Las Vegas has a long custom of employing celebrities at the nadir of their careers in an effort to attract housewives from Kansas into their casinos. Celine Dion's recent $100 million dollar assault on Vegas joins Kenny Rogers, Elvis, and Carrot Top in a long legacy of garish, mildly entertaining and somewhat baffling stage shows, intended to separate good people from their good money.

However Las Vegas has always offered a much less ballyhooed celebrity attraction: the capability to gamble side by side with notables and celebrities of varied strata. Celebrities come from all over to gamble in Las Vegas and they usually gamble at the same tables as the unwashed masses. Walk into a casino after a big prize fight and you will see a room that resembles the Vanity Fair Oscar party -- if the Vanity Fair party also included portly people in prime rib stupors draped in manmade fabrics and tank tops.

You can experience celebrity in a proximity even US Weekly can't provide. I have experienced such encounters during a raft of non-lucrative blackjack trips. This unparalleled proximity to celebrity is a widely available yet un-advertised attraction of Las Vegas.

A typical Vegas style celebrity encounter usually starts at 12:30 a.m. on a Saturday. I approach the blackjack table -- an empty seat awaits me at second base -- Matt Damon - "Bourne Identity" star and Affleck little buddy -- looks up and gives a nod, I nod and sit at his right. The non-gambling tourists stare at us, me and my Oscar Award winning pal, Matt Damon. I play it cool, intimating to passersby that yes indeed I was here with Matt Damon and of course he prefers me to Ben Affleck and of course I agree with Matt that J-Lo was Lucifer and "what was Ben thinking?" Of course Matt and I were only playing blackjack to kill time before heading up to Cameron Diaz's suite for an evening of celebrity tag-team coitus culminating in a breakfast buffet with the cast of "Charmed".

I don't know Matt Damon. Sure, I am sitting next to him and we occasionally high five like frat boys when the dealer busts, but I don't know Matt Damon or at least, Matt Damon doesn't know me. For this moment, though, we are contemporaries, brothers in vice. My association with the unwashed masses does not appall Matt and I am not in awe of Damon's celebrity -- for a moment I am within his celebrity, part of it.

Encounters like these have forever jaundiced my view of celebrity. I bestow an avuncular pity on autograph seekers and fan club appendages. Sitting next to N*Sync's Joey Fatone and witnessing him begging a dealer to lower the table stakes to $25 before pulling a four inch pimp wad from his monogrammed leather fanny pack, you realize; "Oh my god! This guy has fans" -- people pay to see this guy, to have his CD, to be in his fan club. There are people who would pay good money to be where I am now, would bid on eBay for the brief opportunity, yet Fatone is sitting at the table in a tank top and has asked me repeatedly what his cards add up to. This man is clearly undeserving of worship and the world is clearly in need of justice.

Generally, the many middling celebrities I have encountered play the plebian tables, under the pretense that they hate the people from Tuskaloosa who notice them. The uni-talented Jenna Jameson doesn't play blackjack but coos her fans while riding the arm of a sweaty and grotesquely hairy man seated at my table. Ricki Lake bellies up to our table, where neither I, nor anyone mentioned her inexplicable fame. Lake keeps craning her neck when a group of tourists came by and then quickly turns and rolls her eyes in feigned reproach as though she were not desperately craving the admiration of Japanese tourists.

NBA stars provide a higher profile yet equally hilarious brand of celebrity encounter. Former Knicks strongman Charles Oakley vociferously refused to drink water from an opened bottle. When the waitress insisted that it was hotel policy, Oakley freaked, claiming that he had a drug test coming up and feared a slipped "mickey", would cost him the season. A new unopened water bottle was produced. Oakley then peeled $5k from the $50k he had balled up in the pocket of his sharkskin suit. When he had burned through the entire $50k, I spotted him $1,000 so that he could double down on a 10. I was sure that Oakley was going to want to hang out whenever I was in town; this was more than "Access Celebrity", I had shooed away potential gawkers and autograph seekers, I had spotted him a cool grand. Yet at the end, Oakley stood, grunted, waved and was gone, the sphere was no more.

Dennis Rodman encounters are a cottage industry in Vegas. Every dealer, host, cocktail waitress has had their time with the festooned rebound king. Apparently, Dennis -- on a roll and unwilling to leave a hot table -- chose to urinate in a bottle and hand the offense to a nonplussed cocktail waitress for disposal. Rodman also rubbed an unwitting tablemate's crotch with dice for good luck, this bit of irrational exuberance ended with the Rod-Man in a Nevada court.

The greatest Rodman tale is mostly rumor, although it's a rumor that has been told so many times that if it wasn't true to begin with it certainly is now. Legend has it, that Rodman had run up a $500,000 marker at The Hard Rock. I have witnessed Rodman getting kicked out of Mandalay Bay, $100,000 in the hole and declined additional markers. Needless to say, the story does not seem far fetched. When Rodman could not pay back his marker, The Hard Rock decided to have him work it off by hosting dinners for Bulls loving high rollers and their children.

A dealer once mentioned that he had previously worked at the Hard Rock. I asked, "ever deal to Rodman?" The dealer immediately charged into the tale of Rodman's indentured servitude. Dealers, you soon learn, know everything and will disclose nasty tidbits in direct proportion to the chips you throw in the tip box. Dealers will tell you which celebrities are heinous: "Ja Rule got kicked out for molesting cocktail waitresses, then got his ass beat when he pulled a knife on his limo driver." Dealers provide tasty gossip nuggets that ease the ride down the shame spiral which immediately follows the surrender of your mortgage payment at the altar of the blackjack gods.

Experiencing celebrities in their natural habitat makes you reassess the value of celebrity. Do you really want anonymous, radically oversized women in suggestive halter-tops asking for your picture or proffering unwanted career advice? When you gain insight into celebrity you realize that these are typical people with rather pedestrian peccadilloes and vices. You realize what complete losers we all are for having ever read US Weekly or watched E! What losers we are for worshipping these people and what huge whores celebrities are for loving every minute of it.