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I have been here only a few hours, but already I can tell you this:

• That dark futuristic scene from Back to the Future when Biff has taken over and the town has gone to hell--that was on my mind a lot this evening. On that note, in maybe twenty minutes of a Thursday night on the strip, I saw eight people arrested in three seperate incidents, and two different people crying.
• You know how young women spend a lot of money on prom dresses, and then after the big night that money goes down the tubes as the dress spends the rest of its days in mothballs because there's nowhere besides a prom that you can wear a shiny monstrosity like that? I'm here to tell you that all those prom dresses are welcome here in Vegas. You'll fit right in. Come on over.
• Darryl Dawkins is staying in my hotel, as are lots of celebrities. But I only really think that one's important. His wife was on my plane too. If we can somehow make a killing at baccarat together, perhaps one day I will look back at this as "the Darryl Dawkins All-Star Weekend."
• If you want to cruise the Vegas strip in a shiny automobile, you have to have all same sex people in the car with the windows rolled down. No car with the windows down has males and females in it. I have no idea how you get around if you actually pick somebody up. Taxi, maybe?
• Despite a grueling lack of sleep--it's nearly 6 a.m. at home now--I dragged myself to a Converse Dwyane Wade party. It was loud and crowded, but pretty celebrity dense. Let's say there were 500 people there when I was there. One of them was Dwyane Wade, another I'm pretty sure was his wife Darlene,(CORRECTION: my excellent memory at work--his wife's name is...) Siohvaughn plus Joey Porter, Kenny Smith, and... Aaron Williams! You might think to yourself, wow, that would be kind of cool to be able to grab a Corona from the open bar and stroll over to chat with one of those people in a relaxed setting. No dice. WAY TOO LOUD. No one was talking to anyone, but also, no one was dancing which is what that volume setting works for. All there was to do was people watch, which you can technically do pretty well anywhere you look in Vegas right now. (There are about 7,000 people in this city right now who, to my eye, might be Devean George.) I quickly found that standing not talking to anyone while my oversized ears were pounded with bass, well, that was only so fun for someone who should be sleeping. So I decided to cut out early and... go back to the room to write about standing around with a beer. 'Cause that's so much cooler.