Enter the Nightmare

So Joanne and I are in Vegas on New Year's Eve, watching "Enter the Night," the big, Vegasy, New-Year's-Evey show at the Stardust.

And suddenly, without warning, it goes from an unimaginably expensive high-school talent show -- complete with over-vocalized classics ("Uhn-foooor-gheeet... ablllle!") and long- and well-forgotten pop tunes (DeBarge lives!) -- to the wet-dream of a profoundly disturbed 13-year-old boy.

What were happy, peppy, perky dancers and singers are now happy, peppy, perky and nearly naked dancers and singers.

For this song, they've chosen a bizarre fantasy motif.  The men stalk around in these enormous, awkward cod-pieces and huge white wigs with elaborate horns protruding from the top.  One guy, and he almost makes me choke on my $4/8oz. Coke, is dragging a styrofoam horse rear-end around behind him, creating what I suppose we are to interpret as a centaur, but what looks more like a fraternity prank gone horribly wrong.

The woman, more tastefully, parade around in thongs and some lace.

And, I suppose, several thousand dollars worth of surgery. While some of these parading women have normal-looking breasts, others look as if they had their chests applied with a giant ice-cream scoop.

I turn to Joanne, but she's still watching the show, her mouth agape, like she's witnessing a happy, peppy, perky, nearly naked, dancing and singing car accident.

And after it's all over, the performers stream out into the audience and start shaking hands.  A parading woman, now dressed, grabs my hand and pumps up and down it a couple of times.

"Thank you," I say.

And I mean it.

 



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