You came and you gave without taking

Other than the extra-curricular activities that I have found in Las Vegas (mostly involving my hotel room), I have been quite busy doing all manner things after the course finishes up for the day.

One thing I had booked before coming here was something quintessentially Vegas, and that was a show. I wanted tacky. I wanted up-lifting. I wanted fun. All this and more was to be found at "Barry Manilow: Music and Passion". As I sat in the Las Vegas Hilton Showroom, home to Elvis for many a year, I realised quite quickly the target audience of Barry is somewhat akin to a retirement village. We had been given our requisite glow stick to proudly wave during "Copacabana", but some of those excited grannies just couldn't wait - they were glowing and waving from the moment they sat down. Barry, aware of his aging self, and audience, poked fun at himself, and spoke humbly of his career. He crooned and wooed us all with old, old songs.

But I didn't feel the passion that was so alluded to. And it took me a little while to work out why. It wasn't just the fact that he is old enough to be my father, so finding him passionate borders on creepy. It also wasn't just the fact that he has had so much work done, he looks as old today, as he does on the video footage of him singing "Mandy" from circa 1975. I think it was those factors, combined with the fact that he came across as being incredibly asexual. He seemed to project no presence of a sexual, a.k.a. passionate, being.

I am not sure, of course, that it is such a bad thing to say that I was *not* turned on by Barry Manilow.