Vegas with kids

Of course I knew what it would be like, so my complaints are absurd. I stuck a day in Las Vegas onto our Death Valley trip simply to pander to my children, offering fake pyramids, temples, castles, cities, and islands to entice them to accept my own interest in a real desert.

During our one-day, catch-every-sight-that's-free trek up the Strip, my 7-year-old daughter was entranced by The Sirens of TI, an unabashedly cheesecake spectacle combining shirtless pirates with dancing women in fancy bikinis. And they're not doing a quadrille, mind you.

The pirates fire cannons and plunge dramatically from the riggings, the sirens summon hurricanes with lightning and fog, the ships catch fire and sink... Actually, it's pretty cool for a free show.

Bailey asked, "Why do girls always win?" because she's six and that's what she sees in modern kids' movies and books. In some weird and creepy turnaround, I had to reply, "Well, they don't always win in real life," wondering how to explain that sex appeal is one of the lousier powers on which to depend. It looks pretty potent in Vegas.

And my 11-year-old daughter was much quieter, on the verge of adolescence and absorbing commercial values and messages like a sea sponge.

While I know they have to live in this world, and that they'll cope one way or another with the deranged values of this commercial, anti-human culture, sometimes I dream of pulling a Grizzly Adams and just stealing them away from it all.

Or perhaps I could start by just avoiding the obvious pits of despair...