8/31, Las Vegas

My plan for today was to drive ten hours to Mesquite, Nevada, a locale of which I know nothing except that a Budget Inn can be found there. Sadly, lack of sleep and a late start forced me to end the day in Las Vegas, possibly the only American city that has never attracted my interest.

Resigned, I decided to make the best of it; and the best I could make of it was to drive the Strip, bottom to top. It took maybe half an hour, staring at casinos and listening to BBC World Service coverage of Governor Schwarzenegger's convention speech.

Vegas: Everything is bright. Everything is big, even when it's a miniature New York or Paris or Sphinx. It is disconcertingly warm at night, and smells vaguely like popcorn. I saw a lot of people walking around at night, which is something not all cities manage, but no one really looked happy to be there.

I passed up a possible $17 room at the Howard Johnson Las Vegas Strip, a lonely motel surrounded by a long block of Adult Superstore and XXX Movies.

Synchronicity: When I turned on my TV at the Best Western, the first thing on was an ad for Dr. Vegas, the new Rob Lowe series. When I switched to the free premium cable channel, it was airing Showgirls. The thirty seconds I saw consisted of dancing, topless dancing, and banal dialogue. Now I'm watching Governor Scwarzenegger in The Terminator.

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9/1, N. Las Vegas

If the Vegas Strip at night gave a pleasant buzz - I can't deny it - then following it up through North Las Vegas in the morning was the hangover. Casinos and glitz give way to pawn shops and used car lots, all the ways to recover from the mistakes of the night before - and liquor stores to help you make them again.

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9/1, Colorado

Way up in the Rockies tonight I caught a glimpse of the moon, so big and so orange that when it disappeared right away behind another mountain I thought that I had imagined it, or that I had misinterpreted, like maybe it was just a big round orange truck stop sign that had vanished around the bend. But it wasn't.

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9/2, Denver

Last night I arrived, hours late and almost asleep, at the Mercury Cafe open stage in Denver. Friendly people, cool room, and the largest selection of leftist posters, stickers, pamphlets and cartoons I've seen since college. But I had to leave early, while I could still drive without passing out.

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9/2, Kansas

Based solely on the signage on I-70, I would say that the three things Kansas loves most are Jesus, pornography, and astronauts.

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9/2, Kansas City

Kenny and Winnie - who generously put me up in one wing of their vast mansion - and Kyle took me on a nighttime driving tour of what felt like most of Kansas City, from hip singles neighborhood (with bubble tea!) to mallified business district to tragically dead downtown.

I can't get over Kansas City's wonderful architecture: 19th-century mercantile buildings and strangely lit industrial towers and an ominous, Orwellian new courthouse. This is a city that's begging to be captured on film.

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