Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Friday, June 29, 2012

Foxwoods, The Wonder Of It All

House wins in the end.

Yesterday, after dropping Thing One and Thing Two off at a UPS facility to be mailed to God knows where,  I dropped by Foxwoods on the way home.

Foxwoods may or may not be the largest casino in the world or the east coast or Connecticut.  I'm not sure. But it's a pretty big deal, I guess.

It's also incredibly sad.

Two years ago, the famdamily took a trip out West and spent the night in Deadwood, because I loved the HBO series.  Gambling is legal there, so the ground floor of our hotel was a "casino", but most of the slots were 1 or 2 cents.  The stakes were awfully small.  And yet, battalions of aging white people hooked up to their oxygen tanks and motoring around on scooters were plopping down their pennies and hitting that button.

Over and over and over again.

Foxwoods wasn't THAT sad.  But it lacked the feverish energy and general adrenal rush of Vegas.  Foxwoods was more a Reno-type sadness.  Vegas is an "experience".  It looms out of the desert and it overwhelms you.  The Strip really has to be seen to be believed.  I don't especially like Vegas, but I can appreciate the showmanship that went in to creating it.

Foxwoods - and Reno and Deadwood and Atlantic City - can't capture that giddy expectation of sin and excess.  They can offer all the same games, but Vegas is Vegas.

Instead, these wanna-be casinos expose the real purpose behind the all-you-can-eat buffets and the bright lights and the big name performers: bilking people out of their money.  It's just so much more naked and exposed for some reason outside of Vegas.

Anyway, within a calender month I have been to Churchill Downs and Foxwoods.  I am glad I did so, but I am equally glad I never will visit those places again.

Actually, I might wind up back at Foxwoods.  They really do get impressive acts there.

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