Vegas vagaries

The Las Vegas airport produces the same kind of chaotic, disorienting distraction that is also produced by the casinos.

We talked about budget cuts to higher education - in a casino.

I saw my first chukar.

I read Christian Peet's Big American Trip on my small American trip. I plan to do a book description soon.

My room had a padded vinyl headboard and motorized drapes. I think this was supposed to suggest sexiness, rather than a mental institution. The mirror was supposed to have a television in it, but there wasn't a remote, and I didn't bother to ask for it, so all I could see was myself, which wasn't very entertaining or unique, from my point of view.

There is a palpable class hierarchy amongst casinos. I was at the Flamingo, which seems to have a distinctly working/lower-middle class, racially mixed clientele. Walking through the Wynn (new, lush) one could feel the money - Dior, Rolex, Swarovski - lots of Japanese people, not many African-Americans. Less pink w/ brass fixtures, more burnt orange and wood paneling.

The weather was better in the Mojave Desert than it is in Kansas.

The sins in "Sin City" are theft and stupidity. In this way, it is like the global economy, only moreso. Not original, but it bears repeating.

Why would anyone expect a senator from Nevada to be morally upstanding? Didn't you see Godfather II??

The greatest thing about Vegas: being able to sit in an easy chair and watch 5 baseball games at once.

I saw Liberace's pink turkey-feather cape. And his Czar Nicholas collection. That's what all Americans aspire to. The Czar, not the turkey, I mean.

Do you always wait for the longest day of the year, and then miss it? I always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it.

Why waste all that perfectly good Colorado River water in the Gulf of California, when it could be spewing forth in fountains to the strains of "Blue Danube" or "Viva Las Vegas"??

Firefox Ak's album Madame, Madame! is a great Denver airport soundtrack.

If you are underground, it doesn't matter where you are.