Las Vegas Weekly

Made for each other: Vegas and a T. rex

Aww. Isn’t Samson a cute little fellow?

Courtesy of Bonhams & Butterfields

A T. rex skeleton nicknamed Samson will be auctioned off at the Venetian on October 3:

No city needs a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton more than Las Vegas. Don’t get me wrong: I think every place should have a fossilized remnant of history (which reminds me—since Strom Thurmond is no longer with us, let’s ship a T. rex to South Carolina, too). And yes, Vegas already has just about everything a tourist seeking engorgement could want. But that’s kind of the problem, isn’t it? We’re the city where anything goes, where we’re pinning our immediate future on a $9 billion albatross at a time when housing values are in the commode, when our politicians use their parents’ money to buy someone’s silence, when city officials focus more on a never-gonna-happen sports stadium than on the homeless problem. Maybe it’s time for a constant reminder of what happens to societies when there are no rules, when the big and powerful take whatever they want, when caution gets thrown to the wind. So let’s all chip in and buy Samson and stick him right next to the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. It might not usher in the next generation of social responsibility, but it’ll prove that we at least considered it at one point in our history.