"… solutions …""…young and strong." "Woo!""At least you're not wearing heels!"Man looking at weather forecasting equipment: "I'm not that serious yet, but maybe one day." Vendor, after pausing to wonder why he's been wasting his time and trying to stay cheery: "Yeah? Excellent!""They get into your culture, try to change your schools…"
The Consumer Electronics Show is closed to the public, which means the vast majority of folks out there only get to check it out through the manicured barfstream of content; a foggy GoPro lens on a selfie scepter; and the endless whinging of journalists on Twitter, including the occasionally-complainy man you're currently reading, about how hellish it all is.But this is Las Vegas after all, and once you let yourself wash away in the neon stream, it becomes less horrible and more weird. Wandering the acres and acres of floorspace is a surreal experience, especially if you smoked approximately 250,000 menthols the night before: You hear a snippet of conversation here, a word there, all of which floats into your ears on top of an oceanic roar. It's enough to make you feel slightly drunk.Don't just take my word for it, try it for yourself. For reference, I spent the above eight minutes and six seconds walking across the second floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center's South Hall, holding my phone in my hand and sliding it into people's personal bubbles like I was waving a wand in order to pick up snippets where I could.I didn't take too many detours, and yes, it takes about that long to walk from one end to the other of just one of the three main convention halls. (There are multiple satellites at the convention center and at other hotels as well. This convention is comically enormous.)This is my favorite CES experience, if you've been wondering: Strolling around feeling like a crazy person while an endless horde swarms all over the shiny things. I think the crowd at the 5:00 minute mark (photographed above) put it best, in response to the shouting of a man selling battery packs: "[unintelligible cheering]!"