Sarah E. Moffett

View from the glass-encased balcony at Ghost Bar, on the 55th floor of the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas, NV.

I was in Las Vegas for a few days this week attending a conference aimed primarily at statisticians. The conference was informative enough but it was made abundantly clear, I’m sad to say, that not much has progressed to correct the inverse relationship between braininess and public speaking ability. I was not a presenter, although there’s no compelling reason why I couldn’t/shouldn’t have been. If nothing else, it would have kept me in line.

I don’t know what comes over me when I travel. With the exception of my annual trip to Toronto, where I jaywalk to within an inch of my life–like any New Yorker will do–while the locals wait patiently and safely on the sidewalks for the lights to change, I curiously find myself adopting local customs. In Vegas, I found myself wearing short dresses and going to the hot clubs. Where everyone is 21 years old, the women have outlandish boob jobs and the men have frosted hair? I never do this in New York–the thought of waiting on line to pay a $20 cover for an excessively crowded club with lame music and $12 drinks is placed on the desirability scale alongside hot-gluing my eyelids open and watching the entire Michael Bay filmography.

The funny thing is, somehow I managed to get into the clubs for free–possibly everyone at the female end of the spectrum did–and I got legitimately hit on. (He was not a sleazebag, although it’s entirely possible that he is married. Thankfully, I wasn’t interested.) I also found myself defending Celine Dion and the Pussycat Dolls. (For the record, I did not actually see Celine Dion, but I did see the Pussycat Dolls.)

As worrisome as this activity may seem, it gets worse. Clearly the lifestyle effects more than offset any eggheady impact because on the plane ride home, I not only badly fumbled on the Sunday New York Times that I’d been carting around for three days, but I couldn’t even come close to solving the “Gentle” Sudoku puzzle (the others being “Moderate” and “Diabolical”) in the airline magazine. Also, I watched License to Wed from start to finish and didn’t despise it.

Doing the math, I’d say Vegas made me dumber. Let this serve as a directional, cautionary note rather than a statistically significant finding. But, I’m afraid to find out what repeat experiments might reveal.

(Thanks Sarah!)

Missy is a Former Ohioan-turned-District of Columbia denizen-turned-New Yorker. Brooklynite, to be precise. (There was a brief stopover in Pennsylvania in there, too.) Her blog, Listen Missy, is visually stimulating with her talented photography and culturally inviting with its endless stream of film, literature, and societal commentary. Read it here.

[Sarah Moffett is on hiatus, Walden style. Comments and such will be moderated upon return, provided she does not get “lost” in Western Europe.]

Share This