Slow Weekend Still Busy in Vegas

Yesterday, NPR called. At first I thought it was about giving a contribution but then I found out it was a reporter who wanted a response from me to a convention of 1,000 left-leaning bloggers coming to the Riviera Hotel. My response: "There are 1,000 left leaning bloggers coming to Riviera?" I will, of course, be going to it now (some of it, anyway). But in my defense a convention of 1,000 in Las Vegas is as hard to notice here as picking a person out of a crowd while in an airplane overhead. According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority site, among the dozens of conventions going on in Las Vegas over the next few days Coffee Fest is expecting to draw 8,000 to the Las Vegas Convention Center; at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, 11,000 are coming for a convention called eBay Live; and nothing beats something called the Truck Show-Western Addition which is bringing 30,000 folks to town.

I have never heard of any of these conventions. I was planning to spend most of the weekend at CineVegas at the Palms, which is going to be larger than any of the conventions yet isn't listed by LVCVA at all since it is not a convention but an event put on by locals. CineVegas is happening now (as with most events created by locals) in part because this tends to be a slow time of year in Las Vegas. By the way, this year is no exception. The obvious might be worth one more hearing here: every moment of every day, a lot happens in Las Vegas.