Kick me, beat me, don’t let me go to Vegas

If next Dec. 20 you should see me packing and ask where I’m going and I say Las Vegas, you have my permission to knock me unconscious, tie me to the bed and not release me until my head has cleared and my senses are restored.

The reason for that is at the moment I write it is Christmas Eve and we have just returned from the Land of Dreams and Nightmares and our tree isn’t up, the presents aren’t wrapped, the roof leaks and we’re expecting a house full of company tomorrow.

We flew to Vegas to be with friends but for some reason failed to anticipate that squeezing four days’ work into about 12 hours on the day before Christmas might border on the improbable and possibly even the insane.

Cinelli and I are great squeezers, but the yuletide season and Las Vegas were never intended to be combined, although they do present a nice dichotomy of piety and sin. The friend we went to Vegas to join is going to have to change her birthday to September if she expects to see us there again next year.

I hadn’t been to what many regard as L.A. East for a few years, and discovered enough changes to fortify anyone’s notion that America is indeed the most decadent place on Earth. “But it’s our right to be decadent if we want to,” a partygoer remarked on the 30th floor of the Mirage, where the birthday celebration was being held. “That’s what freedom is all about.” I’m not sure that freedom is all about seeing topless showgirls kicking their long legs and old ladies blowing their Social Security checks at the craps table, but I guess there is an element of freedom in options.

I kept thinking as we looked down on the glittery Strip, with its erupting volcano, its Venetian canals, its hotel roller coaster, its Eiffel Tower and its Statue of Liberty, that Osama bin Laden would go nuts here. Not nuts with an increased hatred toward the U.S., but nuts trying to keep up with the night life, not to mention the day life. Sure, there’s debauchery all around, but there’s art too.

Cinelli wanted to see the art, which was at the Guggenheim Hermitage museum in the Venetian, where the canals are. Once in Las Vegas, I wasn’t that interested in pondering the works of neoclassicist artists, I was there to do what the Romans probably hadn’t thought of yet. “The trouble with you,” Cinelli said as we stood before a painting by David Teniers the Younger, whoever he was, “is you’re so male.” It was difficult to debate her contention that I was, you know, male, so I just smiled stupidly and thought about the topless show we had seen the night before at the Bally, in between the Guggenheim art and a Bellagio Hotel collection of Faberge eggs.

I don’t know how Las Vegas, where nudity is next to probity, ever got the idea of sandwiching art between sex and greed, but it works. Appeasing decent people with art while their counterparts practice moral depravity elsewhere is a stroke of genius. Sort of like leaving the kids in a play area while daddy shoots the works downstairs.

I didn’t squeeze a lot of degeneracy into the time we had, although I did whine and wheedle my way to the aforementioned show at the Bally. Titled “Jubilee,” it somehow managed to combine semi-nudity and tumbling on the same stage to a degree that was both curious and enticing.

When a man reaches my age, he has most likely seen enough naked mammary glands to accompany him into hell, but for some reason they all seem new again when they’re before you. But then after dozens of beautiful, leggy, topless showgirls in spangles and feathers bounce by in row after kicking row, you begin to wonder if there’s going to be any other kind of diversion.

Well, sir, there’s not only a high-wire act with muscular young men swinging out over the audience, but there’s also the sinking of the Titanic, with all the accompanying screams and bravery and the band playing “Nearer My God to Thee.” This was the only part of the revue that wasn’t topless, which was something of a relief.

Now I am home again and it’s Christmas Eve and I’m disoriented and behind in everything and a little crazy trying to get back on track. I keep thinking of the surreal combination of art and degeneracy in Vegas and wondering if it might not be a good place to invite Bin Laden to visit. After a night out, he might even consider it the Paradise he’s been promising in his twisted interpretation of the Koran, although I wouldn’t count on a lot of virgins there if I were him.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.