Microserfs

Dusty is still in disbelief that her baby wasn't a grapefruit and is also at Mom's house for a few days while we're at CES, nursing Lindsay Ruth and keeping Ethan company. Mom is giving her a crash course in motherhood, dragging out embarrassing baby photos of me and tiny little jumpers that I had no idea she kept. Dusty sits and stares at Lindsay for hours on end, saying to anyone who'll listen, "Ten toes! Ten fingers!" Lindsay was delivered on the evening of the final round of the Iron Rose IV competition, and Todd told me on the flight down that Lindsay Ruth was named after movie-of-the-week star and Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner, as well as for a Bible person. He hasn't really talked about the baby yet - I think it's finally sinking in that he's a father, now that he's got the physical proof.

* * *

Luggage lost; luggage retrieved; Vietnam veteran taxi driver; Gallagher billboards. We checked into our hotel in a daze - a creakingly old hotel called the Hacienda. (Best not discussed. It's sole redeeming feature is its location right next door to . . . the extravagant-beyond-all-belief pyramid of the LUXOR.)

We left the hotel to register at the Convention Center, many football fields' worth of sterile white cubes, which are as attractive as the heating ducts atop a medical-dental center. The look on all the registrees' faces was great. You could tell that all they could think of was sex and blowing their money later that night. It was so transparent. Las Vegas brings out the devil in everyone.

* * *

Las Vegas: it's like the subconsciousness of the culture exploded and made municipal. I was so overwhelmed by it that I ended up reviving my old-style subconscious file from last year. Herewith:

* * *

vasectomy reversal billboard

breakfast

Siegfried & Roy

Compaq

NY Steak & Eggs $2.95

moccasins

Sahara

Nokia

47-Tek

control.

remote.

keno

social interface

cardboard IBM box

is it loud?

tanked girl

reflective surfaces

forgotten cocktails

name tag

cheddar

interactive virgin

Flamingo

dry ice

Moon

American

Floyd

Heywood

cities destroyed

win win win

Nam-1975

monster lab

air lock

Bob

orb

tatami

rings

object popping

lemon

fight

morphin mighty

VFX-1

colonize

thrust

boy game

64 bits

pods

Softimage

anti alias

BAR

trilinear MIPmap interpolation

Ultra 64

gravy

Samsung paper napkin cherry

synthetic

emotional

response

Nye County, Nevada

traffic lights

computer personal

Howard Hughes Parkway

Dept. of Energy

White Tigerzoid

floral carpeting

*69

cinderblock walls

First Interstate

implant

strip

Big Endian

escort leaflets

00

beverage

bell

I Endian

* * *

When we returned to the hotel to change, Karla's and my room somehow became the party room. None of us except for Anatole, who's here to schmooze Compaq, have ever been to Las Vegas before, let alone a CES. (Amy called us "bad American citizens.") We were all giddy at the prospect of an evening's unchained fun; sleazy adventure divorced from consequences.

Anatole and Todd brought up vodka, mixer, and ice. Our ancient queen-size bed was as concave as a satellite dish - the same mattress must have been mangling the lumbars of low-budget gamblers since the Ford Administration - so we sat clustered in its recess like kangaroo babies inside Mom's pouch. Chugging V&Ts, we surfed through the channels, high on simply being in Las Vegas, even just watching TV in a hotel room in Las Vegas.

The TV began showing these three-minute pay-TV movie clips. ("Hey, let's watch Curly Sue!") Then one came on touting the AVN Awards, the Adult Video News awards. Susan yelled, "The Stiffies!" It's an actual Academy Awards-style show for porn people. We had to pay. It was simply too juicy not to. People were sashaying up the aisles to collect awards for things like "Best Anal Scene" and they were getting all teary and emotional making acceptance speeches. It was unbelievable. Awards for, like, "Best Group Scene."

Dad was fortunately in his own room, talking on the phone with a friend from Hewlett-Packard he was having dinner with that evening. But really, the whooping we all made . . . we were just the sort of people you don't want staying in the room next to you.

Anatole said, "Oh look - that actress there - she was in the booth across from my old company six years ago - and now she's won an award!" Anatole actually seemed quite proud. "In the old days, you had 12 computer game geeks and 12 porn stars all crowded into the most remote corner of some remote convention building. We were the freaks of the convention. Now we run it. Ha!"

Amy and Michael went into the bathroom and emerged with Kleenex boxes on their feet: "We're Howard Hughes!"

* * *