Such Pretty Forks in the Road

Started: 2025-11-13 20:02:23

Submitted: 2025-11-13 22:12:42

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Alanis Morissette in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace

I came to Las Vegas so I could see Alanis Morissette on the evening of Saturday 1st November. After spending Friday out and about in Las Vegas I decided to spend the day at the hotel pool. After breakfast (a Nutella, banana, and strawberry crepe from Eataly) I headed to the pool, nestled between two of the three wings of the Park MGM hotel tower and the adjacent Aria. Two of the pools were still in shadow, but the third pool was in the sun. I found an available lounge chair just out of the sun, then tried to guess whether the sun, just out of view behind the hotel tower, would continue to rise and place me directly in the sunlight. (I guessed wrong: even though it was an hour before solar noon, the sun was close enough to its zenith that it didn't directly illuminate my chair until the sun moved far enough to the west that it was visible around the side of the hotel tower.)

I dropped by the pool for a swim, talked to a guy wearing a University of Colorado hat who recognized the Colorado flag shirt I was wearing (he now lives in Irvine), and returned to my lounge chair for a leisurely afternoon by the pool, until the sun finally hit my seat and I decided I should head elsewhere for lunch.

(This picture is the view of the pools from the Park MGM tram stop, providing a commanding view of the whole pool complex. I visited the pool in the bottom right of the picture.)

I got a piece of pizza at the New York New York casino next door, then looked across Las Vegas Boulevard to see the site of the Tropicana with the construction cranes and piles of aggregates portending the construction of a new urban ballpark for the A's, formerly from Oakland.

I returned to my hotel room in time to join my family's monthly video call. After talking to my parents and siblings, I headed north along the Strip for my evening show. I caught the tram at Park MGM and rode it to the Bellagio, then found the right path through the casino floor to find the bridge to Caesars Place. I ate supper at True Food Kitchen, at the very end of the Forum Shops (which gave me the chance to ride a curved escalator down to the ground floor, which seemed even more like black magic than a regular escalator). The restaurant had an interesting veg-friendly menu, and I had a noodle bowl with (in honor of my home in Santa Cruz) Brussels sprouts on the side.

After supper I headed back into Caesars Palace to find the theater they call the "Colosseum", though I didn't see a Colossus out front so I'm not sure they can really call it a "Colosseum". (This took me past the sports book, which was crowded with people watching game seven of the World Series between the Dodgers and Blue Jays. I could see the line on the display behind the crowds of people, the only baseball game on the display, but I wasn't quite close enough to be able to read it (and I wouldn't have been able to understand it if I could). I had a brief urge to put money down on the Blue Jays (because beat LA, I guess?) but I kept walking; and if I had I would have lost it anyway.)

I arrived early enough that there was no line at the door and no line at the merch table (I got a t-shirt) and no line for refreshments. (The doors opened at 18:30, and the show was scheduled to start at 20:00.) The seats in the auditorium were mostly empty when I arrived, but filled in over the next hour. (I guess I could have spent the time somewhere else, but the inside the theater seemed to be smoke-free, a nice contrast to the casino floor just outside.)

The published showtime came and went, and in the audience someone wondered if Alanis was watching the World Series game. Then the lights dimmed and the crowd cheered and the curtain parted and Alanis Morissette stepped into the spotlight, waving at the audience, said she wanted to say hi to everyone, and walked straight to the edge of the stage and started shaking hands with people in the standing pit at the very front of the theater. She shook hands and waved until her handler/assistant came out and told her there were five thousand people here and she couldn't greet everyone. (The character of her handler/assistant would reoccur throughout the show, running around stage to herd her in various directions, and appearing on video wherever Alanis was hiding between sets.)

Her setlist drew heavily from her mid-nineties albums Jagged Little Pill and Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, as well as her most recent album, Such Pretty Forks in the Road. A few songs were performed as brief segues to the next full song (including "Everything", which is one of my favorite songs ever).

Alanis set up the song "Hands Clean" with an anecdote about being pitched the idea for the music video. "'We'll make it like karaoke sung by children,' they said, and did I say 'That's a terrible idea?' No, I'm Canadian, I said 'Sounds great!'"

Her hits from Jagged Little Pill got the most reaction from the crowd. After an intermission (and a skit on video with Alanis being retrieved from a slot machine in front of the theater) she returned to sing "All I Really Want". (Many of my pictures have an out-of-focus head at the very bottom of the frame, from the tall guy sitting right in front of me.)

Between some of the songs were skits with Alanis and various characters. One showed Alanis working with a songwriting partner going over the lyrics for "You Oughta Know". "'Are you thinking of me when you fuck her?' I'm not sure that's the right line." "Was that what you thought when you wrote it?" "Yes." "Then that's the line."

One recurring element was a whiteboard rolled out on stage to depict some aspect of the song. I don't actually remember the context for this alternative to the gender binary (the show was so packed with ideas and emotions and thirty-year-old songs I love dearly because I encountered them at an impressionable time in my life) but it all made sense at the time.

Between other songs Alanis talked directly to the audience. She talked about anxiety and depression, about being highly sensitive, and wanting to hide at the same time as please everyone. It was clearly scripted and rehearsed but it felt honest and authentic, because it reflected the artist with whom we've developed a parasocial relationship through her song lyrics.

For most songs Alanis paced back and forth the length of the stage, holding a handheld mic. Sometimes she sang at a mic stand. For a couple of songs she played guitar; and for "Head Over Feet" she played the harmonica in the bridge.

The video into to "Ironic" showed Alanis dressed up as various characters, including a linguist who talks about shifting meanings of the word "ironic", and an incarnation of Alanis reacting badly to being asked the same question in an interview again and again. These characters continued to scroll on the screen behind the stage through the song.

She saved her rawest angriest song for the end of the second set. 4500 people sang along with "You Oughta Know" as she excoriated an ex in a shared moment of pure catharsis. (And, at the back of my mind, I wondered how it feels for her to sing this thirty-year-old song, when she's in a very different point in her life. There are songs I've run into at pivotal points in my life and when I listen to them now I immediately feel everything I did at the time (which is a power that I need to be careful with), and I didn't even write the songs; I merely imprinted on them.)

Alanis and her band returned to the stage for a short encore culminating in one of my other favorite songs, "Thank U". It was a perfect way to end the show, after a couple of hours immersed in the music and the complicated world of this particular artist.

The title of the song segued straight into the band and cast and dancers taking their bows. They were thanking us for being there, for supporting them in their art; and we were thanking them for taking us on an emotional journey through music.

The show was amazing and I'm beyond thrilled that I had the opportunity to see one of my favorite artists perform the songs I love on stage, with 4500 other people all there to see the same thing.