Leaving Las Vegas

Reason's Dynamic Cities conference is now, like Frank Sinatra's CalNeva Lodge, part of history. Hitchens, we hardly knew ye! Where are the Drew Careys of yesteryear? Joel Kotkin, you old African; I finally found you! Buttman, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

The big winners in the Las Vegas confab were the many Reasonites who came and gave as good as they got. Welch and Gillespie, for example, gambled far into the night with caged celebrity-impersonator dealers. But in another, more accurate sense, the winners were people like one Reason spouse who won a grand and a half on a slot machine—though not, unfortunately, a "That Girl" tuppence machine. (Has Marlo Thomas ever brought anybody luck?) Of the vice on display, the fleshpots of John Stagliano's revue Fashionistas, the lechery, the drunkenness, the gluttony, the surprise visit by a way-off-the-reservation former Buckeye State congressman, well, the less said the better. Next time, come and see it all for yourself.

"Oh, I could never go there myself," you're saying right now. Oh no? The Hit & Run comments gallery was well represented. Amy Gallaher, better known by her crime-fighting alias "Ruthless' Daughter," proudly championed the family tradition of stylish Sin-cinnati anarchism. Our own Wine Commonsewer was another conference highlight. Joe, Jennifer, R.C., Thoreau, GOP John—where's your team spirit?

Indeed, my one regret is that while I spent quite a bit of the conference praising the scintitilating fantabulousness of the Reason comments boards, I forgot to bring it up where it really would have mattered—at the "New Net Neighborhoods" panel that closed out the conference like Robert Downey Jr. heeltapping the dregs at the Viper Room. We got yer new net neighborhoods right here, and you can rest assured that, except where it really counts, I'm always putting in a good word for alla yous. (If you're still wondering what "Reason After Dark" was, your guess remains as good as mine. I presume the idea was that many of the activities took place under cover of night where they belonged, but I was none-too-secretly hoping that "Reason After Dark" would turn out to be a muscular, flamboyantly befeathered troupe of male dancers. Maybe next year…in Branson, baby!)