Why do so many Americans turn up their nose at Vegas, while we foreigners can't get enough of it? For a start, Americans' familiarity with Vegas has matured into the mother of contempt.
Since quitting drinking, I've lost weight, rebuilt friendships and finished writing a book. What better time, then, to return to Vegas and spend an entire month on the Strip, surrounded by all the things I've worked so hard to escape from?
The poor old Sahara. In a little over a month, the icon of old Vegas will welcome its last guest. But the hotel is already brain-dead, barely clinging on to life with the help of strong drugs and a machine that goes 'beep'.
This Vegas adventure is supposed to be a learning experience -- so I decided it was time to man up and learn the correct etiquette for visiting a strip club.
The sight of a million drunken college kids (SPRING BREAK!), has made me never want to so much as touch a liqueur chocolate ever again. But the trip is young.
Las Vegas represents all that is good and bad about the American dream. It is beyond appropriate, then, that Donald Trump should own at least small chunk of the town's real-estate.
To say that Matt Goss is "famous in the UK" is like saying Jordan Knight is famous in the US. According to people familiar with the situation, here's how the reinvention of Matt Goss went down.
The biggest draw of hotels is the people you meet in them. In the past three years, by virtue of having no fixed abode and very little shame, I've just about seen and done it all.
Today I had my first day at a spa and -- seriously -- why did no one tell me about these things before? Specifically, why didn't I know about them while I was drinking? Those hangovers would have flown by.
Right now, most of my stories are still spinning around in my brain -- not quite ready to land. So here's the second part of my weekly round-up of my accommodations, written in the form of haiku.
At Absinthe, there are no nets, no safety cables and certainly no face protectors, either for performers or audience. Not that a plastic safety mask would be much use against a girl in roller-skates ploughing into your face at 100 miles an hour.
The Las Vegas Courtesan, an anonymous online sensation here, is everything she claims to be: blonde, young, very attractive and a real-life escort. She told me everything I wanted to know about living in Vegas and working as an escort.
I'm sick and tired of moments here on the Strip when I have to censor an otherwise wonderfully profane anecdote simply because some little darlings are within earshot. In a bar. In Las Vegas. Is nowhere unsacred?
The walk-up window is perfect for certain kinds of wedding; no frills, no ceremony, just two people in love who want to make sure everything is in order, just in case one of them doesn't come home. And an Elvis impersonator.
By far the biggest argument against universal hotel living is the cost. But I haven't been living out of hotels for the past five years because I'm wealthy. There are plenty of tricks to make long-term hotel stays entirely affordable.
Here we are, at the end of week three, and time for another round up my past week's hotel stays -- from Paris to the Wynn -- in handy haiku form.
What does the CEO of a company that was acquired by Amazon for almost a billion dollars do next? He rebuilds downtown Las Vegas, obviously.
What we're seeing play out in Las Vegas is simply basic supply-and-demand economics. For every hardworking homeowner who took their bank's advice and paid the price, there were plenty of others who fell victim to their own greed.
A few days ago I received an email from a producer at KSNV Channel 3, asking me to come on their breakfast show and help commentate their royal wedding coverage. Idiotically -- publicity whore that I am -- I agreed.
It was with mixed feelings, trending against sympathy for unions, that I arrived at the union hall of Culinary Workers Union (Local 226), the largest union in the state of Nevada.
After less than an hour in the same room as Trump, it took all of my reserves of self-control not to heckle from my press seat. "Motherf**ker" is how he referred to Chinese politicians.
