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XENI GOES NOWHERE
30 November 2004
Friday night I got to meet Xeni Jardin, Internet frontier scout, in the flesh -- she was in town with family for fun and
shopping. It's always a little surreal to meet someone in person whom you only know through Internet communication. This was
doubly surreal because I'd watched Xeni on national television earlier in the evening, on ABC's World News Tonight, commenting
on Firefox, the new Web browser which is challenging Internet Explorer.
We had a rollicking conversation at the Fireside Lounge, appropriately surreal, the epitome of Jetsons chic, about corporate
media and the new technologies which will spell their doom -- and if that thought doesn't put you in a holiday mood I don't
know what would.
Xeni took the picture above, of the glass chandelier at the Bellagio, with her cell phone camera -- tres Nowhere.
THANKS AGAIN
27 November 2004
Thursday evening I went out in search of turkey. By happy chance I remembered a restaurant recommended to me by the novelist
David Kranes, the Redwood Bar and Grill in the California Casino. It has a famous prime rib special but was serving a traditional
turkey dinner for Thanksgiving.
The California caters primarily to tourists from Hawaii. The maitre d' at the Redwood was a large man wearing a Hawaiian
shirt and a lei but the room itself is wood-paneled, vaguely Craftsman in style, dimly lit and inviting. I was the only person
of European descent dining there that night. There was one table of African Americans -- all the rest of the patrons were
of Japanese descent, all, as far as I could see and hear, speaking English and having the turkey special. Hawaiians. Oh, America.
Oh, Las Vegas.
The food was abundant and good, the price, at 16.99, a bargain. I ate it with a couple of glasses of a nice California
Zinfandel and encountered the same impeccable professional service I'd had at the far more expensive Nob Hill.
Thanksgiving is best spent with family and friends, of course, but it's not a bad time to feast alone and count your blessings.
Miester Eckhart said, in a quote I'm very fond of, "If the only prayer you say in your whole life is 'Thank you,' that
would be enough."
So thank you -- thank you very much.
I went back to the Hold-'em table at the El and after a few hours walked away $11 up -- which puts me $29 down for this
time in Las Vegas. For me, playing in the game at the El Cortez, that's the equivalent of placing in the money at the World
Series Of Poker. Just one more thing to be grateful for . . .
THANKSGIVING
25 November 2004
On Tuesday morning I drove the Navigator across the Hoover Dam on the last stretch of the road to Nowhere. The Navigator
is silver -- I call it The Ghost -- and reminds me of a large and extremely mobile Coors Light beer can. Now I'm here.
I unloaded the car at a storage space on Durango near Desert Inn then checked in to the El Cortez -- of course. I had
a drink at the bar, a grilled cheese sandwich at the coffee shop, then sat down at the Hold-'em table around four in the afternoon.
I staggered away from it at four in the morning, down $150 but immensely wiser. Twelve straight hours of poker, with only
bathroom breaks. Heaven.
Wednesday I spent looking for a furnished apartment -- the one I had picked out on the Internet sucked when I went to
examine it. Wednesday night I planned to take my first ride on the monorail but it's down for repairs until the beginning
of the new year -- wheels and things keep falling off it. So instead I took the Strip Trolley, a small bus, from the Stratosphere
to New York, New York. The trolley was filled with tourists, many of them overweight and with Southern accents. A plump, dark-skinned
young man in the seat in front of me, late twenties, early thirties, was silent for the whole trip until we pulled away from
Treasure Island -- then he started talking to himself. "Should have gotten off back there. Oh, no -- going too far. Bad,
bad. Should have gotten off back there. Bad. Should have gotten off back there. Should have gotten off back there."
I felt perfectly at home on this bus.
I walked around New York, New York, which is not a totally successful casino space but has some cool touches. You can
smoke everywhere. Imagine that -- a replica of New York City where you can smoke in bars and restaurants. Cheap and tacky
as it is, it's more like the real old New York than the new yuppified New York. Only in Las Vegas.
Then I crossed the Strip on an overhead pedestrian walkway and had a lovely meal of shellfish in a swanky restaurant called
Nob Hill. I'd never head of it but it looked interesting and had a intriguing menu. I was served with impeccable and highly
polished style of the sort you rarely find this side of Paris (France.)
Las Vegas has the same feel of delirious excess and license you recognize from reports of other American boom towns --
Frisco in the days of '49, Deadwood during the Black Hills gold rush. There's a long tradition in America of trying to forget
the past -- betting only on the future. It's sweet, sad, dangerous, delusional and wonderful -- all at the same time.
Fortified by the shellfish, I used the pedestrian walkways again to visit the Excalibur. I'd planned to check out the
card room, which is supposed to have an easy $1-3 Hold-'em game, but the room was non-smoking so I took a cab back to the
El and got on the list for a seat at one of their Hold-'em tables. In the two hour wait I won $25 at roulette, then got seated
a a table of poker boobs and proceeded, in a six hour run, until dawn, to win back $110 of the $150 I had lost the night before.
This was deeply satisfying but misleading -- the players at the El are generally much sharper than the unfortunate dudes I
plundered that night. At any rate, I'm currently down just $40 for 18 hours of poker fun and instruction, and that's not figuring
in the Biblical flood of free drinks provided by the El -- this could be the best entertainment value in the world right now.
The past month has been epic, awesome, soul-trying -- too much to write about now . . . though someday I will recount
an amazing night and day in the Mississippi Delta I spent with Lang and Maudie Clay on my trip west.
Enough to say that everything, or almost everything, that needed to get done got done, with the help of many kind friends
and indulgent family members. I'm nowhere at last. Today I'll find some turkey at a cheap buffet somewhere and give thanks
for all of it and all of them. I'm still homeless, but I'm home . . .
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