorta) run from there.

However, a look to my left at any given time revealed the whole highway at a standstill. It was stopped from the tollbooth all the way up to the 95/495-295/NJ Turnpike split before the Delaware Memorial Bridge. For such a tiny state, there sure are a lot of people stuck there -- mostly, unsurprisingly, just trying to pass through.

But this traffic revealed one of the most ridiculous traffic anomalies I've seen in some time. Because for those of you who've never had the (dis)pleasure of driving down I-95 through Delaware, you should know that it's approximately 10 miles in length. And since Delaware's a small state with not a lot going for it, they need to make as much revenue as possible from people trying to race through those 10 miles as fast as possible (as if anyone could blame them). As such, the road is fucking crawling with cops, most of which are usually busy citing impatient drivers.

But today, there was only one cop on I-95. He was a Delaware State Trooper, located just past the only rest stop in the state, his car pointed towards the traffic as if prepared to nab anyone driving a mere single mph over the limit.

Time for a pop quiz.

You are a Delaware State Trooper, positioned to nab speeders in the manner described above. To which side of the highway do you point your car?

(a) towards the side of the road where traffic is progressing at a smooth rate

or

(b) towards the side of the road where traffic is at a goddamn standstill?

If you guessed (a), you're probably thinking way too logically to be a viable candidate and should consider a different career. If, however, you guessed (b), you should probably apply to join your fellow like-minded go-getters of the Delaware Highway Patrol. Way to work hard, boys.

I mean, I-295 through Burlington County is hardly an exhilirating or visually appealing drive, but at least I didn't hit any traffic on any of the New Jersey roads I drove today. What seems to be the problem with the Delmarva?

I Long for a Defined Jaw

As I mentioned to one of my patients earlier today, I'm pretty confident that there's no fat man or woman on Earth who is genuinely happy with being fat. I say this with roughly fifteen years of experience on the matter -- yes, it's true, there was a time when I was both skinny and cute, and what the hell happened to those days is anyone's guess.

And while my "M.lb." plan got sidelined by a number of different logistical problems that come with the being-home-and-not-in-State-College-for-the-summer territory, I've been making a concentrated effort in recent weeks to genuinely slim down. Specifically, by jump-starting my progress with the no-carb plan (which I know isn't a valid long-term weight-loss plan and is probably terrible for me, but if you were sick of being fat and something worked really well, you'd do it too) and then parlaying it into good old-fashioned exercise when I return to Penn State.

In the week and a half since I've been carb-free, I've noticed myself losing. Tomorrow's the official weigh-in, but I'd guess I've lost around five pounds or so, if not a little more. And while my voluptuous man-tits, bulbous ass, and cottage-cheese gut are the three things I'd most like to see vanish as a result of my most recent effort, I determined while in the car today that there's something to be said for the weight that sits in one's face.

Me, I've had a double chin for some time. This may shock many of you -- in fact, it shocked me. I only discovered this double-chin when I realized that the chin-neck area of my body is a nebulous, indistinct area. My chin doesn't get clearly defined so much as the edge of my soul patch slopes at an indiscriminate angle that ends somewhere below my Adam's apple.

And yes, I know that means it's my neck that really disappears, but my jaw is what really suffers because, contrary to popular belief, my face is not round, but rather square. Much more like, say, the left-bottommost Mii face than the left second-from-top that I currently use.

Perhaps this is the source of my complete lack of self-confidence! The epitome of the man's man is the tight-lipped, square-jawed Clint Eastwood-style motherfucker who takes no shit and pulls no punches. This is what I secretly strive to be! I ache to be listened to and respected without question, to have my many moods tolerated with impunity! The key is in the jaw, and my jaw, beneath layers of unsightly cellulite, possesses the definition necessary!

If that's not a reason to lose weight -- besides, of course, my obscene personal vanity -- then I don't know what is.