Rear View Mirror Goes On The Road

For the next four days I'm blogging from scenic Las Vegas, Nev., Sin city, Slots Vegas you know the place.

I'm here to cover the International Consumer Electronics Show for the magazine I work for. I'm going to leave out the name because technically I’m not supposed to be doing this, but instead officially blogging for the magazine. Which I will do, but it won’t be as interesting as what I'll write here. My "real" blog will give quick sketches of what is going on in what will hopefully be a real funny manner. Probably not, but I can only hope.

Rear View Mirror will host the path less scene. Or at least less reported.
Las Vegas is the oddest man made creation on the face of the planet. It is here purely to entertain people with what would normally be considered, for lack of a better word, bad things. Like drinking, gambling, eating to excess, foolishly spending your money on idiotic stuff like $6 bottles of water. And for those without a significant other there is a wide variety of truly illegal behavior that is not only condoned but legalized here. Prostitution. It might seem hard to believe, but the county surrounding Vegas has legalized prostitution. And it might not be to well known to those who have not visited, but you can find branch offices of the local houses of ill repute inside the city limits.

The Hilton, where I'm staying, actually has a bar nicknamed the "Hooker Bar" for the obvious reason that you can find women, and maybe men too, of that persuasion hanging out there plying their trade.

As a more then happily married man, I am nothing more than an observer of all this, except for the drinking and gambling part. My wife knows of these hobbies and as long as I don't blow the deed to our house everything is cool.

On the flight out I watched the movie Almost Famous. I thought it was a fitting film for a journalist to take in. For the uninitiated the movie is an autobiographical sketch of Cameron Crowe when he was a teenage editor for Rolling Stone. I doubt there is a journalist of a certain age, say 38 to 55, who doesn't wish he was a reporter for Rolling Stone in the late 60s or 70s. Crowe was a 16 year old out on the road with Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, The Allman Brothers and a dozen other great rock acts. I can't believe his mother let him do it. My mom freaked out when I told her I joined the Army, granted a slightly, but only slightly more dangerous endeavor then hanging out with Jimmy Page at the height of his decadence.

The movie captures a spirit that is almost indescribable to me. It makes me want to write. It makes me want to take my profession to another level. Unfortunately, few trade editors such as myself end up making a movie about what they do for a living.
This CES blog is about as close as I can come.

So over the next couple of days you will get an insiders look at Vegas and what goes on at the show, pictures included.