Ron Donoho

Following the grand opening, I’m back again to explore the hotel-casino’s new “East Side” expansion—with lunch at Eataly, dinner at Best Friend by Roy Choi and late-night cocktails inside On The Record. Night Life at On The Record Keep in mind that Eataly, Best Friend and On The Record are all proximal to each other—along with the hotel’s new Park Theater, which is alternating as the Las Vegas home base to Lady Gaga and Cher. On The Record is a two-story night club that looks like a vinyl record store on the first floor; then the needle skips wildly when you go up the escalator into the phantasmagoric, 11,000-square-foot nightclub fashioned by L.A.-based Houston Hospitality. In no particular order of amazement, there is: a DJ booth built out of the front end of an actual Rolls-Royce (the car’s back seat rests across the way in the front bar); fireplace-equipped VIP areas; disco-ball-lighted karaoke rooms; floor-to-ceiling walls made out of cassette tapes; a speakeasy decorated with classic vinyl records and manned by rotating celebrity mixologists; and an open-air area half-filled by a red, full-sized double-decker bus (which had to be maneuvered in by crane).

We knew Woody was bringing his son this year to our annual convergence in Las Vegas for March Madness. I’ve written about March Madness in Vegas several times over the past three decades. This year on the return trip I feel bloated and tired—and peeved I forgot to check in on Southwest Airlines, so I get a “C” boarding pass that lands me in a center seat. However, I can reflect on the fact that I’ve put 27 March Madnesses in the books.

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It’s a friendly ice breaker, with friendly and ice being relative terms to this late-winter trip to the Wisconsin Dells. I’m killing time at the Ho-Chunk Casino; in town for a business meeting at Kalahari Resorts Dells, part of a growing chain of indoor waterparks/convention centers. I have a bedroom that’s separated from a large area that includes a living room (with pull-out couch), a six-seat dining-room table and a kitchen. Two days later, it’s 21 degrees outside as I slide into the back of a snow-crusted SUV for the 45-minute drive from The Kalahari back to the Dane County Regional Airport in Madison.