Las Vegas

"Sin City" is a crazy place undoubedtly modelled on Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. Not surprisingly, therefore, people say "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas".

A mere 400 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, the capital of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose followers, the Mormons, neither smoke, consume alcohol or even drink coffee, Las Vegas is like the Devil come to tempt Jesus. And as if determined to prove this analogy, the city is slap-bang in the middle of a desert: the Mojave.

In contrast to nearly anywhere else in the US, you can drink outside and smoke inside almost everywhere in Vegas. And true to its moniker, the city seems entirely geared towards entertainment of one sort or another.

In all, there almost 200,000 slot machines in the city, spread across 1700 licensed gambling places. There are 37 perfectly green golf courses (this was a desert, remember), almost as many bowling alleys and hundreds of shows to choose from every night, from magic to music, including no fewer than five different Cirque du Soleil productions. Vegas is also a popular place to get married and the nigh-obligatory destination for stag parties. Companies seem to like the city too, given that some 19,000 conventions a year take place there.

Vegas is a city of superlatives in other ways too. Aside from 122 casinos, most of which seem to be open 24 hours a day, it has 350 hotels with a combined total of more than 150,000 rooms. Not only is there a half-size, 165-metre replica of the Eiffel Tower and a two-thirds scale model of the Arc de Triomph. More than 1000 fountains outside the Bellagio Hotel "dance" to music every 15-30 minutes.

Another of Sin City's earthly delights is prostitution, or rather, "escort services", as they are euphemistically known, which are touted openly by groups of mainly Latinos. Any man walking along The Strip, Vegas' main street, is likely to get lurid calling cards thrust into his hand at what seems like 10-metre intervals. Since most of these cards are quickly dropped the moment the person realises what he is holding, the street is littered with thousands upon thousands of pictures of semi-naked women every evening.

When we went to Vegas, my then 7-year-old son was fascinated by these cards, pocketing a selection "for research", as he put it. We thought it was a bit of harmless fun (they weren't pornographic, after all). But when he announced his intention to take them to school for "show and tell", Mrs Newbie offered him a deal: if he threw the ten cards away, she'd buy him ten Pokemon cards in their place.

"But there are pictures on both sides of these!" my shrewd businessman of a son replied. "I should get 20 Pokemon cards."

Luckily for our reputation at school, he got his 20 Pokemon cards. And the more unsavoury ones stayed in Vegas.

Fight For Your Rights

As I discovered this morning thanks to that tremendous invention, the Internet, the source of a wondrous array of facts, half-truths and the merely fanciful (not necessarily in that order of magnitude), America is one of only 14 countries worldwide in which it is illegal to buy and consume alcohol under the age of 21. Whatever the pros and cons of this, the law is the law, and deserves to be upheld.

Without revealing too much about myself, it is fair to say that I am in my mid-40s, and although I like to think I don't look my age, I have had independent confirmation from several third parties – Mrs Newbie included – that I could not pass for 20.

I have therefore been irked (yes, irked, no less) for some considerable time that I am required to prove my age whenever I shop at my local Kroger supermarket. A sticker by the cash register, which some similarly senescent person has clearly tried to peel off in their annoyance, declares "If you are under 40, we must ask for ID". Cashiers even have to enter your date of birth in their till in order to authorise any attempted purchases of alcohol.

Time after time, I resolved to resist this blatant overcautiousness on Kroger's part, and time after time I meekly pulled out my driver's licence, only to kick myself afterwards (metaphorically, I hasten to add) for my repeated temerity.

So annoyed was I by this flagrant injustice that I hatched a cunning plan: on a day when my children had wound me up to near breaking point and Mrs Newbie had failed to see my side of the story, I would charge into Kroger, grab some beer and defend my Congress-given right. I would make a fuss, demand to see the manager and win elderly people across America back the prerogative to go into a store armed only with some crumpled dollar bills and declare, "I wish to procure sundry libations" (or whatever the local equivalent thereof may be).

Although all is well in the house of Newbie and the Newblets have for the most part been their darling selves, I resolved this week that the time had finally come. So together with the kids (brought along for defensive purposes only), I drove over to Kroger, picked up a six-pack of Mike's Hard Lemonade, filled up a shopping cart with suitable alibi groceries to cast aside angrily should my demands remain unmet, and headed for the meanest-looking cashier in the store.

Trembling with anticipation and pumped with adrenaline, I thought, "This is my date with Destiny. Today is the day that will change America. Henceforth, baby boomers throughout this great nation will no longer live in fear, but be able to purchase alcoholic beverages unchallenged once more".

With my heart thumping in my throat, I unpacked my cart, brazenly placing the Mike's at the very front, and looked the cashier straight in the eye.

"Do you have a Kroger card?" he asked. And that was it.

A new sticker by the till read: "If you are under 27, please be prepared to show your ID".

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Postscript

Less than a week after writing this - on the first day in living memory when, through a chain of coincidences, I did not have my driver's licence on me - I was "carded " at Kroger in spite of the new sticker, which I pointed to (to no avail). Duly summoned, the store manager said, "I'm sure that'll be OK." And it was.

Code Red

I've already raved about Mountain Dew. What I haven't told you about is my latest discovery and new soda-of-choice: Code Red.

Now I usually detest cherry-flavoured drinks of all kinds because they're generally sickly sweet. Code Red, however, although billed as cherry-flavoured Mountain Dew, doesn't taste anything like cherry, but is slightly tangy with an aroma that's a cross between cinnamon and vanilla (probably both). It's still got the same ridiculous amounts of sugar and caffeine as regular Mountain Dew and looks dangerously high on cochineal red, but hey, who's counting when it's this good?

Thanks to my neighbours, who drink Mountain Dew instead of coffee and actually start their day with a can or two and can thus safely be described as MD aficionados, I have also been introduced to a wonderful new mixer: Bacardi and Code Red.

No prizes for guessing what's standing beside me as I type these words.

Alcohol

Listening to the radio today, I heard a Michigan college (i.e. university) proudly announce that it had had no alcohol-related deaths among its students since 1999.

To my ears, that's not good news, but an exception-proves-the-rule indictment of American alcohol laws, which forbid people from drinking alcohol under the age of 21 (who says Prohibition ended in 1933?).

Given that most Americans only drink light beer, which contains about 2% alcohol, it beats me why they don't lower the legal drinking age to, say, 18.