Everybody hates Vegas
Mar. 11th, 2010 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceThis is America; one must be extreme. One must hate the place one is - apparently - so very much, one must get up at 5am in order to sit in a coach for ever in order to be somewhere else, just for the day.
We? Went to the Grand Canyon. For a day. It's a trip.
I am not the daytripping kind. I'm not sure I can even remember the last time I was on a coach full of people all going to the same place as a single party. Even going to bed the night before, half of me was kinda wishing I'd said "No, you two go, I'll just hang around in Vegas and get some work done," like that. Only, that would've meant being in Vegas all day, and, well. Y'know. Hate.
So, off we went in a bus, to a big concrete shed where we were briefed and divided up and sent to other buses. Apparently the Grand Canyon had been closed the previous day on account of snow (I had this image of its literally pulling its rims together, closing up like a clam-shell against the weather, smooth resistant desert where there used to be a gulf), so this day was exceptionally busy; traitor me did harbour a vague secret resentment, wishing that it had been today the snow came and the trip was cancelled.
By the time we reached the Hoover Dam - which is not far at all - I was wishing that very fervently indeed. Cliches are stereotypes which spring from archetypes, or something. Apparently truck drivers really are large and loud and jocose and oh-so-predictable, and their families just encourage them, except where they have tiny silent Filipino wives. Ugh. Die die die thinks Chaz, and doesn't much care whether it's them or him. (I'm not vindictive, no. Just, I didn't want to share their space. It could be theirs, they were welcome to it. For hours and hours and...)
Happily, the driver numbed even them into passivity with a truly awful movie - Old Dogs, since you ask - which we pretty much got to see twice, as it hadn't quite finished before her rest stop, and she rewound it pretty much to the beginning when we set off again. Cliche truck drivers laughed in the same places both times through.
Aaaand then the snow came. Too late, obviously, to cancel the trip; but it was thick and heavy and dangerous to drive in, and she was a damn' good driver and kept us all alive, and we did seriously think that the IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon was all that we would see when we eventually got there.
Only then the sky cleared, and the canyon was wicked cold and very visible indeed, and then at last I was really really glad to be there and felt it was worth all the getting-there. It's kinda strange, though, having a view-for-miles-and-miles that goes downward instead of up. There's probably an SF story in it.
I may have taken pictures.
Then we may have found a bar, and drunk hot coffee cocktails and wine before the whole coming-back thing. Which took for ever (coming home is usually quicker than going out, 'specially when you dislike the home you come to, but not this time: more snow, much slow-and-careful driving, and time lost), and was made bearable by more movies. Avatar! Which I am very glad to have seen in 2-D on a little coach video screen with distractions, because it saves me from going "ooh, pretty! look at all the pretty!" and so not seeing what else there is. Which is a thin story and zero character and dreadful dialogue and we know all about the white-man-saves-the-natives storyline and the politics of that. And still'n'all and never mind, I did kinda quite enjoy it for I am a simpleton of movies, I make no demands of them whatever and have no expectations. Books matter, movies don't.
And then we got another movie, and I almost could have wept. Four Christmasses, was it called? It was actually rather well done of its type, crisp script and intelligent acting (and Robert Duvall!) - but fuck, I hated it. There's a sort of humour-of-social-embarrassment which I don't know if it ever did make me laugh but just makes me cringe these days, however well done it is; and then there was the underlying theme of the movie, which apparently wanted to tell us that actually all women really do want to get married and have kids after all, despite all their assertions otherwise; and men really don't want to do that but will fall into line if pressured enough. Which, um, no?
So. The last hour and a half of the trip was all driving around Vegas by a weird windy route, dropping off at infinite hotels, and we of course were last on the list and by then it had pretty much killed us, except that we still needed to finish each other off. Mercy killings: no jury would convict. Eighteen hours, was it, there and back again? We left before six and barely made it back before midnight. And sat in the diner plotting our escape, which is just about now, we're out of here in ten minutes; and I have been down to the diner this morning to get a coffee-to-go because nothing in Vegas is free, there isn't even coffee in the rooms and this is the first wifi we've actually had to pay for - and there's something in the coffee, some flavouring, might it be hazelnut...?
This. Is not. Coffee.
*hates Vegas*
We? Went to the Grand Canyon. For a day. It's a trip.
I am not the daytripping kind. I'm not sure I can even remember the last time I was on a coach full of people all going to the same place as a single party. Even going to bed the night before, half of me was kinda wishing I'd said "No, you two go, I'll just hang around in Vegas and get some work done," like that. Only, that would've meant being in Vegas all day, and, well. Y'know. Hate.
So, off we went in a bus, to a big concrete shed where we were briefed and divided up and sent to other buses. Apparently the Grand Canyon had been closed the previous day on account of snow (I had this image of its literally pulling its rims together, closing up like a clam-shell against the weather, smooth resistant desert where there used to be a gulf), so this day was exceptionally busy; traitor me did harbour a vague secret resentment, wishing that it had been today the snow came and the trip was cancelled.
By the time we reached the Hoover Dam - which is not far at all - I was wishing that very fervently indeed. Cliches are stereotypes which spring from archetypes, or something. Apparently truck drivers really are large and loud and jocose and oh-so-predictable, and their families just encourage them, except where they have tiny silent Filipino wives. Ugh. Die die die thinks Chaz, and doesn't much care whether it's them or him. (I'm not vindictive, no. Just, I didn't want to share their space. It could be theirs, they were welcome to it. For hours and hours and...)
Happily, the driver numbed even them into passivity with a truly awful movie - Old Dogs, since you ask - which we pretty much got to see twice, as it hadn't quite finished before her rest stop, and she rewound it pretty much to the beginning when we set off again. Cliche truck drivers laughed in the same places both times through.
Aaaand then the snow came. Too late, obviously, to cancel the trip; but it was thick and heavy and dangerous to drive in, and she was a damn' good driver and kept us all alive, and we did seriously think that the IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon was all that we would see when we eventually got there.
Only then the sky cleared, and the canyon was wicked cold and very visible indeed, and then at last I was really really glad to be there and felt it was worth all the getting-there. It's kinda strange, though, having a view-for-miles-and-miles that goes downward instead of up. There's probably an SF story in it.
I may have taken pictures.
Then we may have found a bar, and drunk hot coffee cocktails and wine before the whole coming-back thing. Which took for ever (coming home is usually quicker than going out, 'specially when you dislike the home you come to, but not this time: more snow, much slow-and-careful driving, and time lost), and was made bearable by more movies. Avatar! Which I am very glad to have seen in 2-D on a little coach video screen with distractions, because it saves me from going "ooh, pretty! look at all the pretty!" and so not seeing what else there is. Which is a thin story and zero character and dreadful dialogue and we know all about the white-man-saves-the-natives storyline and the politics of that. And still'n'all and never mind, I did kinda quite enjoy it for I am a simpleton of movies, I make no demands of them whatever and have no expectations. Books matter, movies don't.
And then we got another movie, and I almost could have wept. Four Christmasses, was it called? It was actually rather well done of its type, crisp script and intelligent acting (and Robert Duvall!) - but fuck, I hated it. There's a sort of humour-of-social-embarrassment which I don't know if it ever did make me laugh but just makes me cringe these days, however well done it is; and then there was the underlying theme of the movie, which apparently wanted to tell us that actually all women really do want to get married and have kids after all, despite all their assertions otherwise; and men really don't want to do that but will fall into line if pressured enough. Which, um, no?
So. The last hour and a half of the trip was all driving around Vegas by a weird windy route, dropping off at infinite hotels, and we of course were last on the list and by then it had pretty much killed us, except that we still needed to finish each other off. Mercy killings: no jury would convict. Eighteen hours, was it, there and back again? We left before six and barely made it back before midnight. And sat in the diner plotting our escape, which is just about now, we're out of here in ten minutes; and I have been down to the diner this morning to get a coffee-to-go because nothing in Vegas is free, there isn't even coffee in the rooms and this is the first wifi we've actually had to pay for - and there's something in the coffee, some flavouring, might it be hazelnut...?
This. Is not. Coffee.
*hates Vegas*
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-12 08:39 am (UTC)Just the other day we were looking at aerial photos of Las Vegas by night and remarking that we're almost tempted to visit and witness the bonkers firsthand. I think we'll stick at almost tempted.