One of my favorite moments happened in the Ladies’ at Caesars Palace. I was taking pix of the art on the stall doors and ended up having a conversation with a nice and intelligent woman about the evolution of Las Vegas over the last 20 years and which casinos have the most interesting Ladies’ Rooms. This prompted a trip to New York New York for pix of the (apparently) famous pink toilets in the Mae West Ladies’ Room by the escalator.
But it wasn’t all gambling and toilets. First and foremost, there was the food. Roasted salmon, Robert’s 16 oz rib-eye with bone marrow, delectably artistic sushi, truffled onion soup with wild mushrooms, tea-smoked Arctic char, mountains of perfect pastry, fresh berry crepe with Tahitian vanilla whipped cream, elegant milkshakes (mine was caramel, pureed chestnut and vanilla, Robert’s was Irish Coffee,) --- going into the French restaurant and knowing the waiter so well I didn’t even order, he went into the kitchen and spoke to the chef about creating meatless courses I would enjoy that weren’t on the menu. It was goood.
You won’t believe this, I wouldn’t except there’s proof: one night we went into the hotel gym just so Robert could film me doing chin-ups before dinner. Inelegantly, but considering that I’d been eating excessively for days, it was a miracle. Nice gym, too, not that I’ll ever see it again. I go to Vegas to escape the gym.
Really, that’s what the trip was all about. Escape. From what to what is almost irrelevant, the escape happened and that’s what matters. Now it’s over and we’re back. At least I have all the pix.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Vegas Interstitial
Overheard at a slot machine: “I’d play this game but I don’t know how.” Put money in and hit the button, honey. Then wave bye-bye.
Random visual: Two Hasidim standing in an artfully lit foyer, listening to a loud guy in a louder Hawaiian print shirt, exactly two days before Rosh Hashonah. L’shana tovah. I took a picture.
Random sightings: Between the two of us, we counted nine brides. Not bad for September. Ironically, we only saw three in June.
Random visual: Two Hasidim standing in an artfully lit foyer, listening to a loud guy in a louder Hawaiian print shirt, exactly two days before Rosh Hashonah. L’shana tovah. I took a picture.
Random sightings: Between the two of us, we counted nine brides. Not bad for September. Ironically, we only saw three in June.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Loving Las Vegas
Hello again my dears, darlings and random strangers. We’re home, and what a long strange trip it ‘twas.
Cue Munchkins singing, and put away your Ouija board. Crowds are back in Vegas. They weren’t tourists so much as hordes of glowering businessfolk, but it still speaks well for the economic forecast. Significantly, the casinos no longer pander, which means they don’t feel like they have to, which means that we-the-people have (in)discretionary income with which to gamble again.
Speaking of we-the-people, they were particularly entertaining this time around. Cameo: two young businessguys at the next breakfast table in a tres chic bistro in the Venetian. Overheard; “I’m here for you, Doug. This is all about you. It’s Doug’s world, and I’m just here to make it run smoothly and keep Doug happy.” Oil piled on cliché for ages before I looked and saw that he wasn’t talking to his companion, he was talking into a phone the whole time! Well, except when he asked the waiter for ketchup for his eggs. The waiter flinched, but brought it in a pretty little ramekin.
That was a momentary diversion before we received the oeufs au gratin, sautéed spinach, lyonnaise potatoes, cranberry toast with sweet butter and jam, sourdough waffles with fresh strawberries and selection of pastries. Like I said, it was breakfast.
The Pet Store convention spawned some amusing visuals, mostly people wandering around the casino towing large purple boxes with “Urine Off!” written in huge appropriately-yellow letters. Yes, I have pix. If you want to see them, just ask. We’ll get coffee. I have pix of all the food as well.
Then there was nice Peggy from West Virginia, in Vegas for the first time. She wanted advice on how to work the system. I did my best, and she took notes. Contrast this with a conversation I had at midnight, in the same casino, with a seasoned gambling lifer at the next poker machine. He gave me tips on how to work that system. He taught me well, I was there long after he went bust. No pix of either of them, sorry.
End Part One.
Cue Munchkins singing, and put away your Ouija board. Crowds are back in Vegas. They weren’t tourists so much as hordes of glowering businessfolk, but it still speaks well for the economic forecast. Significantly, the casinos no longer pander, which means they don’t feel like they have to, which means that we-the-people have (in)discretionary income with which to gamble again.
Speaking of we-the-people, they were particularly entertaining this time around. Cameo: two young businessguys at the next breakfast table in a tres chic bistro in the Venetian. Overheard; “I’m here for you, Doug. This is all about you. It’s Doug’s world, and I’m just here to make it run smoothly and keep Doug happy.” Oil piled on cliché for ages before I looked and saw that he wasn’t talking to his companion, he was talking into a phone the whole time! Well, except when he asked the waiter for ketchup for his eggs. The waiter flinched, but brought it in a pretty little ramekin.
That was a momentary diversion before we received the oeufs au gratin, sautéed spinach, lyonnaise potatoes, cranberry toast with sweet butter and jam, sourdough waffles with fresh strawberries and selection of pastries. Like I said, it was breakfast.
The Pet Store convention spawned some amusing visuals, mostly people wandering around the casino towing large purple boxes with “Urine Off!” written in huge appropriately-yellow letters. Yes, I have pix. If you want to see them, just ask. We’ll get coffee. I have pix of all the food as well.
Then there was nice Peggy from West Virginia, in Vegas for the first time. She wanted advice on how to work the system. I did my best, and she took notes. Contrast this with a conversation I had at midnight, in the same casino, with a seasoned gambling lifer at the next poker machine. He gave me tips on how to work that system. He taught me well, I was there long after he went bust. No pix of either of them, sorry.
End Part One.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Shangri Las Vegas
Once upon a time, Las Vegas was sanctuary. We saw no one we knew. There was neither obligation nor responsibility. No matter how scant our budget, we ate both well and often.
After nearly a decade, that’s almost all still true. Knock on wood, I’m gearing up for satiety and bliss. We leave on Sunday. (Jonah is already preparing to take control of his country estate.)
The difference is that now we have lives in Vegas. We have people we see and people we avoid. More significantly, people know us. There goes my precious anonymity. The exponentially increasing familiarity makes it difficult to feel like a tourist but I’m sure we’ll manage somehow.
I’ll let you know in about a week. Behave yourselves, my darlings. Stories later.
After nearly a decade, that’s almost all still true. Knock on wood, I’m gearing up for satiety and bliss. We leave on Sunday. (Jonah is already preparing to take control of his country estate.)
The difference is that now we have lives in Vegas. We have people we see and people we avoid. More significantly, people know us. There goes my precious anonymity. The exponentially increasing familiarity makes it difficult to feel like a tourist but I’m sure we’ll manage somehow.
I’ll let you know in about a week. Behave yourselves, my darlings. Stories later.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Mediocre Expectations
We all know the drill. “Once upon a time” something happens. The good guys eventually triumph, and evil is punished proportionately. We, as readers or viewers (medium depending) live happily ever after.
How difficult is that?
George Peppard’s plans always came together. Tim Hutton’s do now. And no one, absolutely no one, messes with Angela Lansbury. Period. This is as it should be. This is the Tao of narrative.
Can you tell how irritated I am? We’ve been watching a pleasant but strangely unsatisfying murder mystery series on DVD. I bought the first novel in the series, to try to suss out what bothers me about the show. Oy vey, was that a mistake.
Okay, so I figured it out. Bad things happen in this book, as is necessary for a story, especially a murder mystery. Here, the bad things keep happening. Then we find out the worse things that caused the bad things to happen in the first place. Then it ends. Aargh!
Someday I will write the post I’ve begun a dozen times, pondering why we enjoy something as gruesome as a murder mystery. In the meantime I will watch Top Chef and reread stories wherein Evil and Rudeness are punished, and the hero(ine) wins in the end.
How difficult is that?
George Peppard’s plans always came together. Tim Hutton’s do now. And no one, absolutely no one, messes with Angela Lansbury. Period. This is as it should be. This is the Tao of narrative.
Can you tell how irritated I am? We’ve been watching a pleasant but strangely unsatisfying murder mystery series on DVD. I bought the first novel in the series, to try to suss out what bothers me about the show. Oy vey, was that a mistake.
Okay, so I figured it out. Bad things happen in this book, as is necessary for a story, especially a murder mystery. Here, the bad things keep happening. Then we find out the worse things that caused the bad things to happen in the first place. Then it ends. Aargh!
Someday I will write the post I’ve begun a dozen times, pondering why we enjoy something as gruesome as a murder mystery. In the meantime I will watch Top Chef and reread stories wherein Evil and Rudeness are punished, and the hero(ine) wins in the end.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Dada Mambo
I got to see my dear pal Max today, which is always happy-making. You’ve heard me mention Max. If you get the chance, ask for his Marcel Duchamp stories. The cutesy-pie title for this post is misdirection. The meme du jour is surrealism.
Surrealism: melting clocks, chickens in shoes, whatever. To paraphrase Max paraphrasing Magritte: “Ceci n’est pas un blog.” Well yes, it is, but Max’s original joke is superb and I’m not telling it here. See his show. Now buckle up and hold on…
I had an interesting Twitter discussion a day or two ago. Put your eyebrows down, that’s not an oxymoron. @Neurasthenic is an intriguing and intelligent art student in Canada. We were talking about conceptual art theory and repressive authority structures.
The ideas somehow dovetailed with a novel I’m reading. One of the characters is a surrealist painter and former student of Andre Breton. Breton is the only surrealist I’ve ever read about in detail, albeit years ago, in the fiction of Lisa Goldstein.
Still with me? The last Goldstein book I read was called “Tourists” and had nothing to do with Breton or surrealism. But the clock of my life is melting; in a week or two we will be back in Las Vegas for our regular seasonal touristness. This is the Big One, folks. It’s Robert’s birthday! Don’t tell him he’s getting socks. Again.
Wait, I forgot. We were talking about surrealism. Well, that’s Vegas, baby. Juxtapose crude and elegant. Put a loud beer-drinker wearing a wife-beater and shorts inside an exquisite French restaurant. Stand in the Bellagio garden and be elbowed by someone who will only see the flowers when they get home and download the pix. Forget the Ugly Americans, though there are plenty, there’re also Ugly Everyone Else’s. My favorite haven is a bright, noisy, plastic-coated, delicious pit of despair that’s as separated from consensus reality as you can get without driving over yellow bricks.
I should be able to see Max once more before we leave. You can see him at www.maxmaven.com
Surrealism: melting clocks, chickens in shoes, whatever. To paraphrase Max paraphrasing Magritte: “Ceci n’est pas un blog.” Well yes, it is, but Max’s original joke is superb and I’m not telling it here. See his show. Now buckle up and hold on…
I had an interesting Twitter discussion a day or two ago. Put your eyebrows down, that’s not an oxymoron. @Neurasthenic is an intriguing and intelligent art student in Canada. We were talking about conceptual art theory and repressive authority structures.
The ideas somehow dovetailed with a novel I’m reading. One of the characters is a surrealist painter and former student of Andre Breton. Breton is the only surrealist I’ve ever read about in detail, albeit years ago, in the fiction of Lisa Goldstein.
Still with me? The last Goldstein book I read was called “Tourists” and had nothing to do with Breton or surrealism. But the clock of my life is melting; in a week or two we will be back in Las Vegas for our regular seasonal touristness. This is the Big One, folks. It’s Robert’s birthday! Don’t tell him he’s getting socks. Again.
Wait, I forgot. We were talking about surrealism. Well, that’s Vegas, baby. Juxtapose crude and elegant. Put a loud beer-drinker wearing a wife-beater and shorts inside an exquisite French restaurant. Stand in the Bellagio garden and be elbowed by someone who will only see the flowers when they get home and download the pix. Forget the Ugly Americans, though there are plenty, there’re also Ugly Everyone Else’s. My favorite haven is a bright, noisy, plastic-coated, delicious pit of despair that’s as separated from consensus reality as you can get without driving over yellow bricks.
I should be able to see Max once more before we leave. You can see him at www.maxmaven.com
Friday, August 28, 2009
Summer Camp In Mayberry
To all of you who call me “Luddite” like it’s a bad thing, let me extend my most triumphant double nyah.
We were cooking our dinners last night when the power went out. Of course I assumed it wasn’t just us, so I didn’t panic. Turns out I ought to have. It was just us, just our 1939 technology. Apparently a doohickey blew, and took a whatsit with it.
Five power outages in the region, we were told when we called, plus a fire. “Don’t expect anyone in a hurry.” After an hour it was, “They’re on their way and will be there any second.” They were right the first time. It was too hot for candles, so we camped out on our front lawn for about three hours before the trucks (yes, plural) came.
Here’s where the Mayberry part comes in. Because of all the chaos in the area, the guys didn’t show up til well after 10:00 p.m., but they were here past midnight. Okay, we still didn’t have electricity when they left, but they tried, dammit, they tried. One of them fell off the ladder and bounced off the gazebo roof. His reaction was to compliment us on how sturdy it is. And they seemed genuinely sorry that we would have to first find an electrician then call the power company to come back afterward. Such niceness, and from city employees!? Ya gotta love Burbank.
I won’t tell you how I found the electrician we ended up with (aboriginal shamans go through less in their initiation rites) but he was an absolute angel. John Hall (818) 848 – 7474. He showed up within the hour, fixed everything, and dealt with the power company for us to get the electricity turned on. He even stayed while the new guys were here. More Mayberry, he knew one of them because their sons were in Boy Scouts together.
The crowning glory of this whole story happened an hour after normality was restored. We’d cleaned all the food out of the fridge and gone to replace it. While unloading the groceries, a very nice neighbor came by and happened to complain that his air conditioning was broken. Pobrecito. While we were telling him this story, the power company guys from last night showed up because they’d just gone on duty and wanted to be sure we were all fixed up and didn’t need anything else.
Now if Aunt Bee would just make us a pie, we’d be set.
We were cooking our dinners last night when the power went out. Of course I assumed it wasn’t just us, so I didn’t panic. Turns out I ought to have. It was just us, just our 1939 technology. Apparently a doohickey blew, and took a whatsit with it.
Five power outages in the region, we were told when we called, plus a fire. “Don’t expect anyone in a hurry.” After an hour it was, “They’re on their way and will be there any second.” They were right the first time. It was too hot for candles, so we camped out on our front lawn for about three hours before the trucks (yes, plural) came.
Here’s where the Mayberry part comes in. Because of all the chaos in the area, the guys didn’t show up til well after 10:00 p.m., but they were here past midnight. Okay, we still didn’t have electricity when they left, but they tried, dammit, they tried. One of them fell off the ladder and bounced off the gazebo roof. His reaction was to compliment us on how sturdy it is. And they seemed genuinely sorry that we would have to first find an electrician then call the power company to come back afterward. Such niceness, and from city employees!? Ya gotta love Burbank.
I won’t tell you how I found the electrician we ended up with (aboriginal shamans go through less in their initiation rites) but he was an absolute angel. John Hall (818) 848 – 7474. He showed up within the hour, fixed everything, and dealt with the power company for us to get the electricity turned on. He even stayed while the new guys were here. More Mayberry, he knew one of them because their sons were in Boy Scouts together.
The crowning glory of this whole story happened an hour after normality was restored. We’d cleaned all the food out of the fridge and gone to replace it. While unloading the groceries, a very nice neighbor came by and happened to complain that his air conditioning was broken. Pobrecito. While we were telling him this story, the power company guys from last night showed up because they’d just gone on duty and wanted to be sure we were all fixed up and didn’t need anything else.
Now if Aunt Bee would just make us a pie, we’d be set.
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