I WAKE UP IN THE DESERT. THE SUN IS RISING YELLOW OVER A CANYON RIM. GREEN SPIKY CACTI STAND LIKE ALIENS BRIGHT IN THE DAWN LIGHT. THERE ARE WEIRD SHAPES EVERYWHERE. I FALL ASLEEP AGAIN AND WAKE UP ONLY AS WE pull onto Frank Sinatra Boulevard. Vegas, baby. At eight o’clock in the morning we stumble into the deserted marble lobby of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and soon I am having breakfast in the luxury of the Verandah restaurant next door at the Four Seasons.
I’m perched high in a huge suite. Spectacular soundproofed windows give me a 180-degree view along the Strip to my left and across the desert to my right. Directly outside my bedroom my name keeps popping up on the gigantic moving screen billboard, between the constant Shania Twain ads. It’s funny to see the words “The Greedy Bastard Tour” over the Strip. Directly below me, so close I can almost touch it, is Las Vegas International Airport. Tiny toy planes are lined up. Between me and the airport are a few remnants of old-style two-story Vegas motels grouped around miniature pools, the last vestigial traces of the old Vegas, here where the Strip petered out into the desert, before they were dwarfed by these monstrous constructions.
I take a smoothly efficient tram past the gleaming pyramid of the Luxor to Excalibur. This is certainly the real site of Spamalot. The singing and dancing Knights of the Round Table belong here, no question. Too bad this tram doesn’t continue any farther, it would be a great way to see the eccentric layout of the Strip, one fantasy world replacing another. I love the way you can walk from Paris to Venice in five minutes, but today limping down Las Vegas Boulevard in the fresh morning air is hard going on my foot, so I return to Mandalay Bay to the White Swan chocolate bar. Here I order chocolate, chocolate, Spam, chocolate, and chocolate and I am almost thrown out because my hotel room, registered under my pseudonym Mr. X, doesn’t match my driver’s license. They reluctantly accept my explanation that I need a pseudonym to protect me from my rabid fans. There is nothing more humiliating than professing a claim to fame to people who not only don’t recognize you but haven’t even heard of Monty Python. The fact that I am appearing at the House of Blues only twelve yards away is of no help whatsoever. I begin to doubt my own identity, but fortunately my wife arrives to clear up my doubts.
Tania, whom I think I shall have to rename Shania, so frequently is the nineteen-foot Twain woman outside my window, comes with me, Skip, Mrs. Skip, and Katy Skip to see Blue Man Group. We pile into a cab, and I begin reciting my sexual history out loud, to the amusement only of the cabdriver. The rest of our party looked totally bemused. Clearly they don’t watch Taxicab Confessions. The Blue Man Group have a first for showbiz—a splash zone. Although I think we might need one for the Greedy Bastard Tour, the way we spit onstage. Elaborate precautions are taken to wrap the first seven rows in plastic rainwear, an unnecessary precaution in the event, since there is far less paint splashing than I remember from New York. The same blue aliens bang away on various things and cover the audience with paper, accompanied by loud music and heavy drumming. It’s a cross between a sixties be-in and a play group. My feeling is that this is something mimes have discovered to reinvent themselves.
We join Jennifer and the rest of our Greedy Bastards at the Flamingo to see Steve Traxler’s late show Second City: three very funny men and two alarmingly cute girls. Their impersonation of the dancing waters at the Bellagio is hilarious. They do a lot of fast blackout skits, which I haven’t seen done for years. We used to call them “quickies,” but my wife explains that means something different in America. I ask her to demonstrate.
We walk over to Shark Reef just as it opens.
“Did you two have an enjoyable time last night?” a keen young attendant asks.
“No, we’re married,” I reply.
I like the stunned look on his face.