Alan Zaremba, author of The Madness of March: Bonding and Betting with the Boys in Las Vegas, is in Las Vegas as I write this. He’s keeping his own blog through the weekend, and I’ll be pulling stuff from his blog and posting it here, because he writes a mean running commentary on the chaos that is March Madness in Las Vegas. Here’s a post from last night:

I am back in Las Vegas for March Madness, having arrived last night, March 17th, to the quiet rustic country sounds of Las Vegas. Not. I imagine that St. Patrick's Day is not the night to come to Las Vegas if you plan to sleep easily in a hotel room despite being 23 floors above the strip.
If the economy is affecting Las Vegas there were no discernible signs last night. My hotel was completely sold out, the lines at the registration counter were large and the armies of revelers on the strip something from a Saturday night at the height of prosperity. I heard a police officer chatting with a visitor and caught a piece of the conversation. "This never gets old" he said as he negotiated the walkway dodging a remarkably diverse population of people in green.

Las Vegas this weekend is hosting a beer distributors’ convention. Go figure.

If you want more, check out Alan’s blog, which he’ll update many, many times between now and Sunday.

In other news, I just finished speaking with John Sorensen, one of the editors of The Grace Abbott Reader. If this week is about March Madness, next week will be about the Abbott sisters (Friday is Abbott Sister Day, by the way). Stay tuned.