NAB 2000

Every year in April 100,000 people from broadcast communications and media industries fly to Las Vegas Nevada for five days to Get Things Done. This year I had an uncluttered agenda: I had to look for projectors and screens and stuff for a webcam installation, help with an editors' party Monday night, and the rest of the time was mine to blow on foolishness. Last year's National Association of Broadcasters convention was a ton of fun, and this year, thanks to my rebellious screw-it-all attitude, it was even better. Here's how it went.

SUNDAY - Rebellion and rum

Earlier this week I try but fail to encourage our editors' group to boycot the Mirage properties (where they keep captive dolphins) including the Bellagio and the Treasure Island, so am feeling rather maligned when the leadership team, of which I am part, chooses a buffet at the Bellagio over my arcane political pleading, and goes off to dinner without me. The always loveable Paul from Boston is rooming this year with Dan, producer of a public television series "The Visionaries," and so apologetically joins the traitors, first setting us up to meet for dinner. Dan and I head for the Mandalay Bay because I want to see two architectural splendors: the Fire and water walls at the Rum Jungle, and the vertical tower of wine storage at Areole where the attendants rappel like Peter Pan on a rope.

Dan is wonderful company. We have some calamari and a few rum drinks, listen to Latin music and admire the flames and cascading water walls. We walk back to the Stardust by way of the always-hokey pasteboard Arthurian Excalibur casino where we struggle to navigate our way out of the rabbit-warren of souvenir shops and family-friendly attractions, when our eyes behold... a Krispy Kreme stand! The splendors of the perfect donut! We walk along and share a glazed donut and regret not buying more, knowing that we'll never find our way back. They are superb, they are exactly as Gail Boysen describes them all airiness and a thin film of perfect white sugar glazing and an aroma of vanilla that touches a perfect nerve of happiness. So far, opting out of the buffet at the Bellagio has been rewarded grandly.

The Stardust Terrace Lounge is the traditional staging area every year when we arrive in town on Sunday night. Already there is a group of editing teachers, headed by our friend Ilan Bernet, so there's a bit of greeting and chat. I get Dan a beer at the bar, and myself something stronger, and I bump into a lovely man, Jeff, who tells me we've met at three previous NABs. I can't believe I don't remember him. If he's offended, he doesn't say so. When he strolls away to talk to others, I find myself looking around for him, like some kind of just-spun thread is being pulled taut.

The dolphin-offending group from the Bellagio arrives late for our meeting. I'm willing to stick around just long enough to find out about my duties at the user group party the next day, but I'm hungry and restless. Jeff suggests dinner at the House of Blues. It's hospitality industry night, so lots of the local HI people are there to dance and drink. They're skinny and young and kinda drunk. We go to a loud disco with strong drinks and go-go dancers behind screens who look bored rather than sexy. To have any kind of conversation involves shouting into the other's ear, and so we spend a few hours like this, hollering and drinking cosmopolitans from plastic cups.

MONDAY - Conventioning and a sudden break for freedom

My roommate Sarah has an agenda every year- and an affection for technical toys. An artist in Atlanta, she is ready with her marked-up program to cruise the convention floors for DVD and software and projectors and screens. We go to the Sands Convention Center where the digital media and software stuff is. Videographer Maud and her husband Tom are at the Sony booth looking at cameras, and point out the newest of the small digital marvels, the Sony PD-150. Preset time code. Ooo... Progressive scan. Ahh... It's not shipping until June, so we can only stand around and whimper at its desirability.

Vaporware is everywhere... 3D video, compression schemes, cameras, decks, monitors.... unavailable technology being shown with price lists and flyers and agents and sales reps, like you can actually buy these things. You can't. So much of it is a wretched tease.

I go over to the Accuweather booth, and troubleshoot their newly-launched web site. Hey. No charge. I move on.

Apple computer has made a nice comeback this year and is showing some fantastic one-stop shopping solutions for web and video stuff. There are gumdrop-colorful little iMacs everywhere and newly developed software to go with them.

Lunch at the Venetian is only good because of the company, so many of the people I've met over the years. We find a food court after a half-hour hike through vast new casino. The magic-hour painted skies throughout give me the bends or inertia or some kind of jet-lag... it's noon in the desert and my eyes are beholding some kind of Tuscan sunset. It is as freakish as the rest of Las Vegas.

Monday night, people start showing up for the Media 100 users group event at the Stardust. Jeff and I check in the pre-registered people and enjoy the parade of familiar nametags with their people attached. This particular experience, seeing the faces that go with beloved email identities, is the whole reason I come to NAB every year. 300 people mill around the giant ballroom, listening to keynote speeches and a panel of intimidated industry insiders who sweat out unwanted questions. After a while it doesn't take much convincing to get Jeff to sneak out for the RealNetworks party across town. We enjoy our walk through many casinos and arrive too late, so we move on to the Rio.

The Rio's Wine Cellar has a huge collection of vintages, sizes, specials, best-buys... and a bar where one can choose "flights" of four similar wines from their standard collection of 150. Some of the more expensive flights might include a rarer vintage. They will open a bottle, pour a glass, then gas and cork the opened bottle. After three days, whatever is left of the wine goes upstairs to the kitchen at the superb Fiore restaurant. It so happens that a Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1984 is heading upstairs and so is offered as an option for one of Jeff's four. He generously offers me a taste of it... I try it and wait for harp music, the whisk of angels' wings, and the hum of the Aurora borealis to enlighten my ignorant universe. Instead I feel the buzz of high tension as it occurs to me that I am hogging this rare thing like a crow would idly carry around a shiny gum wrapper. I slide the glass back to him and he almost manages to hide his relief.

TUESDAY - Local treasures

I make short work of the larger Las Vegas convention Center, which is loud and dark and full of the same technology I've seen the past three years. The din is deafening so I retreat to the women's restroom and wait for the hollow echo in my head to subside. I can't bear the place anymore so I walk outside into the amazingly bright sunlit midday and decide that more than anything, I want to catch up on sleep. A shuttle takes me back to the Sands Convention center. It is full of tired foreign men with cloth briefcases and polo shirts.

I walk across the parking lot to the Vagabond Inn motel, which is an under-heralded marvel of Las Vegas lodging. Our room is $44 a night which Sarah and I split. It's a shabby but clean place with a funny little pool almost right on the Strip, next to a liquor store, behind the Sands Convention center (no shuttles!) a short walk to the Fashion Show mall and a Starbucks. There are free pastries and coffee in the lobby each morning, and a coin-op laundry and some good vending machines. It is a friendly straighforward place that will soon be blown up so that the Venetian can expand its faux Tuscan sunset ceilings another city block. Soon there will be nothing affordable near the convention centers, but for now, I turn up the air conditioner, enjoy a beer and watch television free of casino propaganda, as my dusty clothes slosh in the washer.

After the annual ProMax bash a group of us go to the Frontier for margaritas and fajitas. Fajitas are $14 for two people, and they're huge enough for four people to share. The margaritas are potent and come in pitchers. The fare is very satisfying. Maud gives the restaurant manager a hat she got from the convention, and she gets free drinks the rest of the evening.

WEDNESDAY - To Infinity... and beyond

I'm tired of the convention crush, so I visit the dolphin habitat at the Mirage hotel, thinking that it would be good to know first hand what I've been boycotting for years. It's a large facility with four connected pools and an iso-med tank. The dominant male dolphin is isolated from the others, moodily floating at the gate. The handlers play games with the females and calves. There are no shows. They answer all my questions about the water and the care. One tank has what looks like sand and coral on the bottom. 'It's all made of concrete," says one young trainer. "The dolphins can't tell the difference." I'm guessing she's been exposed to one too many faux Tuscan sunsets herself. Jim, one trainer, calls to me as I leave; he has a photo of a wild bull orca with a leaning dorsal fin and wants to know if I can identify the animal. I try... it has markings I recognize, and the scenery seems to be Alaskan. I invite them to come up and I'll show them whales in the wild this summer. They like the idea, we swap emails.

The new Paris casino, an absurd yet charming behemoth with a scale model of the Eiffel Tower punching through a Versailles-like building, has bell staff who speaks French greetings. A French family gets out of a cab. "Bonjour," says the doorman. The French people chatter at him in French, thinking that his Francophone abilities must certainly extend beyond the basics. The doorman apologizes with a (somewhat Gallic) shrug. "I'm sorry, that's all the French I know."

Inside there is a wine bar and restaurant with a view of the Bellagio's stupendous roaring water show, which rips every 15 minutes. Maud and Tom, envigorated by their day of equipment shopping, show up with two friends from the networks, and so my old friend Tom and I pull Jeff away from the wine bar, and we go have dinner. Tom, Jeff and I share escargot, smoked salmon, and a cheese platter. Tom takes to the garlic butter sauce left over from the escargot, tackling it with his baguette. The wine flows, the food makes the rounds, we talk about dolphins and cameras and television and BOOM! the water show goes off with loud music. I love Las Vegas.

A bunch of us go to Fremont street to see the gigantic five-block canopy light show. We have martinis and there's a good lounge band at the Golden Nugget. It seems like after the Paris and Fremont street, this would be enough for one night, but Jeff wants to go to the Voodoo Lounge at the Rio. It's very late, everyone else seems to have x's over their eyes. I'm superhumanly awake, so once again the late night belongs to the survivors.

The Voodoo Lounge has a dress code, which I barely meet. (My wardrobe consists of mismatched items I threw at my suitcase minutes before leaving for the airport. It's a bad idea.) We go out to the roof terrace high atop the hotel, which is packed with people. We drink beers and look at the city, contemplating trajectory and impact of things like limes and lawn furniture. We notice the furniture is all chained down, so Jeff takes the lime from my beer. "Do you want me to throw it?" "Yes, throw it." and lobs the tiny lime bit off the roof. I'm sure it will hit like a cannonball. He thinks it will drift in the wind and lightly bounce. We listen for screams and hear none.

Some really drunk people give us free coupons for something. "G'waan," they tell us, "just give this to the bartender and ask for a fishbowl." I fetch one while Jeff chats with our benefactors. When I bring this sloshing tureen of watermelon- colored madness back to the roof deck, he is laughing in amazement; he thought these friendly drunken people were sharing one of these fishbowl drinks, which seems huge enough to floor five people, and there they were with one each. We drink ours to the approval of the happy drunken people at the table, and express our appreciation.

We go indoors and have ANOTHER fishbowl with the other coupon, and watch how this one is made. The bartender, who juggles like Tom Cruise in "Cocktail," grabs four bottles of rum and pours a third of the gigantic snifter full. Then four bottles of juices and pours another third. Then four bottles of liqueurs and pours another third. There's a few gratuitous ice cubes and a chunk of dry ice for atmosphere, and an overly-long straw that can put out an eye or deviate a septum with one wrong move. We're in an altered state, a completely new kind of intoxication which keeps us awake until 6 the next morning in a town of synthesized wakefulness.

THURSDAY -

I have about two brain cells left to rub together after the Rio. Nothing to do but go to the Orleans to drink margaritas by the pool, which sounds idyllic except there is a steady hot wind like a hair dryer, which blows ripples in the pool and my spray bottle of suncreen bouncing down the patio. I adjust to the whole thing, letting the wind stream over me as I sit in a lawn chair, two questions in my empty head: is there nothing finer than this perfectly-tempered hot wind, and... am I going to discover a tattoo this morning I didn't have yesterday? The convention exhibits close down, miles away, and I smell the chlorine on my skin and marvel that I got all my work done and still have time for important things like this.

Thursday is the day most people catch a plane for home in the evening, and a traditional night for casual good-bye dinners convenient to taxis. Since I'd started the week a cranky, badly-dressed rebel and didn't show up in the usual places all week, I'd also missed seeing several old friends except briefly. A bunch of us play an absurd game of cell phone tag trying earnestly to coordinate a final meeting place. Rob suggests a steak house called Smith and Wallensky. Several of us don't like the prices or the crowd, so move on to the Monte Carlo casino's Brew pub. Tom, Sara, Paul, Greg, Philip, Jeff and I have some nice rum drinks, dinner. Rob and the others join us later.

On the interior wall of the place is a light stencil that subtly paints the simple message DRINK BEER high on the wall. "Have you noticed the subliminal message over there?" asks Greg. "It makes me feel like... oh, I don't know... drinking beer or something."

People take pictures, and talk about the things they saw at the convention, then they one by one pick up their rolling suitcases bulging with trade show literature and trickle away, departing for Atlanta and Orlando and Ottawa and Minneapolis and Australia and Boston. I find myself looking at them as they go... I can almost see the invisible just-spun threads being pulled taut but not snapping. They stay with me in email and in phone calls and in thought, more permanent than sunburn, more real than politics and faux Tuscan skies.