Sunday, November 06, 2005
Viva Email
Hello from Fabulous Las Vegas. Continuing my pattern of trying to get away from L.A. as much as I can, I decided on Friday evening to make a quick getaway. I'm due at a management meeting tomorrow at 10am, and then going back into the studio at 2pm, so this will be a short trip, but it's nice while it lasts.And what am I doing in this city of a million forms of dubious recreations and distractions? This morning I am sitting in the dark in my suite at The New Frontier (one of the older and quainter hotel/casino enterprises on the legendary Las Vegas Strip) trying to catch up a bit on the almost 400 email messages sitting in my inbox. And no, that doesn't include any spam email... that has already been filtered out.
I am chronically behind with email, but with all I've had going on lately, it is considerably worse than usual. So I'm taking this bit of quiet time away from home to work on it.
If you are one of those who has written me, and you're wondering why I haven't written back, my apologies. You're in good company. One of these days I'll figure out how to keep more on top of my email, but for now I do the best I can.
But don't worry about me missing out on a little recreational activity. I plan on going for a swim soon, followed by some time playing poker (Texas Hold'Em) at Bellagio, and possibly doing a little card counting at the Blackjack tables. I steer clear of most of the games here because they're all rigged towards the house, as anyone with any common sense can clearly understand. Poker tables and card counting are the only two games I know of in LV where a player stands any significant chance of doing well over time, if they have the skills. I suppose some people do well betting on sports, but I don't follow pro sports enough to have any idea how to do that.
Of course, gambling in general is pretty much a waste of time, as far as its net impact on human civilization is concerned. Although I generally come out slightly ahead with my gambling activities, it never pays as well as real work. But I enjoy it, and I do need a little stimulation and recreation from time to time to keep me sane. The occasional Vegas outing serves that purpose. For me, the overall surreality and misguided grandiosity of the place has a certain perverse charm to it as well.
