How do I sum up my Las Vegas Pride 2008 experience? On the afternoon of May 3 at the Clark County Government Center Amphitheater, I sat down with thousands of other people watching some guy belt out Creed’s “With Arms Wide Open.” As if the song wasn’t awful enough — I would have gladly accepted Robbie Williams over Scott Fucking Stapp — the vocalist, dressed for his big moment in no better than American Eagle Outfitters, sung no better than anyone you’d find at Goodtimes’ karaoke night.

OK, I feel bad tearing Daughtry 2.0 apart, even if I wasn’t the only one doing it, and if people weren’t verbally scratching their heads as to why Pride organizers gave this guy his own slot on the entertainment roster, they were ignoring him completely.

To participate in Las Vegas Pride is to be resigned to a certain kind of, um, modesty. I don’t mean that LGBT Vegans are more reserved and less outlandish than those of bigger cities, where twinky bois dance on alcohol-sponsored floats with their freshly waxed asses hanging out of their jockstraps — though we Sin City suburbanites are more reserved and less outlandish than our more homo-politan peers. What I’m actually referring to is the quaintness of our celebration, which is to say, despite the weeklong sprawl of events that comprise Las Vegas Pride, it looks and feels all so low-budget. (Note to Southern Nevada Association of Pride, Inc.: Start your Pride 2009 fundraising now … if only to upgrade from Cece Peniston to Fantasia Barrino. Baby steps.)

It wasn’t bad enough I gave Saturday’s Pride festival three hours before the bleeding in my ears forced my early exit. I almost felt embarrassed as I tried to explain to my Chicago-born friends attending their first Vegas Pride event our community’s particular situation, especially while homeboy was belting out songs from Now That’s What I Call Butt Rock, Vol. 3! Gay pride events in general have limited entertainer options with which to plan their festivals, parades and parties — you know, aging divas, queer popsters, American Idol losers, all represented in Vegas last weekend. But we seem to cull from the bottom of that F-list pile. They also complained there weren’t very many good-looking guys. No need in telling them Cirque du Soleil doesn’t get Pride weekend off.

So, why do we bother? We’re clearly not coming for the performers (who, by the way, weren’t revealed until a week or so ago). For some of us, it’s obligatory. Hey look, we’re here, we’re queer, blah blah blah. We stand and are counted, in a perverse and perhaps disingenuous way. In fact, it’s a lot like voting — if we didn’t attend, how could we complain? Or maybe we know we’ll see our friends there … though, frankly, I didn’t see a whole lot of my fellow fag-pals out. (Then again, the sun was still out and I’m sure many of my friends had partied late the night before — though I had, too. Bitches.)

I know I keep going for those reasons, and because I like seeing us all out at once. The gay Vegas community, such that it is, represents such a diverse, integrated, self-interested (for better or worse) group, Pride is the one time of the year you can survey it and get a close-to-accurate representation of its breadth and size.

For instance, if this late-night gay-bar patron didn’t go, I’d never know Vegas had lesbians, who seem to hibernate the other 51 weeks of the year. And yet there they were, out in full force, of all age groups and mullet lengths. (Just kidding — mullets seem to be going out in the land of Sappho, now that they’ve been co-opted by the electro-twerps at the Beauty Bar). Many of them even brought kids — and, boy, were there a ton of them, too. If there was any demographic eating up all the rainbow-flag paraphernalia, it was children, completely nonplussed the guys picnicking on their right were adorned in leather kilts and the nuns on their left were men inked to the hilt with tats.

Take all that in with the trannies in their Saturday afternoon best, the strippers with their asses hanging out of their Daisy Duke cutoffs, and everyone else parading around like there hadn’t been a big ol’ parade the night before, and who needed stage entertainment?