Can you believe that this, the Ruvo Centre, just being finished in Las Vegas (guess the architect ha ha) is.............. wait for it.......a treatment centre for those with scrambled brains. The Las Vegas Sun architecture correspondent yesterday had his work cut out trying to get over the bleeding obvious and reassure the world of it's true quality!

Seventeen years since I was first here, and it's easy to feel like some kind of aging lothario with bulging stomach and pills and rather grisly beard and reading glasses. Somebody who's feet begin to ache and who feels a twinge. No Cindy Crawford miracles for me I fear, I've made my arm chair and I'm going to have to sit in it. Bethnal Green could flatter (!) but there is nothing like this city of such frenetic addition and subtraction to bring on inevitable contemplation of the dance to the music of time, when for instance there is a 50% sale at Macy's if you buy before noon, and 80% if you buy before noon on Monday. Venturi and Scott Brown did not like the new Vegas which was my old vegas, and the new new vegas is something else entirely. For one the skyline is full of ordinary buildings, sure some of them have tents on top, and some have wonky lines but they are the apartment blocks and the administration blocks and the other blocks of the new generic city, which, frankly, is not up to much, for it is the perfect representation of some new generic life of which I heartily and instinctively disapprove. And every time I run the shower I think of the sinking water levels of Lake Mead, and I'm wearing a tee shirt which is extraordinarily 80% bamboo. Poor fucking pandas I found myself saying, but I bought it anyway, for it was remarkably soft to the touch.

Julie got a message from Jesus on her mobile phone. Presently she's watching the Americans kick ass against an inter-gallactic army of bugs who've just nuked Buenos Aires (?). Later she's timetabled in the man who lives with bears. There's an army of slot enthusiasts over there playing slots against the clock and making, collectively, very strange noises indeed. I'd forgotten just how inter-gallacticly weird things are in Las Vegas, it can cause some pretty serious fraying at the edges. The TV is full of advertisments for illnesses you might GET if you take the product advertised, and there seems to be a vogue for buying all your meals for a month in one go delivered by UPS (presumably medication comes extra). That way, you are apparently sure to lose hundreds of pounds (!!) Tony Orlando's proved it ('Get two weeks free!'). And Cindy Crawford has managed the delicate art of traveling backwards in time by looking younger by getting older (we need SERUM!) and TWINS are everywhere, it's the only way you can tell the difference between one person and another (ie no difference). We paid $20 for TWELVE chocolates and I'm beginning to long for cottage pie, and the future, if this is anything go by, is played out to a soundtrack of crappy Beatles records for all eternity. Vince Neil (yes, Vince Neil!!) is now a corporate executive.

Oh God, they're off again with the speed slots. Is there a technique to this BEYOND hitting a button very quickly? - Ah, yes, some people use both hands! And people are walking around in pyjamas.

Under such circumstances, it becomes essential to reach for another Bud Lite.

Cowgirl bikini craps dealers. Quite something.

It's not every day that you wake up with $800 worth of art in Vegas. There's plenty of the other kind of art here, the place is cleavage central, but this was real art, like a painting. How did that happen? Art Friday meant the Grateful Dead (not the Grateful Dead, a Grateful Deadish band even looking like them) noodling away to us in the cool night air, and me pretty loved up with the whole thing amidst lots of Las Vegas art, and Las Vegas art is special, a sort of unpretentious dime store surrealism with, yes, lots of painted cleavage. It certainly beat the hell out of the London art crowd and here they are used to making deals, so when they need to pay the rent, and you've absorbed sufficient noodling - deals are done. We bought a painting (sin citiscape) drawings (burlesque life drawing classes) and an alien nude table. Alien nudes are also very popular amongst Las Vegas artists. I'm wondering whether the table will actually ever arrive in the UK, but hell...

There's something happening here..and I wish could get my head around what it is. You can smell it, this widespread unease, primarily with regard to the whole shooting match of the economy. Examples crop up every day- the State of California is so broke it is selling off it's own buildings for instance, and how can that make sense? The State of California is going back to renting? The news is full of futures in 'self employment' which means as far as I can see- every man for himself. People are busily crossing their fingers. The republican frenzy may well be a representation of this economic vampirism. In the UK the conservatives are hardly seen as a vehicle of economic imperative, but representatives, Dad's Army style, of the status quo- duck houses in moats etc- which is hardly the same thing. Met a one eyed oil man. Toying with the notion of lunch in a Steak House strip bar, but first I shall sit down and read Colin Rowe's 'Transparency; Literal and Phenomenal', then it's on to Vegas tonight.

I'm surfacing. Just like a diver in the pool (not this one, it's on the roof 23 floors up and scares the hell out of me). I can work the room AC, I can navigate the TV, it is THE AFTERNOON, I have met nice taxi drivers, know my way to the largest liquor store in the world and even find myself scanning mens fashion magazines with interest. I have left the UK behind, I couldn't care less, I found my way to the Menil Collection and sat with Rothko and Barnett Newman and Max Ernst drawings and thought 'Not bad but its a bit sweaty outside'. I took one photograph. They ordered ME a taxi and I realize the key is 'Don't think : Enjoy' the second key is 'Spend Money' for if you don't spend money you are nothing, even if you haven't got any. This is how terrible life is in the USA, and presently it feels pretty good, and I'm now swimming with the rest of them, it was a bit of a shock, but I got over it, I'm embracing the nothing and the now. And now, I shall sit down and read Colin Rowe on 'The Chicago Frame' in the afternoon comfort of a freshly made up hotel room and stare out of the window at gothic skyscrapers.