I’ve previously written at length about the difference between vacationing and traveling, but to quickly recap: Matt is a vacationer and I am a traveler. But each of us brings something out of the other in this contradiction. Vacationing involves pampering: visiting spas, reclining in the sun on a cruise ship, decompressing with cocktails on a balcony, indulging in a slower pace. Traveling involves adventure: throwing yourself into the local culture, using the wrong verbs, exploring places tourists don’t, staying in a New York walk-up apartment rather than a 5-star hotel. Matt and I seem to find a good balance between both experiences when we travel: Matt gave me our Fremont Street day, for example, and today I’m giving Matt his vacationing day. And, the process, we learn brand new different ways to enjoy life. And that’s very special.
We decided to have breakfast in the Luxor at Blizz, a frozen yogurt and crepes establishment, the kind of place you might find in a food court in a mall, walking up to a counter to place your order. And it was fine. I got a crepe called the Versailles (bananas, strawberries, caramel) and Matt got one called the Benedict (basically eggs benedict on top of a crepe), both served on a “super fancy” black plastic plates. Again, it was fine. Don’t go out of your way to visit Blizz. I’ll talk more at length in my last post about things Matt and I learned about how to properly experience Vegas (praising all the hits while lamenting all the misses and how to avoid them), as we both agree our food experiences were largely disappointing.
We next spent an ample amount of time at the pool at the Excalibur. The atmosphere was much unchanged from our previous visit (they were still playing terrible music, there were still a few too many people about), but the weather was absolutely perfect: sunny and bright, warm but temperate, and the skies were free of any trace of clouds—a solid, deep, vibrant blue above our heads, expansive and infinite. We first tried to enter the members only section to get away from the crowds (as we did previously), but we were quickly found out (as we weren’t previously) as a very kind staff member asked us politely to leave. So, we did. And fair enough. We still regardless enjoyed our time reclining in the sun, sipping on a giant piña colada, dipping ourselves in the cool water of the pool, resting half submerged on the stair step entrances, gazing upon all the people.
Following our pool time, we spent some time decompressing back in our hotel room, sipping on whiskey. And before we knew it, it was lunchtime, so we headed to Hussong’s Cantina in Mandalay Bay. We had passed by this Mexican restaurant during our earlier adventures, and I had marked it down as a place I wanted to make a point to get to. Sadly, as with our crepes from Blizz in the morning, it was fine. I would have expected a Mexican restaurant closer to the border than any Minnesotan counterpart to be at least marginally better than anything we have in the north, but it just wasn’t the case. I could write more about how much I don’t remember much about our visit to Hussong’s, but no words are coming to describe how indescribable and immemorable the whole experience was, so let’s just move on. And if you should walk past Hussong’s, you should just keep walking past and spend your money elsewhere.
We next made our way to Park MGM where I once again tried my luck with the gambling devices, starting with $10 at a good old fashioned slot machine. At one point I was up $20 but then lost $10.25 and decided to cash out, taking away a whopping $9.75 in earnings. Matt and I remarked over and over again that gambling just doesn’t feed that pleasure center of the brain in the way it does others. Later on in the evening, I queued up to the cashier, but I couldn’t help but ask someone else in line, showing him my paper receipt with my earnings, “I’m sorry, is there where I turn this into money?” and with a puzzled look, he responded, “Er, yes.”
Following our brief visit to the casino, Matt and I made our way to something I never thought I would ever find myself attending: a, er, Mariah Carey concert, in this case her Celebration of Mimi performance at the Dolby Live right inside Park MGM. (Mimi, by the way, is her nickname, apparently.)
If you could indulge me for a moment, let’s back up for a bit so I can tell you about my limited knowledge of Mariah Carey, which takes us to the very second date Matt and I ever had (I promise this will go somewhere, and we’ll get back to Mariah Carey in a moment). Matt invited me over to his place for a dinner of pasta carbonara (it was quite yummy, I recall). And when I arrived, he had his YouTube on and it was playing a performance by a woman who I honestly didn’t recognize. “Oh! Who’s that?” I asked. And, with all the fortitude in the world, Matt politely responded, “Er, that’s Mariah Carey.” And then if I didn’t damage my prospects enough for a third date, I next asked, “Is this new?” and Matt continued to politely explain—without heftily sighing in disbelief, “Who is this guy?”—that the performance was from the mid-90s when she was on a world tour, this particular video a performance at the Tokyo Dome.
Keep in mind: it’s not that I never heard of Mariah Carey; I just never found her music or her persona particularly interesting, so I never really made a point to memorize her features or listen to her music beyond what I might’ve accidentally encountered in the mall (and, even then, I probably didn’t even know I was listening to Mariah Carey at all).
My ignorance of certain things popular isn’t new, mind you. For example, until about 2008 or so, I honestly thought Jay-Z was a woman until I heard him speak during an interview on Wisconsin Public Radio. But more recently, I had to ask Matt who was featured in a video that played before the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics (“That’s Beyonce,” he explained). For whatever reason, pop culture just doesn’t turn me on, and I tend to not remember things that I don’t find particularly memorable. But don’t we all choose to not remember things we find immemorable? That is the meaning of the word, after all. But also—and I want to stress this very clearly—I’m not suggesting in any way that pop culture is bad or dumb; it’s just not for me. And that is totally fine.
So! Back to Mariah Carey. I would best describe her performance as unlike any performance I’ve ever yet witnessed; that is to say, a performance totally unfamiliar and alien to me. I expressed this confusion to Matt who helped explain that Carey wasn’t necessarily performing music but rather was putting on a show in a similar way that a drag performer might put on a show. Indeed, he described Carey as “all dragged up” in her various costumes throughout the night. Her music, then, just happened to be happening while our eyes consumed all the glitzy, gaudy, garish imagery. And, it really was a show of visual illusions, and what better place to put on a show of illusions than in a city of illusions. That said, sometimes Carey’s illusions weren’t particularly good at tricking the senses (more on that later).
As Carey started to perform, I was immediately struck by how awkward her stage presence was. She stiffly moved around the stage, one tiny step at a time, a gate more like one not belonging to a pop diva but rather belonging to a paranoid Barbie doll afraid of falling at any moment. And then, within a handful of minutes after performing a couple of songs, she flounderingly walked off towards stage left as if looking for the bathroom, her eyes wide open and dazed like some kind of helpless forest animal mesmerized by a flashlight. Meanwhile, her backup singers, her band, and a troupe of dancers would perform a musical number while Carey got changed, and by the half-hour mark, she was already dolled up in her third costume.
A half hour of singing while awkwardly walking from one end of the stage to the next (perhaps a total of an eighth of a mile in steps) was apparently all that Carey could manage in exercise for the evening, so she reclined lazily on a pink couch situated atop some stairs in the middle of the stage. It was at this point where I thought of Mick Jagger, an old man 25 years Carey’s senior, who would only have just begun to have run circles around a stage ten times as large in a stadium holding tens of thousands of more fans. But, recline on a couch Carey did, and I was once again confused about what happened next. As she performed, I asked Matt, “Is she only performing parts of tunes?” And he responded in the affirmative that she was, indeed, only singing 30 second snippets of a handful of tunes. “How strange,” I thought. Matt would explain that we live in a TikTok world where people don’t have a lot of time for anything longer than 22 seconds.
After a tad too long on the couch, it was time for Carey to get changed again, so she was awkwardly led off stage, gingerly stepping down some stairs as a gentleman weirdly helped her move at a glacial pace. But we were treated to another mini performance by her backup singers, her band, and her virtuoso pianist, Daniel Moore. I generally found the moments that Carey wasn’t on stage far more entertaining than when she was on stage. The music during these sections was real, and it was classic and entertaining in the way R&B music used to be as it was in the 1970s, legends like Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight, and Al Green creating sublime music to outlive the ages. Moore’s performance on the piano in particular was glorious and energetic, his fingers dancing up and down the keys with graceful, effortless elegance.
Eventually, however, Carey did return to the stage, but her illusory attempts to confound the senses were noticeably flawed as she started to sign autographs while “singing.” I put singing in quotes because as she signed autographs, she clearly had a hard time doing more than one thing at once, focused intently on signing her name while forgetting to move her lips convincingly to the lyrics while her voice continued to still be audible on the recording. “Oh my god,” I thought, “She’s lip syncing. What else has she not been singing this whole time?” I wondered.
As the show trundled on, by the 90-minute mark it appeared that Carey was done. She didn’t even try for an encore, and she started walking off stage, her back to the audience, before the curtains even finished closing. The lights also came up really quickly, and audience members started leaving before the clapping even stopped. I’m generally used to seeing Bruce Springsteen or Queen or the Rolling Stones put on frenetic performances lasting two and a half hours or more, the audience cheering loudly to the very end, begging the musicians to perform forever and ever, but Carey seemed to only manage 90 minutes (and 30 minutes of that was spent fussing backstage to change into her next costume), while some of her fans seemed equally flaccid in their adoration.
If my experience at this show couldn’t have been made worse, Matt and I were sat next to some young women who insisted on chatting with us throughout the show. “What’s your favorite song?” the young lady immediately next to me asked at high volume directly into my ear. “I’m not a Mariah Carey fan! I’m only here for my boyfriend!” I yelled back. “Oh, that’s so sweet of you to come! At least he likes Mariah Carey and not something else like modern art!” I could’ve responded that I kinda like modern art, but I didn’t. There were also moments during the show that she tried to dance with me, but I refused. “Lighten up!” she exclaimed in exasperation. When the show was over, I wanted to get away from them as soon as we could, so we quickly made our exit.
And so, that was my experience at a Mariah Carey concert. What things we do for those we love. I do feel so happy that I was able to share this moment with Matt, as he had a really good time, and Carey’s music is really important and meaningful to him on so many levels. But, her music just isn’t for me. And believe me, it’s not for a lack of trying, as I’ve listened to more Carey in the past two years than I have in the previous two decades.
But the memories I have of this concert will be with me forever and ever, and it’s a story I really like to tell. I also have a broader understanding of the spectrum of the human condition, appreciating other ways we humans may enjoy life. And I really admire that Matt has such an encyclopedic knowledge about Carey, and he’s so passionate about her work and her life and her music. And that’s really special. And no one gets to take that way.
Stray observations:
- Our server at Hussong’s, while friendly and nice, concluded our visit by giving us a card with a QR code to scan to rate our experience. But she rather imploringly pleaded with us to fill it out, “so she could keep her job,” she explained. Matt and I both thought that was a rather strange way to request feedback.
- I realize I didn’t actually talk much about Carey’s actual music, focusing more on her awkward performance. But I don’t really know what else to say beyond the fact that her music just doesn’t turn me on. I find her vocal timbre strident and her melodies overly complex and unlistenable because of how she excessively ornaments the base melodic lines, creating melodies that lack any semblance of an elegant and graceful structure. But when you take away her voice and her melodies, the music underneath is repetitively and vapidly uncreative and leaves so much more to be desired, so there isn’t much within Carey’s soundscape that speaks to me in ways that I find interesting even though her music is so interesting to others. All this said, she clearly has struck some kind of chord with lots of people, and she is a powerhouse to be reckoned with. She has changed the world of modern popular music (albeit with lots of help from others), and she will enjoy more than just a solitary footnote in the history books.