My old friend Chris, who works for Channel Five, has invited me to go with him to Las Vegas, where he is attending the Natpe TV marketing convention. We're staying at the Mirage, a tropical-themed hotel with its own rainforest and volcano on the main Vegas Strip. The long back wall of the lobby is a coral reef aquarium with sharks, moray eels and clownfish. To get to your room you have first to pass through the casino, itself an aquarium-like space, dimly lit, with reefs of gleaming slot machines, card tables arrayed like sea fans, and some extremely strange creatures drifting about.

LRB 4 March 2004 | PDF Download