Back to the Grind

The Nine Inch Nails concert was awesome. It's hard to describe.. perfect sound, great view, very long set (they played almost 3 hours)... I chatted briefly with Ron Jeremy..

It was a nice trip, which I usually measure by a lack of disasters. There were no disasters. We had a fantastic room, awesome sushi (right in the Mandalay Bay casino), decadent spa treatments.. set new records for dining expense.. and saw a great concert.

The one flaw was that we flew coach, which we're not used to doing anymore. It's not as if we like to spend vast sums of money on first class seats, but John is clever in that all his business expenses (even stuff clients reimburse) earn flyer miles.. vast sums of miles that are used to always fly first class for free. The problem is that the airlines have cut back on their schedules, thus cutting back on the availability of flights that are miles available.

There is a huge difference between coach and first class. Sure, everyone gets to the destination at the same time.. but in coach, it helps to be a member of Cirque de Soleil.

I still think Las Vegas is itself a large "bubble". It's monumentally expensive, even if you're not losing a bunch of money gambling. I remember the first time I went to Vegas with my parents, some 30 years ago. The rooms were dirt cheap, and the food was basically free. Sure, the rooms weren't awesome, and the food was buffet, but they knew they were getting their money anyway because people fed the machines. Shows were inexpensive.. and there were places you could dump off the kids for a few hours and it was basically free.

Today, the hotels are magnificent.. truly.. a modern wonder of architecture and design. We've stayed in some exceptional hotels, and the Mandalay Bay is right up there, if not even more impressive. We ate in a couple of restaurants at the hotels, and the food was not buffet.. it was not cheap line cooked meals. The restaurants are professionally managed, with high caliber chefs doing custom work. We paid a small fortune for dinner.. twice.. There was lots of "OMG that's awesome" - but still.. you could feed a family of 40 in Guatemala for life for what we spent on two dinners.

How many people can afford Las Vegas? The answer is.. not many.. and it's going to be a lot fewer in the years ahead.

...

The camera in my phone is awful.. takes really crappy pictures. It's old, and I don't need all the gizmos in a new phone. But.. when the objective is not to have a clear and high resolution image, what you get is cool as fuck on its own.

/update

Holly shit;

CANBERRA (Reuters) – An Australian gambler who lost millions in a A$1.4 billion ($909 million) gaming spree is suing one of the country's largest casinos, claiming he was targeted by managers despite a known gambling addiction.

In a case which lawyers say could have implications stretching to China, gambling addict Harry Kakavas is suing Crown Casino in Melbourne for A$50 million damages after a mammoth 14-month baccarat binge in which he lost A$37 million.

And I was irritated for blowing a couple hundred.. $909 million?