Utter submission

From this month's Los Angeles magazine:

The brilliant ad line "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" understands that the vast majority of people who come to Vegas won't really have wild affairs or run off with showgirls or indulge in anything more than the garden-variety debauchery of a few too many White Russians at the roulette wheel. The allure of "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" isn’t what happens in Vegas but the unfulfilled possibility of what might have happened the last time and what might happen the next, even as nothing is likely to ever happen. Vegas is a Sodom of the mind, the City of the Free Pass that you never use, and that it's not free at all is beside the point, because the other thing that Vegas shares with LA is the utter submission of reason to hope. In fact, your chance of winning an Academy Award outdistances any chance of ever winning "big" in Vegas. Every intelligent person understands this and it doesn't matter; once again unfulfilled possibility overpowers comprehension.