Friday, May 29, 2009

Preparing My Mind for Vegas

In case you wondered where my blog posts, sketches, and incessant twittering have been, I have been practicing the New Reticence. Yeah, it's something really new and cutting edge that I started and nobody else is doing yet. It's a real inward, mindful trend. I love it. Ashton Kutcher will be doing it soon.

I just got used to being home after New York and I'm back on the road again tomorrow. This time it's Vegas, that absurd wasteland of the human soul. The dancing fountains, the replicant architecture, the wrinkled gamblers dragging their little oxygen dispensers on wheels from casino to casino. The place where chubby midwesterners walk zombie-like up and down the strip sucking on straws sticking out of miniature Eiffel Towers and Empire State Buildings. Fear and loathing, for sure. And Vegas has become a thousand times more psycho since Hunter S. Thompson set his famous story there. His Vegas was old school. Now it's Walt Disney out of his mind on meth and mescaline skin poppers, straddled by a Coyote Ugly dancer on a bad PCP jag attempting to waterboard him with cowboy boot full of Tequila. Bad craziness!

I will be exhibiting again at the International Licensing Show, which is taking place for the first time in Vegas, where it really belongs. This year, just like at Surtex, I'm doing everything bare bones. I've got a room at the dirt-cheap Excalibur casino. I imagine that I'll be kept awake all night by the bells and buzzers of the slots and the stale cigarette stench emanating from the curtains and walls. Note to self: bring earplugs and noseplugs. It's 99 degrees but feels like 103 according to weather reports. You can't ever find anything as mundane and useful as a grocery store or movie theater, it's all David Copperfield Jack Daniels House of Blues Hard Rock Planet Hollywood. I never quite get what's going on when I'm in Vegas, can't trust my instincts. I never know the difference between a friendly face and a hooker, there's such a fine line. I'm never quite comfortable sketching for the same reason. I always expect casino security or some weirdo to sidle up next to me to find out what I'm doing. And then of course there's the overpowering odor of financial desperation everywhere. I'll be live blogging it. Tune in starting tomorrow.

2 Comments:

Blogger Dorothy Reinhardt said...

Good Luck, Lloyd. Exhibiting is hard work and sorta boring at the same time.

4:06 PM  
Blogger Jen Sorensen said...

Ah, the Excalibur. I stayed there once in 1997. Enjoy the Medieval kitsch!

6:46 PM  

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