Vegas Trends, part 1

Author's note: I'm trying a little something different at kurttrue.com. I'm writing about trends. Yes, trends! I've noticed that writers who write about trends get invited to keynote Fortune 500 sales conferences way more often than, say, the guy who writes the "green thumb" column for Family Circle.

What can I say? I can use the speaking fees. You try paying the mortgage for the 5 cents a word I got for "Ten Steps to Perfect Acorn Squash"!

WHITE TIGERS:
So now, now that there's no more Siegfried and Roy show, why not pack up all those white tigers at the Mirage and ship them out to zoos, you might ask. White tigers are hella rare, right? Wouldn't the zoos be thrilled to display them?

Well, no. From a conservation standpoint, those white tigers have no value at all. That's because a white tiger is, in fact, not a unique species or subspecies. It's just an albino tiger.

And zoos are interested in conserving the genetic purity of species and subspecies. Siegfried and Roy's tigers are a blend of three distinct subspecies of tigers (Siberian, Indonesian and Bengal). That's because Siegfried and Roy weren't concerned about genetic purity of the subspecies. They just wanted white tigers.

More and more and more white tigers!

I mean, they bred those things like they were prize chinchillas or something! And now Vegas is awash in glamorous but genetically worthless albino tigers! Magicians are snapping them up at bargain basement prices. There's even some guy at the Tropicana who's got what appears to be a white Liger (a lion/tiger hybrid) that I don't know if he makes it pop out of a hat or what.

But that's just the beginning of the white tiger trend. There's a lot of white tigers out there, and you're going them filling all kinds of roles, typically relegated to other mammalian species.

My prediction: withing the next three years you're going to see a $5.95 white tiger prime rib buffet at the Stardust

(to be continued)

Kurt "big daddy" True
11 september 2005