Greetings From Las Vegas

By Spencer Hall
Las Vegas: proof that where you see sand and blinding heat, a starry-eyed American dreamer will see a place where he can make billions off people’s inability to perform basic math.
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Vegas has become the destination of choice for thousands of basketball fans on the first weekend of March Madness, a mad opportunity for crews of logo-wearing fanatics with brackets in hand to sit in sportsbooks large and small and go insane en masse. By volume it is second in terms of legal gambling to the Super Bowl, but in terms of intensity it surpasses it by sprawling out over four days of drinking, buffet-wrecking, sleep deprivation, and ... well, all the other things that Vegas commercials brag about you leaving there.
(Remember: a criminal record will follow you home from Vegas, no matter what the ads say. Sorry for the downer, there.)
I’ll be here for the next four days to record the whole fracas, top to bottom. If I live through the whole thing, I expect the keys to the city. You know, the big gold ones they hand out to dignitaries -- I bet you can get at least a few hundred bucks for that at a pawn shop in case my first round pick of Belmont over Duke doesn’t work out.
And as you’ll see later today, I have to make that pick thanks to my inability to fire a gun accurately. So don’t accuse me of hating Duke. Accuse me of having terrible hand-eye coordination instead.↵