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As soon as you debark from your plane at Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport, you can plop yourself down in front of a slot machine and go to town. Right in the gate area. With careful planning, you could arrange a trip that would allow you to fly into Vegas, gamble, and then board a plane home without the hassle of paying for a hotel room, re-checking in at a flight kiosk, or having to navigate security a second time.

In fact, there are machines all throughout the airport. And I don't mean sprinkled gently around; one machine tucked away in a corner here, another shoved against a wall there. There are gently roped-off clusters of slot machines all over the place. Nearly everywhere you walk is filled with the soothing, arpeggiated, C major tinkle[FN 1] of people winning and losing money.

Thankfully, there are no such growths in the baggage claim area, where I write this as I wait for the rest of my family to trickle in.

[EDIT: Crap. There are banks of them even here. I couldn't see them over the now-dissipated bustle. At least they're not noisy.]

Perhaps the most telling initial impression I have of Vegas is descending over a vast, vaguely wavy, light brown expanse, and seeing a carefully tended, bright green golf resort built around what I assume was a small artificial lake, isolated in the middle of the desert, a man-made oasis. And I began to consider all of the effort and resources, the countless gallons of water, the cost of transporting goods, and so on, that go into maintaining this little playground for the affluent.

I've heard it said that Las Vegas is the result of excess unchecked; the desire to be entertained and amused given no boundary and spared no expense, made flesh and given life. I believe Tim Powers in Last Call likens it to a cancer feeding on -- or perhaps even formed of -- the childish, selfish, instincts in all of us.

Related, I think, is David Foster Wallace's wonderful essay on cruise ships, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", the crux of which is that (not only) cruise ships sell is the experience of having all of your needs catered to, all of your responsibilities lifted, to have the affront of boredom alleviated; and, at heart, to be back in the womb, warm and as far from death as you can get, relieved of even the necessity of chewing and swallowing your sustenance.

I also recall Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Hunter S. Thompson's claim that Vegas represents the *real* American Dream -- or at least its dark mirror -- the desire to get rich quick and with as little effort as possible, to gain without sacrifice; and perhaps the more universal human sentiment that I deserve to get lucky. That to balance all of the stupid shitty things, all the random failures, big and small, marked on the scorecard of your life, that the universe, that Lady Luck, that (even) God, or what have you, owes you this one big jackpot to make it up to you.

sigerson once observed that the truly insidious thing about the slot machines -- and perhaps about gambling in general -- is that to come away ahead, you have to give up. To say to yourself, "I'm not going to win any more. This is as good as it's going to get." You must adopt an attitude that is anathema to what it means to be steeped in American culture: to be told every day that you are special, and that the only way to lose is to stop trying.
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1) And my understanding -- though I have neither proof nor perfect pitch -- is that every slot machine is, indeed, in C major.