I guess the 3D television in the LG booth was the best thing I saw. It was very, very cool. I forget what programming they had on it. It might have been 3D football. It’s not enough that the 1080P HD pigskin is as clear as a marble before your very eyes, now it has to come flying at you out of the screen. If the purpose of marketing is to sell you something you never knew you needed, then this place is a marketers dream. Around the corner at the LG booth, a group of penguins was frolicking across an iceberg on a screen that was less than a millimeter thick, I think. Is that possible? Less than a millimeter? I believe so. Like, .85 of a millimeter. That’s thin. And the penguins were amazingly clear and compelling. 

For some reason, by the way, most of the programming on these amazing LCDs and Plasmas and other gigundo display units seemed to center around fruit, insects and fish cavorting. Plums so juicy and compelling you felt like reaching out and picking one from the screen. Tiny clownfish darting amid the coral. And sports, of course. If I didn’t know better, I would come to the conclusion that those who slaver over this hardware were interested in nothing but fruit, fish and football. 

Panasonic (PC) featured a booth showing a 3D movie, which was huge, filling an entire screening room. Stuff was flying out at us all over the place — helicopter blades and aircraft wings and confetti and a lot of other objects small and large. I have to admit that I might not be a candidate for genuine 3D motion pictures. I felt like the experience was resonating in a part of my brain that had yet to be accessed by other human experience so far, and didn’t appreciate the intrusion. My head hurt afterwards. It was technologically impressive beyond belief, though. One day I suppose everything will be in 3D like this, and people will have surgically altered corneas to make the clunky gray/blue glasses unnecessary.

Microsoft’s (MSFT) booth was very impressive, with exploding demonstrations of its new Windows 7 platform, and the camera makers were there, too, showing off enormous ranks of digital toys with more megapixels than you can shake a memory stick at. I wanted one. Honestly, I think it’s kind of churlish of these guys. They show you all this cool stuff and they don’t give you one for free? I would have been happy to take a Canon 50D Mark II off their hands. 

I won’t make you guess which displays were the best attended. I will simply tell you that if you want to collect a group of men in one place and have them fight over the best seat, simply put out a gaming demo. Chairs that immerse you in a battle zone. Full body armor that responds as a second skin to protect you during an all-out space war. Steering wheels more sensitive than a stressed out CEO. The rest of the sector could go screaming down in flames, but games will rule forever. This is perhaps why the gaming convention, which is called E3, is now on the upswing, while this one is showing a little softness around the edges, like a fine cheese. 

There were also, as always, the inexplicable products and services that transcend the “Hey that’s awesome even though I have no idea why anybody would want or need one” category and enter the “what the frig is it?” dimension. Like, who needs a watch that is also a phone? I don’t. And how many iterations of a personal music or video player are we going to require? As far as I’m concerned, what this society needs at this point are more experiences that are social, that bring us together in large places to feel the same things, not new ways to go into our closets and pleasure ourselves on tiny screens. 

Speaking of which, I misinformed you. The porno convention starts Monday and is not running concurrently with this one this year. I suppose this makes it possible for the 100,000 people who are here, 90 percent of which appear to be somewhat needy men, to stay an extra couple of days to see if they can experience the ultimate social experience. I’m not sure what I think of this development, which is a change over prior years. Perhaps it explains why that number of attendees, as impressive as it is, is rumored to be down between 15 and 25% over prior installments of CES. 

I will say one thing. The mood here breaks down into two camps, like the rest of the country at this point. Group 1 says it’s over, the party has ended, CES will soon be no more, the sky has fallen, the good times are done, this is a permanent crimp in our shorts. Group 2 says wow, look at all this cool gear, all this great programming, this plethora of invention and desire and magnificent tropical fish dancing across screens the size of your living room, it’s a great world, our potential is limitless, we will be back. In the meantime, let’s gamble. 

I’m with Group 2. I’ve won more than $400 this week, incidentally, mostly at craps, and I intend to keep all of it. Which is why I’m taking off this morning for the left coast. I can’t wait to get home and fondle my cameras. Viva Las Vegas and all that, but this is more than a great place to be. It’s also a great place to get out of.

Vegas, January 8 – You wouldn’t believe the portions they serve you here. It’s almost like they sit planning the menu for people who are looking to keep their weight at a nice, round 300 pounds. Who wants a pizza with scalloped potatoes on it? It’s the house specialty where we had dinner last night. The drinks are small and expensive. A vast majority of the waiters look like potential chorus girls or Chippendales. The others appear to be eunuchs from the local sultan’s harem. 

The night before the convention was scheduled to start, the casinos looked pretty empty to me. At the Palazzo, there was one poker table working. No Hollywood, Bollywood or Silicon Valley royalty seemed to be in evidence. At my hotel, the slots were occupied only by the usual assortment of sad, droopy gray people, their cigarettes mostly ash hanging from the corners of their mouths, giving the enormous, ridiculously gaudy emporium the air of an extremely tricked-out Trailways bus terminal. There was plenty of traffic outside, though. So maybe today will be different and the town will explode with nerdish life. 

There are, of course, as is traditional for this week, two conventions in town – the Consumer Electronics Show, which is my focal point on this iteration of my journey through life – and the Adult Video gathering. The plane on the way from LA was thus filled to capacity with an extremely bifurcated group of individuals. There were the sometimes rumpled, sometimes crisp graduates of their high-school audio-visual club, with assorted peppering of sleek media and internet business executives, and then there were the tattooed, the augmented, the highly scented, spangled and perhaps too-juicy.

I was on an aisle seat sort of up front of the plane. My associate and traveling companion, who I’ll call Ted, was on the window. Between us, at the very last minute, plopped down a pneumatic six-foot tall, platinum blond young woman, dressed all in black, with glitter on her fingernails, which were not of organic material and were so long she had to employ special means to manipulate her touch-screen IPod.  She spoke a very plump, expressive Russian on her cell phone until we took off. Then she read Cosmo. Several articles appeared to be more interesting than the ones in my Economist, but she was flipping the pages too fast for me to really follow them very well. 

It’s not a coincidence that the porn industry meets at the same precise time as the wonks fly in for their annual tech fest. Somebody from the adult business obviously figured out some time ago that it would be wise to hold their extravaganza right now, when the town teemed with guys who spent the best years of their lives with their hands on their joysticks. 

My pal Weaver told me yesterday that “nobody goes to CES on Wednesday,” so maybe the scene will change today. Sources say that the meet is going to be somewhat smaller this year, with slightly less hotness. That wouldn’t surprise me. First of all, conventions like this one have a life span. A few years ago, you couldn’t get in the door at COMDEX. Now it’s gone. For years, I attended a gigantic raving bacchanal that was host to some of the greatest extreme depredation I have ever enjoyed in the world of business. At its height, it was in New Orleans. Man, was that fun. Then it moved here to Vegas. Time passed. The business changed. Now it’s pretty much a ghost town, with tumbleweeds rolling between the booths, which are mostly filled with guys from Sri Lanka handing out complimentary flash drives. Stuff still gets done there. But a party it’s not. 

And then there’s this little recession we’ve got going on. 

So I kind of wonder what it will be like to stand in the middle of the CES floor this morning and feel the vibe. Last time I was here it was like a cross between the bar in Star Wars and the Golden Calf scene in The Ten Commandments. I’ll keep you posted.

So for the first time I can remember, the CES public relations site does not feature a press release saying it was the biggest gathering of all time. There are a lot of interesting items on the site, all of which, I will be honest with you, are very boring to me. I don’t know why. Last year I went to CES and it was hopping, a crazy wild-west show. This year I didn’t go, and a lot of people I know didn’t go, and the news coming out of it was like warmed over mashed potatoes.

I emailed a pal of mine in the tech sector and asked him whether my feeling was right, or whether I was just being like an infant. You know how it is with kids under 3? If they don’t see something, it doesn’t exist. That’s why they like to play peek-a-boo so much. Every time you pop up, it surprises them because they didn’t know you were there at all. So that could be it. I didn’t go. So it didn’t happen. I recognize that possibility.

But my friend the wireless-head verifies my conjecture. “Have long email on this which I will forward. They are saying 140k at the high Tuesday but that was inflated. From feet on street perspective, much easier to navigate less booth babes and fewer announcements. Its like media moved in and big tech left. My guess is we’ve seen the high for ces for a while.”

Gizmodo adds another dimension, rumoring that the show may move out of Vegas when its deals for the space are up in 2011. CES not in Vegas? Would that mean that the porno show would have to move with it? And if it didn’t, what would it do without all those geeks who move from drooling about hardware to drooling about wetware?

My industry has seen the flourishing and death of a number of key conventions. The main industry gathering, for instance, is right now biting the dust due to a) too many conventions anyhow, b) reduced budgets for stupid boondoggles and c) the industry changing so that the convention floor, once filled by the great and mighty, is now populated mostly by Asian corporations that make flash drives. Once, we had to go the event. People fought over the right to take part in its panels. Now you could hear a tumbleweed roll through the aisles.

All businesses have cycles. Today’s shiny toy is tomorrow’s doorstop. The crazy conventions that attend each of our disciplines mirror the biorhythms of the industries they attract. So what’s up, do you think? Is the great eye of hotness moving on?