SEX, BOMBS & BURGERS

With any luck, by the time you read this I'll be in the midst of a boys' weekend in Las Vegas, a la . It's actually my sixth trip to Vegas in the past four years, so the city is starting to feel like a second home.

The first time I made the trip, in January 2007 to cover the Consumer Electronics Show for the National Post, I actually hated Las Vegas. I couldn't believe the waste - the huge buffets that threw out mountains of food, the ridiculous amounts of energy being used to light everything, and so on. There were also a whole bunch of negatives to contend with - transportation is atrocious, ATM fees are sick (some casinos charge as much as $10 just to take out money) and the whole place is just one big sensory overload.

But I went back for CES the following year and, after taking the stick from out my rear, I was able to have fun and see the place for all its positives. It's got amazing restaurants and shopping, some incredible examples of architecture (even if the casinos are essentially temporary, waiting to get torn down for something new at the drop of a hat), and a whole lot of sunshine. That's certainly a welcome event to any Canadian in January.

Over the past couple of years while I was working on Sex, Bombs and Burgers, Vegas also became synonymous to me with porn. The Adult Entertainment Expo, of course, runs simultaneously with CES, so my annual journey also provided me with the opportunity to meet with and interview people in the industry.

In that vein, I thought I'd take this blog all the way back to the beginning, to its very first day. Traffic to this blog has grown considerably since that first day, so I'm guessing very few people were actually around on day one, when I ran an interview with porn star (and legend in the making) Jesse Jane, which I conducted in Las Vegas. If anything, the video below - which is an audio interview set to a slide show - illustrates just how far technology has come in such a short time. When I did the interview almost two years ago, cheap and decent video cameras still weren't really all that common. Now, most new smartphones can shoot HD video.



Part two of that interview . While we're at it, here are a few more "greatest hits" videos and interviews with porn people from Las Vegas over the past few years:

Pink Visual's Matt Morningwood talks about and 3D TV.
Digital Playground's Raven Alexis talks .
Inventor Douglas Hines debuts his .