We spent the last couple of nights, my assistant and our little sons and I, in Las Vegas, staying at the nearly psychotically gorgeous Venetian Hotel.

All of Las Vegas is a little like the Venetian now. I'm not the first to call it an adult's Disneyland, complete with furry animal shows and magicians -- but also every manner of vice known to humanity.

The Venetian has, for example, canals that ferry guests through its shopping district, while gondoliers sing 'O Solo Mio' under a sky that turns believably and weirdly sunny and dark by turns.

It is an indoor souk where people can stop at an oxygen bar or drop 20 large on a pair of earrings; and it is difficult to reconcile it with real reality, with a real sky and real birds.

Children wander around with their parents at 11 p.m. on what we in the Midwest would call a school night. Everyone is buying everything there is.

Who are all these people? They're laden -- laden like prospectors' mules with packs -- with bags bearing the labels of Neiman-Marcus, Tiffany, Armani, Burberry, bags that must contain thousands of dollars of clothing and jewelry and leather goods. Who has all that money? An investment banker from California told me she had clients who routinely had $500,000 wired to "the cage" at a casino where they'd be gambling.

At 7 a.m., when we went downstairs before my speaking engagement to buy milk for my assistant Pam's toddler, the same people were at the blackjack tables as had been the night before.

We saw more people smoking indoors than we remember seeing anywhere in America.

At the Venetian, one of the restaurants was called the Tao, and it featured "spiritual dining" and "religious nightlife." Unable to imagine what that was, we inquired of an administrator, who said that it would be pretty hard to have a religious nightclub, and that it was just an advertising gimmick capitalizing on the popularity of Buddhism and other contemplative religions among such opinion makers as Nicole Richie and Demi Moore.

And just as we departed the hotel -- to which I would return, willingly, for this nearly psychedelic sense of suspended normalcy - two conventions were arriving, which, for me, neatly symbolized Las Vegas, a vista in the middle of nowhere jointly founded by a gangster and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

One was the Adult Entertainment Convention, known commonly as the "porn expo." Security people told us that events in corridors and elevators commonly accompanied this conclave of porn and wanna-be porn performers. We saw breasts the size of canteloupes, breasts that Michael Jordan couldn't have .. well.. We saw a woman with her beau, who was wearing a fur G-string and a fur bikini top, who had piercings of .. well every part that could be pierced, and a hotel staff member was explaining to her that she would need to put on a robe even to walk down the hall.

The other convention was the gathering of the Uber Geeks, the Consumer Electronics Show. It drew 140,000 people who wanted to synch their Windows capability wit their Palm prc file or get their home theater controls to also turn on their air conditioners and make their morning coffee.

I'd have paid to spend just one more night to watch the wildlife play.