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It’s that time of year.

The time of year when every man, woman, and child in the United States looks forward to more than any other.

The time of year when we all gather with family, light fireworks, have barbecues, exchange wrapped gifts, hide colored eggs for the kids, and eat a big meal while giving thanks for all of our blessings.

I’m speaking of Chinese New Year, of course.

Chinese New Year is on January 26th of this year, and it is the year of the Ox.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I planned ahead, beat the rush, and got all of my Chinese New Year shopping done back in November.

I can see it now …  there will be gridlock and chaos at shopping malls nationwide on January 25th as  people scramble with last minute shopping, but you folks have nobody but yourselves to blame for your procrastination.

In all seriousness though, Chinese New Year is actually the third busiest weekend of the year in Las Vegas.

“Normal” New Year, and Superbowl Weekend rank #1 and #2.

The three busiest weekends in Las Vegas occur within 6 weeks of each other … which is a pretty interesting statistic in and of itself.

I was out and about today, and I was utterly stunned at how dead the city was.  I honestly don’t think I can remember a weekend that seemed as empty as this one.  At about 11am, I drove from the Mandalay to the Sahara, and did not encounter any traffic whatsoever.  None.  Las Vegas Boulevard was clear the entire way.

To give you some perspective, in the summer of 2007 I owned a Vespa scooter.  I used to enjoy taking Saturday morning rides, but I always made sure to get off of The Strip by 9am.  If I missed this cutoff time, I knew I would be stuck in hopeless gridlock, and I would be caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic without air conditioning.  It could take up to an hour to get the few blocks home.

My, how times have changed.

Two years ago, I would not have believed that I could go from Russell to Sahara in fifteen minutes on a Saturday, but today … I did exactly that.

If this is the third busiest weekend of the year, then we are in deep trouble.

Anyway, while most Americans either don’t know or don’t care about Chinese New Year, pretty much all of Asia does.

As has been my custom for the past several years, I made my own pilgrimages to the two main Chinese New Year venues, namely, the Bellagio Conservatory and the Wynn atrium.

This year I added a new venue … the Encore atrium.

Over the past three years, I have covered every Bellagio Conservatory display online.  It’s kind of a tradition that I am well-known for, and people have come to expect them from me.   I’ve tried to keep them all organized so that people can refer back and see how they have changed over the years.

Feel free to browse the displays and draw your own conclusions, but for me personally, this Chinese New Year display was the most understated and most underwhelming of any conservatory show to date.  It’s the first time that I have ever been outright disappointed.

I actually heard a visitor say “Where’s the rest of it?”.

It was a sentiment that I shared myself.

I saw only two differences this year.

The first was a bush shaped like an Ox.  Given that it is the year of the Ox, this made sense … although I swear it looked like the Wall Street Bull more than an Ox.

The second, was a Panda Bear exhibit.

The strange thing about the Panda exhibit, was that it contained a video screen showing panda bear footage from a DVD.

I get the feeling that at some point they are going to just replace the Bellagio Conservatory with a 20” TV screen tuned to the Discovery Channel.

Seriously, they are scaling back.

The pulling back has been gradual until now, but this time, they basically just put up half of last year’s display and called it a day.

I guess something is better than nothing, but all of the recent displays are starting to look recycled to me.

Wait, I almost forgot, there was one other change to the display this year.

The God of Prosperity (the big statue guy) was getting high this year.  I mean visibly getting high.

Take a look at that expression on his face and tell me that homeboy wasn’t completely baked.

Given the recent developments in the financial markets and the economy, who can blame him?

They had these huge joints lit up all over the place.  I’m not 100% sure what was in them, but my guess is that the Bellagio was trying to get visitors stoned to make the lackluster display seem interesting.  It was just making me hungry, though.

I’m not sure how that slipped my mind.  I’m usually not so forgetful.

Anyway …

After leaving the Bellagio, I made my way over to the Wynn.

For reasons unknown to anyone, Steve Wynn is somewhat of an Asiaphile. His private airplane has Asian characters on it, he has a casino in Macau, and he likes Asian decorations.  The guy has always had a subtle Asian obsession, and he really took it up a notch with Encore.

Word has it that the unofficial motto for Encore is “We Ruv You Wrong Time”, but I can’t get anyone to confirm that on the record.

Anyway, the Wynn has always been good for a bit of understated celebration on Chinese New Year, so I dropped by both the Wynn and Encore today to see what they had going on.

Both properties had trees lit up and traditional Chinese dragons hanging from the ceiling of the atrium.  It’s actually pretty cool looking.  Not elaborate, but still a nice acknowledgement of the holiday.

Of course, what would Chinese New Year be without Asians?  Even though the crowds were sparse today, there were definitely far more Asian tourists here than on an average weekend.

If I had to guess, probably 1/3 to 1/2 of the people inside the casinos were of Asian decent.

Thank Buddha they were here, otherwise this city would have been an absolute ghost town.

There were literally dozens of tour groups, and this made me a little bit nervous.

Every time one group of Asian tourists crossed paths with another group of Asian tourists,  I got paranoid that a spelling bee would break out.

I kept largely to myself, because I felt that if I made eye contact, one of them may have thrown down and challenged me to recite Pi to the 18th digit.

Since I wasn’t packin’ a calculator, I was completely vulnerable to such an assault.

Come to think of it, now I know why there weren’t very many cars on the road today.   Most of the Asian tourists probably left for Vegas three days ago, but they are still somewhere on Interstate 15 going 25Mph in the fast lane with their left turn signal on.  They’ll probably arrive sometime next week.

You know, life would really suck if I didn’t have stereotypes to amuse myself with.

The fact is that I actually have Asian relatives, and I do kind of celebrate the Chinese New Year … which is why I often go to the celebrations and/or displays.  I don’t necessarily believe in all of the religious and superstitious aspects of the thing, but the traditions are almost as amusing as the whole “Christmas” thing.

In case you were wondering, I’m a “monkey”.

I know, big surprise.

Anyway, next Sunday brings the second busiest weekend of the year, and I plan to cover the Super Bowl festivities and perhaps make a wager or ten.

I hope the tourists make a more impressive showing than they did today.

For those of you who celebrate it … Kung Hee Fat Choy.

Best wishes for a prosperous year.

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