Las Vegas Weekly

E-mail from the future!

A writer’s future self reports back from 2020, when things have really changed.

Geoff Carter

From: Geoff Carter 2020

To: Geoff Carter 2010

Date: Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 1:08 PM

Subject: Hey-ho, Carter Prime

Greetings from the world of tomorrow! First off: You are not a millionaire and you’ll never be one, so stop beginning every other sentence with “When I become a millionaire ...” Also: When you nail that tabloid-friendly actress purely by dumb luck in ’16—hint: her name rhymes with Chinsey Rohan—just keep it to yourself. There’s some legal and medical fallout from that event that you won’t want to brag about.

I’m writing to you from Frankie’s Tiki Room in Las Vegas. I know you’ll be thrilled that Frankie’s is still in business, and that you’ll be somewhat interested to learn that Las Vegas still exists. These days, though, it’s known as Vegas.com Las Vegas. (Locals call it “Vegas Dot Vegas.”) Over the past few years, several of the more cash-strapped cities have sold their naming rights, like they did for stadiums in your time. We came this close to seeing “Viagra D.C.” or “San Diego Johnson, a Family Company.”

You’ll spend New Year’s Eve 2019 in Primm, which has since become the new entertainment capital of the Microsoft United States. A Primm building boom will begin in ’13, thanks to a serendipitous chain of events that include the discovery of a gigantic diamond lode, the building of a bullet-train line from Anaheim and the state of Nevada loosening certain strictures on prisoner labor. This morning, you woke up in the 80-seat Jacuzzi in the Jonas Brothers suite of the Primm Disney-Dubai, down in the depths of its 190th floor. You’ll take the train the rest of the way into town, and make your way to Frankie’s by way of the Downtown-to-Summerlin light-rail line that Mayor Vince Neil grudgingly okayed in ’14 after Gov. Blue Man Group threatened to release some compromising pictures.

The big news in 2020 is that Echelon is this close to finding a buyer, and the stakeholders are celebrating by allowing Chrisco, a Christo tribute artist who stars in the Bellagio’s new Superstars of Conceptual Art, to wrap the unfinished construction in gigantic hooker fliers. I haven’t seen Superstars yet, but I’ve got tickets to the Bellagio’s other production, Oceans 11: Live and Lewd. Actors playing the gang from the Clooney movies face off against the gang from the Sinatra movie, performing various nude acrobatic feats. A different gang wins each night, decided by audience reaction.

I know the show sounds stupid, Carter Prime, but I’m kind of sick of Cirque du Soleil productions—and in 2020, they account for some 97 percent of all the shows on the Strip. Cirque even took over the County Commission (or the County du Commission, excuse-moi) back in ’12 and moved it to City Center. Tired though I am of synchronized acrobatics, swimming and intercourse, I have to admit that this afternoon’s vote to convert The Lakes to live/work brothel zoning, streaming live as I write this note, is givin’ me a civic woody.

Oh yeah, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the first adult human has been successfully cloned. The bad news is that it’s Donald Trump, and he paid for, like, 500 copies of himself. One just sat next to me at the bar and ordered a glass of straight Windowpane. You don’t wanna make eye contact with a Trump clone; they’ll just go off on how much they hate Steve Wynn clones and how they “banged Prejean like a Neal Peart drum solo.”

What else? Well, Nevada legalized pot in ’11, a move that facilitated a sharp rise in tourism and an explosion in neighborhood bodegas. The Flamingo, Las Vegas Hilton, Circus Circus—all gone, nuked. (And the implosion of the Stratosphere Tower was engineered to crush the Sahara, for an MTV special.) No one was worried about hitting the Monorail track; the system went bankrupt in ’12, and was taken over by feral tribes of Mad Max-like rave kids who live in the stations and ride the now-empty rails on horseshoe-shaped scooters powered by buffet waste. Those Monorail stations are a sure place to get mugged, though it still costs $10 to get up there.

And you’re gonna love Downtown Vegas Dot Vegas. Through a previously unknown loophole in the state constitution, Mayor Neil has the power to suspend pretty much any law of man or nature in the blocks north of Sahara. Everybody knows that Downtown Vegas Dot Vegas is the place to go if you want to get laid, evade federal taxes, drink a properly mixed cocktail or drive a car that gets maybe three or five miles to a gallon of premium gas. The Fremont Street Experience light canopy has shown nothing but softcore porn since ’15, and as I understand it no one knows how to turn it off; the knowledge has been lost.

It does my heart good to see Vegas coming out of its long, long recession. People don’t come here in the numbers they once did, since The Hangover Reloaded game was released for the Xbox Gargantua, PS5 and 3wii back in ’16. It comes with a full range of online gambling and shopping options, direct video from Spearmint Rhino’s dressing room and a fleshlike peripheral that wraps around your … um, yeah. Anyway, it’s only $50.

Best of luck to you, and remember: Just because “it feels right” when a naked starlet asks you to invest in “a Nevada homeland for followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster,” it doesn’t mean that you’re not a GIGANTIC F---ING IDIOT. Not that I’m trying to influence you. It would be wrong to try to change the future like that.