Living in Sin: Fantasy and reality in today's Las Vegas

National Review, May 20, 2002 by Jonah Goldberg

Las Vegas

'Are you going to write me a check?" the buxom headliner at the Luxor hotel's "Midnight Fantasy" asks me. "No," I mumble as I put away my pen, a bit distracted because she's wearing cowboy chaps that offer a view of her largely theoretical underwear. I'm taking notes during her show and I guess when a Vegas showgirl sees a pen, she assumes it's to write her a check. She asks my name and repeats it for the whole audience. Then she instructs me: "Move your leg, honey." I comply and uncross my legs which, like my arms, had been constricted in a pretzel of uncomfortable body language: I hate shows, I hate audience participation, I hate this. She sits in my lap and sings to me and I ponder how I can kill myself without drawing any further attention.

When she's done, she sashays back to the stage, turns coquettishly toward me -- so as to ensure that her exposed derriere, shining in the spotlight, "faces" me through her chaps -- and asks, "Would you like to see some more cowgirls, Jonah?" She doesn't wait for my answer and a parade of showgirls returns to the stage to lip-sync another spate of '80s hits, like Billy Idol's "Flesh for Fantasy."

Now, when it comes to topless women, one need not be an "if you've seen two, you've seen 'em all" kind of guy to find this show relentlessly boring. Despite the playbill's promise -- "See every dreaming or waking fantasy you've ever had come to life" -- ten minutes in and I'm sucking the last dregs of scotch off the ice cubes in my glass like it was an antidote to a neurotoxin.

But not everyone feels that way. Shortly after the cowgirl gets off my lap, I catch the eye of one envious older gentleman. Grinning, he gives me a thumbs-up, but holds it low by his hip so his wife doesn't see it. In fact, the audience is full of married couples; the stand-up comic who comes out halfway through the show takes one look at the crowd and says, "Look at all the married couples, this could be a cruise."

He's right. Indeed, a large number of folks in the audience look like they might receive a lot of solicitation mail from AARP. It's impossible to know exactly how many of them came here after loading up on the early-bird senior-citizen special at Denny's, but few seem to have caught on to the irony that this is the 8:30 p.m. showing of "Midnight Fantasy." In fact, there is no midnight showing of "Midnight Fantasy," but apparently "Dinner Hour Fantasy" didn't have the right oomph.

This, apparently, is the future of Vegas. "Sin City," as countless headline writers have noted, "is back." Up and down the Strip, the skyline is dominated by huge, multistory video billboards featuring images of what would have passed for soft porn a generation ago. In my hotel, the MGM Grand, every elevator features a large sign for their nude revue, "La Femme." Small children, old ladies, junior-high-school soccer teams: Everyone sees the same butt -- with just enough frilly thong to keep it legal -- right over the floor-indicator.

It's a carnival of female flesh, year-round. Over 1,000 naked women perform in public on any given evening. Harrah's offers "Skintight," starring Vanna Lace -- whose election as "Miss Nude World" was not, presumably, a reward for reading to the blind. A nightclub called "Skin" is scheduled to open in May; it will feature women shaking their groove thing on platforms while mermaids swim nude in a giant fish tank.

Las Vegas is making a conscious effort to shed the "family-friendly" reputation it earned in the last decade, and don the more risque rep of yesteryear. The Old Vegas was not a place you wanted to take your kids to -- the Dunes hotel offered topless dancing in the 1950s. But that all started to change when Steve Wynn opened the Mirage in 1989. Wynn, who should be given as much credit for creating the "new" Vegas as Bugsy Siegel got for creating the old one, all but declared that he wanted to steal tourists from traditional bring-the-whole-family venues. Declaring the Mirage a "Disney/fantasy experience," Wynn put a shark tank behind the check-in desk and set up a day-care center for hotel guests. "Neon is cheap," he told USA Today. "It's yesterday's Las Vegas."

Vegas quickly became an entertainment mecca for family travelers. In 1991 Kirk Kerkorian broke ground on a billion-dollar project: a 5,000- room hotel with an amusement park roughly the size of Vatican City and an adjoining sports arena bigger than Madison Square Garden. In short order, New York New York, The Luxor, the Venetian, and a host of other theme hotels went up, almost as quickly as the old ones with cigarette- stained drapes and otherwise-stained mattresses came down.

Wynn's bet paid off. By 1994, Time magazine's cover called Las Vegas an "All-American City." U.S. News & World Report featured a similar cover: "Sin City No More." In 1998, Wynn opened the Bellagio, a $1.6 billion luxury hotel complete with a mini-museum with roughly $300 million worth of paintings by Degas, van Gogh, Picasso, and Matisse. You could still find the world's largest rhinestone at the Liberace Museum if you wanted, but clearly this was an appeal to a different clientele.