Vegas

We spent the last few days in Las Vegas. The boys are on spring break, but we went also to celebrate Nathan's 13th birthday, which was Monday. Having an official teenager in the family makes me feel ancient, but there's been no Mr. Hyde-like transformation into a sullen, hormone-saturated, pain in the ass (yet).

We went to see the show Love by Cirque du Soleil, which is based on the Beatles' music. Nathan is more of a Beatles fan than i've ever been, probably indicating that his musical taste is better. The show was quite good, though more of a dance performance than an acrobatic or circus performance. It was more 3 dimensional than a typical stage show though, with performers entering from both below and above the stage, and multiple points of focus. I enjoyed it more than i thought i would.

We also saw the Blue Man Group at the Venetian. I'd seen bits and pieces of their act over the years, but the show was still a great time. It's so high-energy and funny and joyous that it breaks through the boundary of frivolous and loops back to profound. Giving the performers a literally uniform appearance and eliminating speech seems to enhance what would have otherwise been a relatively normal comedy and music performance. And they have cool t-shirts at the gift shop.

We stayed at the Excalibur, the Camelot-themed hotel. It pretty much sucked. I'd never been to Vegas with my family before, but most of the lower-end casinos employ people whose job it is to harass people into going to see the hotel's shows. It's amazing to me. Except for the phone companies, i can't think of another industry that goes out of its way to irritate its own customers. We started referring to them as "zombies", because of the similarity to the way that zombies behave in video games.

During our time in Vegas, the shootings at Virginia Tech took place. Even in Las Vegas, reporters were asking on the street for people from Virginia. I hate the fact that the shooter, despite being dead, is getting the attention that he wanted. There are people out there right now who think that this insignificant idiot proved his point and demonstrated his power by changing people's lives, however horribly.