Can’t quite think right now

OK so I shouldn’t have to explain any more, but J.R. Moehringer wrote about spending two years in Las Vegas for October’s Smithsonian, and it is so, so good:

And it’s not just books. Vegas discourages everything prized by book people, like silence and reason and linear thinking. Vegas is about noise, impulse, chaos. You like books? Go back to Boston.

She said a mega-rich couple had hired her for the night. (Beckham and Posh?) They were hitting all the hot spots, and at each spot they wanted her to appear as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Currently the couple was cloistered in a private back room, “doing something,” and she was keeping out of sight, waiting for her cue.

“What sin are you right now?”

“Sloth.”

I’d have bet the farm on Lust. I wanted to ask if she was free after the traveling sinfest, but the couple was waving, calling her name. They were ready for some Sloth.

When I first opened a checking account in Vegas, my personal banker’s name was Paradise. I wasn’t sure I wanted to entrust all the money I had in this world to a woman named Paradise. In Vegas, she assured me, the name is not that unusual. She spoke the truth. I met another Paradise. I also met a girl named Fabulous and a girl named Rainbow. She asked me to call her Rain for short.

I would excerpt more—or, like, the whole thing—but that is probably illegal and mostly it’s just unfair because I don’t want to spoil every good part for you. Just the juicy bits from the first half.