Gak Tweaking

October 9, 2010

Although I stayed at one of the nicest hotels in Las Vegas, I spent most of my time in the building's cement-walled underbelly, which is usually the case with these types of jobs.

And what, exactly, are "these types of jobs"?

I was there to help create gak for a corporate event. What's gak? It's a term for abstract eye candy that, in this case, was to be projected onto a gigantic screen behind company executives as they discussed their company's bright future. Although gak may sometimes incorporate buzzwords floating on the screen, there is rarely any meaningful content, just pretty designs.

This particular job was a multi-million dollar production, and several companies had been contracted to work on various elements. One of them, in turn, subcontracted me. Most of the videos had already been designed and created in New York, but things that are designed on a 20-inch computer monitor rarely, if ever, look the same when projected onto a 90-foot screen. On-site tweaks and changes are an integral part of the process. That's where I came in— a professional gak tweaker flown in at great expense.

When I first arrived in the space where I’d be working, I laughed at a piece of paper I saw taped to the wall that said, "Today is Friday, October 1."

“Is that really necessary?” I wondered. But by the third day, after countless long hours in the windowless room, I realized that, yes, it absolutely was. In fact, despite the sign, I still got confused. The casino upstairs wasn’t any better in that regard. Most of Las Vegas is designed to mess with your sense of time.

On my third day (or was it the fourth?) I had the morning off and didn't need to show up until three in the afternoon. "Get some sleep," my producer said. I tried, but my internal time clock was a total mess, and I woke up wide awake at 5 AM. My room overlooked the hotel pools -- several of them -- but it was too early for anyone to be lounging or swimming. I stared at the water as the rising sun began to sparkle on the surface. Beyond the pools, I could see the airport. I watched a few planes take off and land. "The airport is so close to the hotel," I said to myself, "How can that possibly be a 20-dollar cab ride?" But it was. In between the pools and the airport lay the Las Vegas Strip, but my hotel was the furthest south, and the window was angled such that there weren't any other casino lights to see, only a few out-of-business hotels, a storefront psychic reader, a sign for a gun show, and a McDonald's. "Aha! That's what I'll do. I'll go to McDonald's for breakfast!" Not ideal, but it was something to shoot for on the outside.

It was barely 6 AM, too early, so I took a bath. As I wrote previously, I went bowling the night before I left New York. Although it's been a year since I broke my arm, bowling was difficult. I must've been compensating for the injury somehow because the next morning, as I rushed around to catch my flight, my arm felt okay, but my back was killing me. Spending five hours on a plane and then working endless hours in a less-than-ergonomic chair only made it worse. Once in the tub, underwater in the middle of the desert, it was hard to get out. But I was suddenly struck with a pressing need. "Okay, let's go. I gotta move around, get some sun, get some air."

Finding your way out of a Las Vegas Casino isn't easy, but I managed to navigate the maze of flashing lights and found the main entrance, then sniffed my way down the long, meandering walkway lined with palm trees and fake rocks, until I saw the street leading to the golden arches.

I've been to Las Vegas at least half a dozen times, but this was the first trip when it wasn't 110 degrees outside and I could actually walk farther than half a block before calling it quits. So, after finishing breakfast, I took my coffee and went for a walk. From Mandalay Bay at the south end of the Strip to the Sahara at the north end is roughly four and a half miles on the map, but with all the stairways and overpasses, I'm sure it's longer than that.

Being a Sunday morning, things were quiet when I started. I poked into as many casinos as I could, to see what they each looked like from the inside. I was especially curious about Bugsy Siegel's joint, The Flamingo. I saw an interview with Martin Scorsese where he spoke about filming Casino. He said it took time to find a suitably old-school location that hadn’t been overrun with the family-oriented updates. The Flamingo was one of the few, if not only, places that fit the bill.

Casino was filmed fifteen years ago, so I wasn't sure if The Flamingo had given in to the trends by now, but I was happy to see that the chairs around the casino bar looked like they'd been there since 1959. Come to think of it, a lot of the patrons did too. Then again, it was 9 a.m. on a Sunday, and senior citizens seemed to be the only ones awake anywhere. I wanted to buy my wife, Deborah, a souvenir -- a T-shirt, maybe. Something suitably tacky, but wearable. I figured that the Flamingo gift shop might have just the thing, but I was sadly disappointed to find it was almost entirely dedicated to Donny and Marie paraphernalia. Donny and Marie have a standing gig at The Flamingo. Their super-sized faces were plastered 40 stories tall on the side of the building. The gift shop was filled with mugs, keychains, T-shirts, and dolls, all featuring the shiny, glittery faces of the famously wholesome duo.

Oh well, back to The Strip.

The entire Strip from one end to the other is lined with news boxes filled with guides to discreet entertainment. "Las Vegas Personals." From the looks of it, tourists must take these pamphlets out of the boxes to have a curious look before tossing them into the street.

"Look, honey, ha, ha, isn't this funny? Ha ha."

"Drop it, mister."

Copies lay everywhere. Business cards, too, featuring photos of smiling faces and bodacious ta-tas with stars strategically printed to cover the nipples. Sun-faded and windblown, strewn in the gutters like New England leaves. I imagined raking them into piles and jumping into them from a tree branch.

I was hoping to make it back to the hotel in time for a power nap before heading to work, but no such luck. Eight miles of meandering, in and out of the fake Paris, the fake Venice, and the fake New York (I went out of my way to walk over the fake Brooklyn Bridge because, well, how could I not?) barely left time for a necessary shower.

Not a big deal, though, because it was a short day, anyway. In at 3, out by 6, then off to dinner and a show.

Kevin, the owner of the production company that hired me, took our small team (four of us, including Kevin) to see Cirque du Soleil's Love at the Mirage. I'd never seen a Cirque du Soleil show before and probably wouldn't have ever gone, but I have to admit, it was pretty spectacular. Afterwards, as we stood in the crowded casino to regroup before heading to dinner, an elderly cocktail waitress passed by in a short black dress. Her black tights stretched over her bony legs, making them look like shillelaghs. She wore a jet-black wig that looked like it had been whipped together in a cotton candy machine. Thick black mascara clumped around her eyes, lipstick, and rouge. Lots of rouge. I imagined the whole package smelled like whiskey and diapers, but I didn't get close enough to find out. As she passed by with a couple of drinks on a tray, Kevin stopped her in her tracks. "Do you work here?" he asked. Not like, "Excuse me, Miss, do you work here? We’d like to order a round of drinks," but rather, "Do you actually work here?" He couldn't believe it. She was the oldest cocktail waitress he'd ever seen.

"Well, yes and no," she said. "I actually work over there." She pointed to the other side of the casino. She had only come to our side of the casino to bring a drink order to a couple of customers who had wandered beyond her station.

By "here," Kevin, of course, meant "here in the casino," not "here" as in "right here in this particular spot," but her answer left me wondering whether the other side of the casino held a protective, timeless bubble. As long as she stayed within the confines of the bubble, she looked like a glamorous young showgirl, but whenever she had to chase down a customer who strayed beyond the magic perimeter, the masquerade was shattered and the truth revealed. There’s a short story in there somewhere. If Ray Bradbury hasn’t already written it.

I wanted to wait around and watch her return to the other side of the casino to see how the story ends, but we had dinner reservations.