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GIRL FIGHTS
31 January 2005
This past Saturday I went to see some professional girl fights at the Silverton Casino. It was my first visit to the
place, which is west and way south of The Strip, in that wonderful part of Las Vegas still surrounded by vast parcels of undeveloped
desert -- it reminds me of the way the whole town felt when I first visited it in 1971.
The Silverton is what they call a "locals's casino" but it's by far the coolest of these I've visited. It has
a hunting/fishing lodge theme, with lots of rough-hewn timbers, good, warm lighting and cozy, inviting bars tucked around
the edges of the gaming floor. One of the bars has a view of the central attraction of the place, a gigantic water tank visible
through big stone portals where ladies dressed as mermaids and other fantasy creatures perform underwater dances. I wasn't
able to see one of these performances on this visit but I can't wait to catch one on my next.
Buying my ticket at the Player's Club desk I ran into a young man who asked excitedly if I was buying a ticket for the
fights. When I said yes he beamed. He looked like a boxer so I asked him if he had a girl on the card, and he said he did
-- Bose Ijola. I shook his hand and wished him good luck and he beamed even more. He and his fighter were in from Chicago
and I guess he wasn't sure people would actually show up for a girl fight in a Vegas casino, but he needn't have worried --
the place was packed.
I lucked into a table at the Twin Creeks restaurant, the casino's premiere dining joint, always heavily booked on a Saturday
night. Some people with a reservation hadn't shown up and the kindly maitre d' gave me their spot. The staff was extremely
friendly, even though the service was a bit slow, and I had a fine meal of fried oysters, shrimp and catfish.
Then I headed off to the casino's small theatrical venue, transformed for the night into a miniature boxing arena. The
ring was set up in the middle of the floor, with straight-backed chairs and bleachers around it -- VIP seating on the stage.
There wasn't a bad seat in the house, though -- it had an intimate feel that gave the event a real charge.
The night was all-girl -- mostly way below championship level, with one fighter making her professional debut and several
with just a few fights under their belts. But I would argue that you see better fighting, pound for pound, with girl boxers
than you do with guy boxers on this level. As I've written before, girls, because of their relatively lesser upper-body strength,
really need to learn to box -- unlike so many guys who try to get by with an undeveloped style and a big punch to get the
job done.
In fact, the fights on Saturday were excellent. In a four-round bantamweight bout, Sharon Gaines, who fights out of Kansas
City, went on permanent offense against Jennifer Salinas of Grand Rapids. The problem was that Gaines's rapid flurries of
punches rarely landed squarely while Salinas's counter-punching was sharp and effective. The crowd, not the most discerning
I've ever been part of, booed the judges's unanimous decision in favor of Salinas, but it was absolutely correct. In the
post-fight interview Salinas greeted her five-month old daughter -- "I do it all for her," she said. Salinas must
have gone back into the gym the day after she had the kid -- she was in terrific shape and razor-sharp, tactically speaking.
An awesome woman, obviously.
Gaines, undaunted, appeared out among the spectators soon after the fight, all dolled up and looking like a total babe,
to sign autographs and promote her web site (still under construction.)
Click Here To Visit Sharon Gaines's Web Site
Bose Ijola, one of whose seconds I'd met buying my ticket, turned out to be a sturdily-built, powerful-looking super middleweight
making her professional debut. She went up against a tall, strong Swede named Asa Sandell, whose second fight it was. Ijola
looked nervous, as well she might, and seemed to have a hard time getting going. The Swede was cooler and in better command
of her arsenal. I thought Ijola's only hope was a full-on body attack against Sandell, which is often effective against a
tall fighter with an elongated body mass -- body shots against such fighters can take their legs right out from under them
at times. But Ijola just kept swinging wildly for the Swede's head and never seemed to find it. The Swede won handily on
points in the 4-round bout.
The tall and lanky versus short and compact match-ups continued in a 6-rounder between junior middleweights Daira Hill,
from Philadelphia (the tall and lanky one) and Angie Poe (short and compact) from Denver. It turned out to be an interesting
fight. Poe was by far the more skillful boxer and the aggressor throughout. She was well ahead on points in the 5th, but
her many scoring blows were rarely directed at Hill's midsection -- and suddenly, Poe seemed to run out steam. Hill, battered
but fresh, threw a series of downward-aimed blows at Poe's head, which dazed her. She took a few more unanswered shots before
referee Joe Cortez called an end to things. It seemed like a sudden stoppage, and heartbreaking because Poe was so close
to winning the bout, and the audience booed lustily, but Cortez is a seasoned pro and you had to give him the benefit of the
doubt -- he had a better view of Poe's eyes in the crisis and Poe's career is just getting going . . . no use risking a beating
that might end it altogether.
Elizabeth Kerin, a tall, powerfully-built middleweight from Chicago had the best of it the first couple of rounds of her
fight with Shelly Burton of Kalispell, Montana. But the shorter, stronger Burton hung in there, got inside Kerin's guard
and pounded away at the taller girl, whose spirit seemed to flag under the assault. Decision for Burton.
The best fight of the night was the featured bantamweight match-up between title-fight prospect Elena "Baby Doll"
Reid of Phoenix (close enough to Vegas to make her an overwhelming crowd favorite) and Lakeysha Williams of Philadelphia.
The most experienced fighters of the night they were both superb boxers as well -- Williams tall and fast, Reid shorter but
equally fast. It was thrilling to watch such skills on display -- a real privilege to witness. The fight was pretty much
even until the 7th round (I think it was) when Reid sank a terrifying punch into Williams's gut, doubling her over in what
looked like excruciating pain, then landed another hard blow to her head as she crumpled to the floor. Williams lay writhing
on the canvas as the ref counted her out and the crowd went wild.
Reid's nickname is well-taken -- she's a real doll, and the flush of her victory made her radiant, with an almost supernatural
glow.
The crowd, as I say, was not entirely admirable, with a lot of drunken young males shouting out ill-advised advice to
the fighters, mixed with crude insults. Salinas and Reid between them could have reduced the whole gang of these louts to
hamburger in about two minutes -- which fact probably accounted in large part for their pathetic posturing.
The auxiliary conversations between my bleacher-mates were sometimes amusing, though. I heard one guy say, "I don't
really collect art, but I do want an original Red Skelton clown painting. What do you think those things go for?" None
of his pals seemed to know. Another guy near me asked his companion, an older woman, "Have you seen much boxing?"
"Oh, yes," she said, "I used to watch it a lot when I was in the army."
As I lit up a cigarette outside the theater I saw Asa Sandell, the big blonde Swede, exiting the place in street clothes
with her trainer. She had a beatific smile on her face and a spectacular black eye. So I guess Bose Ijola's glove did find
Sandell's head at least once -- though I suspect that the shiner won't bother the Swede too much . . . just a reminder, like
a medal of honor, of her moment of glory in the ring at the Silverton, under bright lights in the middle of the Mojave desert.
GODLIKE
27 January 2005
About two weeks ago Jae and I set out for California in The Ghost. We rolled into Ojai around ten in the evening in time
to see the last few songs of a set The Household Gods were playing at Theater 150. The Gods are a group co-founded by my
friend J. B. White (the guy in the center of the picture above) -- a screenwriter who lives in Ojai. The Gods play benefit
concerts from time to time for various good causes in the Ojai Valley and are wonderful -- with eclectic set-lists drawn from
every era of American pop music . . . early Bing Crosby to the Beatles to Dylan to original compositions by J. B.
We went back to catch the full show the next night and saw a performance by Ellen Adams, who was opening for them at this
gig. (She's joining the Gods for an encore song in the picture above.) Adams is a senior at the Thacher School and does
her own material -- great songs about love and the ocean and other terrifying things. Really interesting music and an enchanting
vocal style -- she's someone to keep an ear out for.
J. B. and Jae and I played Hold-'em most of the nights we stayed in Ojai -- J. B. relieved us of surprisingly large amounts
of money, considering the low stakes we were playing for. My friend Oliver Butcher, another Ojai screenwriter, joined us
one night and demolished all of us, even J. B., which was satisfying to see after getting our butts kicked so badly by our
otherwise genial host.
Below is a picture of Oliver gloating over his winnings -- the brutal smugness visible on his face reflected his vicious
domination of the table that night and his undisguised joy at humiliating us all.
But losing at poker is only slightly less fun than winning at poker, and every hand one plays is a source of potential wisdom.
You just have to bring some extra cash with you when you jump into the shark tank that is Ojai.
The effects of the recent torrential rains in California were visible everywhere. The driver of the car above unwisely attempted
to cross a flooded road -- he and his passengers soon found themselves in rushing water up to the windows of the Jeep. They
managed to escape the vehicle and then watched the water carry it away. After pinballing against various boulders, it wound
up in the condition you see and has become something of a tourist attraction in Ojai. The helpful tag below was provided
by the team of city workers that recovered the vehicle -- an example of Ojai wit, I guess.
There are four roads leading into the Ojai Valley. The flooding has closed three of them, and the single remaining road is
often restricted to a single lane as continuing mud slides threaten to block the valley off entirely from the outside world.
We managed to negotiate the road successfully however and headed off to Los Angeles just in the nick of time -- before out
poker egos suffered irreparable damage.
KNIGHTS OF THE FELT
14 January 2005
Jae Song rolled into town last Monday to do some preliminary scouting for the Nowhere Project. This has involved a program
of serious gallivanting, of a strictly professional nature, for research purposes only.
Monday night we visited my new favorite steakhouse atop the Binion's Horseshoe hotel tower -- which has great prime beef
and a magical view of downtown and the Las Vegas valley. We dined like kings and fortified ourselves for a night of poker.
It would be the first time Jae had ever played Hold-'em in a casino.
After the awesome steaks we headed to the El Cortez, visible (sort of) behind Jae in the picture above. As we walked there
the Fremont Street Experience exploded on the vaulted video screen above us.
Hundreds of tourists stood frozen beneath the display -- most of them taking pictures.
Below is a sign on Fremont Street, outside the bounds of the Experience.
Jae and I both lost a tidy sum in short order to the wily old sharks in the El's card room. The precise amounts are proprietary
trade secrets and cannot be publicly revealed. We heard that the Palms had a $2-4 game and allowed smoking so we headed there
looking for easier pickings.
It didn't quite work out that way. The players at the Palms are much younger, mostly macho dorks who should have been
easy to fleece, but since they would stay in and even raise with anything in their hands it was hard to know how to play them.
I remain convinced that there is a way to make money in such a game -- I'll keep you posted.
We ended the night at the Ghost Bar high atop the Palms tower. This is a supposedly hip joint but struck me as highly
yuppified. "This is the sort of place," observed Jae, "where they play all the hits from two years ago, to
be sure everybody knows the music." The lighting was good, however, and the views dazzling and dizzying. It was more
fun than it should have been.
Check in here for the further adventures of the Nowhere team in action . . .
LATEST VIDEO
Since Monday Jae and I have gone many strange places and seen many strange things. Jae's friend Kelly said we had to see
the sushi bar with the tanks of live jellyfish behind it. We tracked it down -- a place called Shintaro at the Bellagio.
We arrived too late to eat there but did manage to get this video record of the bizarre decor:
Click Here To See the Jellyfish
DEAD CHRISTMAS TREES
7 January 2005
It's always a little sad when Epiphany rolls around and the twelve days of Christmas are over. On 6 January I took the
lights and ornaments off my tree, packed them up with the Christmas CDs and tapes and covered the tree with the plastic wrap
it left the lot in. Today I drove it to the Christmas tree recycling station in Sunset Park.
Sunset Park is located to the east of the runways of McCarran Airport, at the corner of Sunset and Eastern. To get there
I passed the Paradise Gardens Memorial Park, where Sonny Liston is buried. Most flights coming into McCarran pass over the
final resting place of that terrible and tragic hero of American boxing.
The drop-off spot for the Christmas trees is located in a remote part of Sunset Park -- a dirt road leads into it. In
the rain today the road was thick mud. There was no one on duty at the wood chipper, where the trees are ground up for mulch.
A few piles of trees lay around it, desolate under the gray sky. The scene was spooky -- like some sort of deserted killing
field. When I threw the shrouded corpse of my own tree onto one of the piles I felt implicated in the phantom crimes.
The melancholy mood of the place and the day prompted me to stop off and pay my respects to Sonny on my way home. I had
fond and wistful memories of my first visit there -- it was a sunny day, and an attendant was digging holes in the ground
near Liston's grave and pumping gas down it to kill groundhogs. I had not come prepared then, so I left a packet of lighter
flints on the grave marker.
Paradise Gardens has flat plaques over its graves, like Forest Lawn -- no upright markers. Liston's plaque has his name
on it, the years of his birth and death and the legend "A man."
The grave is across a grassy aisle from the section where young children are buried. This is fitting, since it was said
that Sonny never felt really comfortable except in the company of children, who inevitably loved him.
Sonny said, "I was born dead." He had an ugly, brutal life, punctuated by a few moments of glory and a few
years of wealth. His end in Las Vegas was sad -- working as a greeter at casinos, drugged out, all but dead in the popular
imagination. He was just the Goliath that David slew, the brute that beautiful Cassius Clay demolished.
Now he's a kind of gatekeeper -- an unheeded voice reminding all of the dark side of Las Vegas, and boxing, and American
life itself. I had not come prepared on this visit either, so I just nodded my head, remembered a man.
THE RIVER
7 January 2005
A picture of the little stream outside my window in its normal state. It's raining again now as I write this -- there
was snow in many parts of the valley this morning. The trickle is becoming a torrent again.
DAVID KRANES AND THE LOTUS OF SIAM
5 January 2005
Dinner last night at the Lotus Of Siam with novelist David Kranes and his wife Carol. David is sort of the Raymond Chandler
of Las Vegas, or the William Faulkner of the Nevada desert, in the sense that his fictional recreations of those places both
expose and add to their essential identity -- as Chandler both exposes and adds to the myth of Los Angeles, as Faulkner both
exposes and adds to the myth of the Mississippi Delta and hill country.
David is also a student and philosopher of casino design, author of a seminal meditation on same which can be found here:
TOWARD MORE ADVENTUROUS PLAYGROUNDS
He and Carol, both teachers in a former life, now work in tandem as consultants to the the casino industry. Based in Salt
Lake City they travel a lot and visit Las Vegas often, of course.
The Lotus Of Siam, located in a vast strip mall off Sahara along with a number of other ethnic restaurants and at least
one sex club, is felt by many to be the best Thai restaurant in North America. In the same mall is another Thai restaurant,
Komol, which others say vies for the title.
Both are extraordinary -- I've had individual dishes at each which rank among the best food I've ever eaten in my life.
Both their menus range way beyond satay.
David and Carol and I had a delightful and wide-ranging discussion about movies and Las Vegas and the coming convergence
of same. David told me about his newest novel, still in draft form, which sounded awesome -- wish I could share its premise
and its opening scene, but you'll just have to wait until publication. I had a feeling that it might be his definitive statement
on this strange town.
A collection of his previously published Nevada stories can be found here:
Low Tide In the Desert
HEAVY RAIN
4 January 2005
Another inch or two of rain here in the desert today -- the trickling stream outside my window became a river again.
I keep forgetting to take a picture of the trickle, to show you the magnitude of the change wrought by the weather. It astonishes
me.
THRILLING NEWS!!!
3 January 2005
The La-Z-Boy recliners have arrived!
I got them super-cheap at a year-end two-for-one sale. They rock, recline, fold nearly flat for napping, are tacky in
just the right Nowhere kind of way and almost as comfortable as the front seats of the Navigator.
Basically what this all means is that there is now really no need to ever leave my apartment -- except to get beer and
cigarettes.
Wake me when the game starts . . .
GIFTS
2 January 2005
I got some awesome Christmas presents this year. Above is a picture of three of them:
A working replica of the Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas sign. I'd seen this being sold at a booth on Fremont Street and
wasn't sure whether or not to buy it, but Beth Raymer knew it belonged in my house -- and so it does. It belongs right where
it is -- next to a 12-inch action figure of Frank Sinatra, which came from Santa (in Los Angeles) along with a superb 12-inch
Sideshow figure of Wyatt Earp. The figure behind him, of Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, is from my mom. You don't expect your
mom to send you an action figure -- but someone undoubtedly told her that this was a primo Sideshow offering and that I didn't
have one. She tracked it down, from Wilmington, N. C., in Raleigh and got my sister Roe to go pick it up -- it's actually
something of a miracle to find a Sideshow figure in a store, since they sell out so quickly, often just through pre-orders
on the Sideshow web site. At that point you have to go to eBay and hope to win the thing for a reasonable bid. My mom also
sent me some related gifts -- Civil War-themed playing cards, which are neat.
I only got one book this year, but it was a beaut -- and one I'd been craving . . . "Locas", the collected works
of Jaime Hernandez, who, with his brother Gilbert, created the legendary comic book "Love & Rockets". Cotty
Chubb gave it to me, having previously given me Gilbert's collected works for my birthday last March. Very cool.
This enormous tin of salted pecans came from the Clays in Mississippi. Best damn things I ever tasted. I also got a big
side of smoked tuna from my sister Libba and family -- it has been decimated, however, and is no longer picturesque.
The piece de resistance, though -- a gift that actually exceeds the bounds of the awesome -- was this pillow made out of an
old and very important shirt, which was worn through in many places and too small for me but could not be thrown away. It
was bought for me by Sevy Osborne, my friend Hugh's mother, in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1968, on my first cross-country drive
-- Sevy was delivering Hugh and I to college, at Stanford in Palo Alto.
College didn't last long but the shirt did -- it became an almost mythical object, associated with that first look at
the American West and with the Sixties. On my cross-country drive last January I stopped in Cheyenne and looked for the store
where Sevy bought the shirt, Western Outfitters, but it was long gone. There was a newer Western wear store across the street,
though, where I bought a similar shirt that I could actually wear.
I tried to give the old shirt to Maya Allison, since it fit her and was still repairable, but she felt it needed to be
memorialized in some more formal way than simply adorning her (delightful) figure -- so she made this pillow out of it, with
working pockets and the label from the inner neck band on the back.
It's very strange, very magical, very Nowhere.
Thanks to all for the cool things that ended up under my Christmas tree this year!
GREETINGS FROM LAS VEGAS, NEVADA!!!
MY SISTER'S DREAM
1 January 2005
I'm not a big fan of Champagne but Chandon California makes a very drinkable Blanc de Noirs and I found a bottle of it
last week at Lee's Discount Liquor on Flamingo. I drank all of it last night -- "Bad move!" says head this morning
-- and ate an ounce of caviar with it, on crackers with minced onion and egg. Caviar is one of those things that never disappoint
and, as I've asked before, what would New Year's be without it? Just another muddy mile marker on the highway of regret.
The night before New Year's Eve my sister Lee had a dream. She and I were walking through my loft in New York, which
I had just renovated, in order to sell it. (In truth, of course, I renovated nothing and sold it "as is".) My
nieces Keaton and Nora were there as well. The place looked so great that my sister suggested to me that maybe I shouldn't
sell it after all. Then we came to a section of the loft that we hadn't realized was there. It was falling apart -- with
rotting wooden timbers. We looked at each other and realized simultaneously that I really did have to sell the place before
it all fell into ruin.
At that moment the door to the loft burst open, as though of its own accord, and a stunning woman on a pink motor scooter
drove into the place. She was fine-featured, with long strawberry-blonde hair which she had somehow managed to get to stick
straight up from her head and which had sparkling things woven into it.
Keaton and Nora thought she was the coolest girl they had ever seen and everybody but me wondered who she was.
I went to talk with her and Lee realized that we had some kind of intimate relationship, which made her very happy --
and she noticed then that I was wearing an unusually sharp tan suit.
At some point I looked back at Lee and said, "I think I'm ready for Las Vegas."
How right I was, back there in Dreamland. And now I guess I ought to be scanning the streets here for a stunning woman
on a pink motor scooter -- I'll know her when I see her, I'm sure.
If you have broadband you can click on the link below and see what the fireworks in Las Vegas this year looked like from
my patio -- the soundtrack is a song Jae Song created on Garage Band . . . very Nowhere:
Las Vegas Fireworks 2004>2005
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