ON THE TOWN:Emotional disconnects

By the time you have read this, I will have just returned from one too many trips to Las Vegas.

All of the trips this year but this one have been for business purposes. More and more, the organizations arranging the annual and semi-annual conferences I am compelled to attend are hosting them in Las Vegas.

Out of each trip, I do manage to squeeze in a little education, but most of the time it does not make up for the fact that Las Vegas has very little to offer the two-day visitor besides what he or she can find along the strip.

And sometimes even that is a bust. This time around, I ate at Aureole, a restaurant in the Mandalay Bay hotel. Aureole was highly recommended to me a couple of years ago, but in all of my subsequent trips I was never able to carve out the time to eat there.

This time I made it. To say that I was disappointed is an understatement. The taste of the food was not only poor, but there is a good chance it is what caused some slight illness a couple of hours later. And the service, which can often make up for mediocre food, was not even indifferent, it was casual at best. At no time was our free-spending party of seven made to feel that we were welcome.

Perhaps shooting the champagne corks across the room had some to do with that.

I’m kidding.

A couple of Sin City trips ago, all of the men and women on the streets of Las Vegas and in the casinos started to look like Homer or Marge Simpson.

The one benefit I can usually count on is the solitude on the drive to and from town. But this time at the last minute, I chose to fly, the first time I have done so in at least 10 years.

I like the drive through the desert. In the four hours it takes me to drive, I disconnect from everything. No cellphone, no radio no iPod, just me, the highway and my thoughts.

But due to some serious road construction that I would have hit on the way back, I decided to hop over it and save myself the anguish of hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic.

What I missed was the solitude. It occurred to me that we could all use more disconnection; more time to just sit and think. More time to stop and ponder things such as why Newport Beach City Councilwoman Leslie Daigle has not responded in this newspaper to charges that she tried to use her position to bully a security guard at Corona del Mar high school.

Or why Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor, who claims to be “disconnected” to any racial fringe groups in the city, has not completely and undeniably renounced them. The responses I have heard to date are not sufficient.

Or why there were plenty of empty seats at the new Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall one week after it opened.

These are important questions, and had I driven to Las Vegas, I am sure I would have had the answers for you instead of asking the questions.

My guess on the Daigle thing is that she has been given some bad advice about the upside or downside to responding to the bullying issue.

Just as school board veterans Judy Franco and Serene Stokes have consciously avoided responding to important (read controversial) school issues in this paper, Daigle was probably told she had nothing to gain and everything to lose, even though her opponent has dropped out and even though her reputation is at stake.

As a marketing professional, I can only tell the Daigles, Francos and Stokeses of this world that when you do not respond to matters like this, you leave it to your detractors to shape your reputation for you.

On the way to Vegas, the first stop was the airport, where I saw a few too many people checking their Blackberries, Palm Pilots and cellphones for messages. I’m sure that on a business trip I look the same way, and it’s not good.

The down time is crucial. I have made the point many times and supported it with hard evidence, that some of our best ideas and inspirations come not when we are working but when we are working out. Or driving. Or shaving.

It is those all too brief moments of solitude that kick start something else in our brains.

But finding those opportunities is becoming very difficult. My very good friend, Mark Berman, M.D., who is a partner on this trip, just told me that he finds disconnection all but impossible.

It’s not just Berman’s profession that keeps him connected because he is regularly on call, but just our lives in general.

The elections are in about three weeks. Too bad there isn’t a vote on whether Newport-Mesa should host an annual “unplugged” week.

I’d even fly back to Vegas to bet that it would win 8 to 5.