Vegas, baby! (part 5) KA

KA was fantastic. It is the best show I have ever seen in my life. My expectations were high because I had seen excerpts on youtube. The show exceeded my expectations. There were many, subtle, impressive details. The costumes of the ticket handlers and their stage awareness were amazing. The theater setting and stage setting had amazing fit, finish, polish, and attention to details that were awe-inspiring, especially the color and texture. The $150,000,000 stage was, of course, spectacular but the work surrounding it was, to me, even more amazing. The actors and the show itself were great and they were, of course, the core of the presentation. But you expect that kind of super-human circus capability in a Cirque du Soleil show. The martial arts movements were on a par with "crouching tiger, hidden dragon" or "forbidden kingdom" and the fact that it was live was amazing. Some of the "flying," "vertical" martial arts scenes were not enhanced by the flight and acrobatics, especially the last fight scene. I plan to go to more Cirque shows now that I have seen one.




Wrap up


After KA, we took the monorail home and drank whiskey in Robert's room. We went to sleep relatively early and a bit tipsy because our flights went out early Sunday.

I had breakfast at Denny's Sunday morning and was a bit late coming back to the bus but they waited for me. The flights back were just as uneventful as the flights out. Eitana and Gab picked me up at the airport.

In LAX, one of the monitors (running windows) has an embarassing modal dialog box showing. We should have one global setting that disables all such embarassing displays. I believe Win7 will fix this family of problem.

Vegas, baby! (part 4)

Saturday I got up early and ran six miles in my new running shoes. Although I was not the only runner out on the strip that morning the revelers out-numbered the runners by over 100:1. I ran to the end of the strip out past the hotels and wedding chappels where the small strip malls became sparse. I wanted to run until the pavement turned to sand but I also wanted to be back on time for breakfast with David and Robert so I turned around after a bit over 3 miles.


On my way back I noticed this drive through wedding chappel (click the photo to enlarge it):






Notice the sign on the side of the roof:




I did not enjoy running on the strip. The car exhaust fumes were pretty bad and the streets are not bicycle / runner friendly. Drunk people stood in long lines at all the restaurants. Robert, David, and I stood in a long line at a casino whose breakfast was rumored to be good.



...and we were not disappointed. The food was very good, fresh, and prepared according to our requests. I was not hungry again until dinner Saturday night. After breakfast we walked around some more to see museums. I really enjoyed the car museum in the Imperial Palace.


















We spent Saturday afternoon at the pool where I got sun burnt. People were drinking in the pool, literally. I swam laps around them.

Then we hopped on the monorail and went to the MGM to eat dinner at the food court where I had rice and vegetables again. Joel's restaurant costs $350 per plate. But it was too crowded and you need a reservation so we ate at the food court for $7 instead. We wandered around the MGM, lingered over a big dessert at Haagen Dazs and then went in to see KA.

Vegas, baby! (part 3)

In addition to the dancing fountains, treasure island show, and other casino displays on the strip, we walked through the "Venice" area and saw the gondala boats. It was quite nice not that impressive.

Late Friday evening we retired to the platinum club private bar in the Imperial (the only place where there was not too much noise, smoke, and large crowds) and I had a glass of red wine while Robert and David continued knocking back Kamikazis. At around midnight they kicked us out of the platinum lounge since we are not platinum club members and I went to sleep.

Vegas, baby! Part Deux, the videos

The camera I was carrying around has a video feature that is useful sometimes. I have uploaded some videos to youtube at http://youtube.com/mzzw/ .

Here is a (long-ish) video of the dancing fountains in front of Belagio. Robert is singing in the background. It's a catchy pop tune that I had never heard before.

The original video is too big to upload so I chopped it up into 30-second pieces.

And here are some smaller videos:

The staff of the rocketeer burger place in the food court mall does a line dance to "Johnny Be Good." It was slightly too big for upload so I chopped the video up into 2 pieces: