Microserfs

and she stopped coming to our table, and Dad, sitting two seats over, was embarrassed because he’s not used to this kind of joke.

The Luxor has a laser beam of pure white light that shoots up from the tip of its pyramid and I’d never seen anything so tall, and never knew this beam of light existed. Pure and clean, and seen from the ground, it’s so powerful that it really appears to puncture the atmosphere. I started rambling on about the laser, but everyone thought I’d gone loony and Abe told me to be quiet.

Ethan would have liked the light beam because the whole Luxor pyramid thing is sort of like the pyramid on the dollar bill, so I sent him a postcard. Instead of having a faux Egyptian theme, the Luxor should get to the point and have a U.S. Mint theme.

Todd was in the lobby of the Hacienda when we walked in, at around 2:30 A.M. He had a plastic container full of Kennedy dollars and was drunk on free drinks, but his meanness was gone. The casino noise was horrendous. It put Palo Alto’s gas-fired leaf blowers to shame. As Karla and I were walking to the elevator bank, Todd came with us and did his impression of the machines: “Dollar slots go koonk-koonk-koonk-koonk- koonk; quarter slots go kathunka-thunka-thunka-thunka; dime slots go nink-nink-nink-nink-nink.” He did a really good job as a machine. I think he bonded with the slots. We commended him on his performance and sent him wonkily tottering back onto the floor to lose his remaining coinage. He said, “It’s an upperbody night!” and flexed his bicep at us.

Karla fell asleep quickly, but as ever, sleep eluded me, and I went downstairs to the casino and half-assedly played the slots until my $20 in quarters was gone.

Sands

stolen watches abandoned wedding rings

buried cinderblocks full of $100 bills.

You want to surrender.

Subjected to the random, you acknowledge your inability to comprehend logic and linear systems. 21 royal flush barbecue sauce garage door openers antenna La Quinta three lemons plastic bucket woofer touch-tone calling card

We generate stories for you because you don’t save the ones that are yours.

FRIDAY

Todd made out last night with a Lisa-unit from the Sony party, which he returned to after screaming at us. This morning he burst into Karla’s and my room and confessed, teary eyed, and carrying a basket of croissants. It was a bad start to a weird day. He was sick with remorse.

Anatole was in the bathroom borrowing Karla’s blowdryer, so he heard everything through the door. Todd made me, Anatole, and Karla swear on a stack of Bibles that we would never say anything to Dusty. Anatole launched into one of his “een my couwntree …” tirades about how French men all had mistresses, but he stopped when he saw how sad Todd looked.

Todd was morose and silent all day. I thought about Dusty and Lindsay Ruth at home, and was glad he felt miserable, but he’d been in such denial over his new family unit that he was bound to explode. At least he didn’t SLEEP with a Lisa.

Also, it was raining outside. Raining. It was so odd to think of Las Vegas having weather, like it was a real place. But since everyone’s always indoors in the casinos, I guess it doesn’t really matter.

There was once a Twilight Zone episode where adults were prisoners of the whims of a ten-year-old boy, Anthony, who could change the world simply by thinking the change into existence — he could make snow fall on crops — he could erase people — he forced everybody to watch TV that showed nothing but dinosaurs and cartoons. And all anybody could say, to prevent themselves from being erased themselves, was “That’s good, Anthony, that’s good.” A focus group of one.

The CES is a trade show like all other trade shows: thousands and thousands of men, for the most part, wearing wool suits with badges saying things like: Doug Duncan, Product Developer, MATTEL … or NASA, SIEMENS-NIXDORF, OGILVY & MATHER, and UCLA, and so on. Everyone loads up on free promo merchandise like software samplers, buttons, mugs, pins, and water bottles as they dash from meeting to meeting. The booths are all staffed by thousands of those guys in high school who were good-looking but who got C+’s; they’re stereo salesmen now and have to suck up to the nerds they tormented in high school.

We Oop!sters were in and out of meetings all day, mostly earnest affairs held in little rooms above the convention floor. They look the same in every hotel: chrome & glass rental furniture, extension telephones, and a water cooler. All these people meeting inside, wearing the first good suit in their life, turning old right before your eyes.

We were really just there to schmooze and do PR, since our distribution’s taken care of, and to approach people to develop Oop! starter modules. Standard stuff. We also did “seed plants” … who you give your hardware to prerelease is a high status issue.

But I must say, there’s something timeless about the false sincerity and synthetic goodwill of meetings, the calculated jocularity and the simian dominant-male/subordinate-male body language. At least the presence of Karla, Susan, and Amy saved us from the inevitable stripper jokes. Karla pointed out how in marketing meetings at Microsoft, everybody was trying to be fake-perky, and trying to fake having ideas, while at CES, everybody’s trying to be fake-sincere and trying to fake not looking desperate.

Also, later, during rare, quiet moments, I’d look through the windows at other people’s meetings, and they looked like Dutch Master cigar box people, but modernized. Old, but new … like a cordless phone resting beside a bowl of apples.

We had a “hunch lunch” in the hallway outside the Intel theater to compare notes on how the meetings were going. The Convention Center has the worst food on earth, served in the most humiliating, chair-free, low-dignity manner possible. People looked like dogs, hobbled over, eating high-sodium, byproduct- enriched, grease-lathered guck. Convention Center food in your stomach is like having fifty chest ? rays, it’s so toxic. In fact for the rest of the day, the “chest ? ray” became our official standard of measurement for something that is probably very bad for you, which shortens your life, but which won’t take its toll until much later on. If we met someone really horrible, we said they were like “ten chest ? rays,” and we’ll probably die three days earlier than if we had never met that person.

After lunch, we went to see the Pentium movie at the theater Intel put up in the main lobby. It was about how interactivity was going to make your life better in the future, and we couldn’t stop giggling because of all the Pentium jokes about decimal points being spammed around the Internet. You knew that every single person watching the show was, too.

“0.999999985621,” I whispered, setting everybody off into spasms again, and finally we had to leave because we were annoying too many people with our giggling.

I guess if you find jokes about decimal places interesting, then you truly are a geek.

In the afternoon, in between meetings, Susan spent most of her time in the SEGA-Nintendo building, and reconnoitered with her fellow Chyx at the Virgin Interactive mini-bar. There was a rumor that supermodel Fabio was signing autographs in another building, so Susan and Karla dashed over to check it out. Sure enough, His Hairness himself was signing calendars and paperbacks among the booming car stereos. Susan and Karla stood in line for an hour and finally they each got their “magic moment”: a few snatches of intimate conversation, sealed with a kiss and, more important, a Polaroid. Susan’s going to post hers on the Net. I asked Karla what he said to her and she said, “Stereos are my passion … but only after you.” Gag.

Todd got sullen because Susan and Karla kept on discussing Fabio’s pectoral muscles … “They’re like beef throw cushions … they’re like fifty-pound flank-steak Chiclets … they’re like …” and Todd would say, “Enough already.”

Went to about seventeen meetings altogether. At CES, everybody name-drops their hotel all the time.