The Bear's Progress
SkeptoBear's trip to James Randi's Amazing Meeting 2004
Day Five
Las Vegas! Is there a limit to tastelessness?
It was a cold winter's morning in Las Vegas, which is why a local was seen wearing a ski parka and a woollen hat while riding a bicycle. If you come from Sydney it was a pleasant spring day, which is why the skeptics team was wearing t-shirts and tank tops as they walked the short distance from the hotel to Starbucks to breakfast on muffins and coffee and collect the email. The cost of the one month subscription to T-Mobile's radio internet service was declared "money well spent", particularly as the hotel had only WebTV for internet and charged for it at a per-minute rate which would be illegal if the money was being grabbed by a slot machine. Breakfast was leisurely, as this was the first time the team had had to relax since hitting the ground in Los Angeles, what was it?, only four days before. It seemed like weeks.
The group had no intention of wasting the day. They had been told two supposed facts about Las Vegas, and they were going to seek the evidence to establish the credibility of these facts. The first "fact" was that there was a limit to the tastelessness on display in the town and that it was possible to find this nadir and know when they saw it. 
The second "fact" was that there were classy things in Las Vegas and all you had to do was look for them. Little did the group know that the searches would take more than one day. Had they known this they would have flown out to the Grand Canyon for a picnic and a helicopter ride. After the computer had been taken back to the hotel, they set off on the quest.
Just about the first place they came to seemed to suggest that the search for tackiness was over. What could be more awful or pretentious than a building pretending to be France, complete with Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and a very tall man who didn't look at all French who was wandering around frightening children? And that was just the outside of the building. Inside was that bridge across the Seine that you see in all those romantic movies about how lovers meet in Paris, part tearfully, and meet again years later when they are married to other people and have to pretend that they have no past together. The scene was uncannily like Paris, even down to the slot machines under the bridge where you would expect to find water.
Thinking that one part of the quest was over, the group emerged into the daylight only to catch a glimpse of New York, New York (so bad they named it twice) and be thrown immediately into a despondent mood. 
Even the Institute for Creation Research had not caused such depression (possibly because it was closed when they got there), and the group felt the need for some counselling from someone wiser than they were before continuing the search for badness. Las Vegas can always surprise, however, and minutes later they met the perfect person to lift their spirits. They met The King! Elvis himself, right there when they needed him. Frank Sinatra might have introduced entertainment and the mob to Las Vegas, but it was Elvis who introduced the tinsel and glitter. Who better to know where the bad stuff could be found? Unfortunately, consulting Elvis is like consulting the Oracle of Delphi because the answer can come in the form of a riddle or a puzzle. After The King listened to our plaint he referred us to the words of the philosopher, Arthur Crudupp, who said "that's all right now mama, just any way you do". He also told us where to get the burgers with the highest level of cholesterol anywhere in the town. As he handed back the glasses, SkeptoBear was heard to murmur "Thank you very much".
After a satisfying lunch of burgers (The King was right - it was possible to feel the increased tightness in the chest after eating one) the group set off for Excalibur, one of the places reputed to have so little class that it was negative. It was only afterwards that they found that there is a real jousting tournament with real knights, horses and lances held in the place every afternoon, but it was enough on the day to see The Bear in the jaws of a mighty dragon to know that this was a place with real possibilities for being the ultimate in awfulness. 
And so it might have been, except that the place tried very hard to redeem itself and it succeeded admirably. You might think that a brace of valveless trumpeters (the trumpets were valveless, not the trumpeters, although they might have been eating those burgers and consequently have titanium mitral valves) would have difficulty adding class to anywhere, but when they can play such an excellent rousing blues version of Waltzing Matilda a lot can be forgiven. It made the team feel quite positively homesick, and it wasn't even a request. Not since the man in the street in Tijuana had said "G'day, mate" (apparently the only English he knew) had the group experienced such a spontaneous recognition of their origins. One quest seemed to be over - there was at least one classy thing in Las Vegas. Well, two actually, but a duo is sort of a single thing even though it has two parts.
It was then that the group heard the whispered word "Luxor" - a place so bad that it had to be approached through a tunnel, lest a visitor catch sight of the exterior of the building and flee in terror. A pyramid bigger than any in Egypt, named after a place where there are no pyramids, and with a big light on top of it that pointed to the sky like some sort of alien landing beacon. Could this be the nadir of badness? The three sarcophagi in the tunnel offered promise, but there was a certain air of quality about them which suggested that perhaps the Luxor might not be as bad as it had been made out to be. This illusion was soon pushed aside by the sphinx (another thing not at the real Luxor). At last, it seemed that the quest was over. Nothing could be worse than the sphinx. Couldn't it just? There was still the statue of Rameses to come. Huge in its grotesqueness. Grotesque in its hugeness. At last, the quest was surely over. 
This had now become a matter of ontology - could anything worse than this be imagined, and if not then it must be the worst. But wait - this was in fact a Popperian situation. All that could be inferred from the statue was that it was bad. Its worstness could not be established without further research, although the team were prepared at this stage to provisionally accept the hypothesis. Someone's mobile phone rang nearby, and as SkeptoBear silently sang along to the ringtone with "It's one for the money, two for the show", he thought how useful it would be the have The King with them again to offer advice, but, alas, Elvis had left the building. Further enquiries later revealed that Elvis had refused to even enter the building in the first place. He has standards.
The team decided that no more could be decided that day, and started the long walk back to the hotel. There was always tomorrow and there were many more casinos to visit, although in the back of everyone's mind was the feeling that the managements of these palaces would have driven past the Luxor and said to themselves "It's hopeless". That statue, with its neon headdress, was a benchmark few could strive for, let alone surpass.
Suddenly, out of the darkness, came the rousing introductory notes of a familiar song, and the group knew instantly that the search for class in Las Vegas was over. There in front of them was the Bellagio fountain performing its magic in time to the music. Earlier in the day they had heard and seen it accompany Sarah Brightman and Andrea Boccelli singing Time to Say Goodbye, and while this is a marvellous song it is somehow out of place to sing about saying goodbye in a tourist town. Tonight was different, and what song could better sum up Las Vegas than Big Spender? The only thing that could have made it better would have been for Shirley Bassey to appear on a floating platform to belt out the words as the water jets danced in time. Fabulous! If you only see one thing in Las Vegas, this should be it. And it's free!
Back at the hotel reality set in. There was laundry to be done, and while the washers were washing and the driers were drying, the team went to the hotel gym. While the martial artist performed a series of leaps, moves and actions which caused passers-by to place their hands over children's eyes to shield them, The Bear's other companion decided that he had not done enough walking for one day and attacked a treadmill. (The Bear felt that lifting a cool glass of ale was sufficient exercise, and avoided the gym completely.) This particular treadmill had a slope which caused the user to adopt a posture which placed undue stress on the tendons in the feet. It would be some weeks before he heard a doctor utter the words "plantar fasciitis" and some months before it got better, but it would be only the next day before he knew he had it. And there was much more walking to do before he would be home again.
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Next: Las Vegas! No, there is no limit.
