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THE END OF SOMETHING
28 April 2005
Steve Wynn's new 2.7 billion-dollar casino opened to the public at midnight on the morning of the 28th. I had an irresistible
urge to go see it, for several reasons.
Wynn is one of the seminal Vegas visionaries, with a genius for creating casinos. He has an uncanny instinct for designs
that capture the imagination and work as commercial enterprises -- and also for spotting (or creating) trends that shape whole
phases of Vegas development.
The tower of the new resort promised much. With its curving, sculptural form it signaled, perhaps, that the era of the
Pastiche Palace -- embodied in the Paris, the Venetian, the Monte Carlo, New York New York and Wynn's own Treasure Island
and Bellagio -- was over . . . that a return to the unmoored fantasy of 50s Vegas was at hand.
I showed up at the place about an hour after the doors opened. I still had to wait in line to get in, and the interior
was packed -- with curious locals, mostly, it seemed, and left-overs from the more exclusive opening parties earlier in the
evening.
My first impression of the resort was -- "underwhelming". Wynn has abandoned, happily, the dull bourgeois vision
of tasteful luxury that informs the Bellagio and makes it a cold place to me. There's an attempt at whimsy and fantasy, instead,
but it has a shopworn feel, as though Wynn couldn't think past the haut-circus decor of the restaurant Circo at the Bellagio.
It's like a classy version of Circus Circus.
The spaces are magical, however -- cozy and inviting. Here you see Wynn's genius in high gear, and there's much to be learned
from the result. But there is a suffocating tidiness and cuteness about the ambiance, and a weird sense of anachronism, of
creative exhaustion.
The mountain attraction in front of the place, only the back of which can be seen from The Strip, turns out to be a perfectly
ordinary artificial landscape, with a few waterfalls. It has one big square waterfall that ripples over what seems to be
a stone wall but is in fact a gigantic video screen, on which play from time to time boring music videos. Wynn said he wanted
the centerpiece outdoor attraction of the resort to be visible only to those who come inside -- unlike the Mirage volcano
or the Bellagio fountains, which he says he regrets "giving away for free". But the truth is that this outdoor
attraction wouldn't lure anyone into the place, and so would serve no function out on The Strip -- and I can't imagine it
will do much more than disappoint those who witness it inside.
I just kept thinking -- this is a place for old people, rich old people who want to think they're hip. The main cafe
is non-smoking, even out on the terrace that looks over the pool area -- a sure sign that Wynn has no hopes of attracting
20-somethings here. The drinks at the bars are way overpriced. The upscale shopping areas dominate the casino space, which
seems like an afterthought.
(I did see Evelyn Ng, the great up-and-coming hold-'em player, waiting for someone outside the cafe. She was extremely
tall and thin and beautiful, and I wished she'd been waiting for me. To me she struck the only note of authentic glamor in
the whole joint.)
The future of Las Vegas is not here -- this casino is like the last gasp of the 80s sensibility that revitalized the Strip,
beginning with Wynn's visionary Mirage, but that will soon be eclipsed by the hipper off-Strip casinos like the Hard Rock
and the Palms.
Those places, by attracting a younger crowd, are creating patrons who will return for decades to come. The Bellagio and
Wynn Las Vegas are appealing to their parents and grandparents -- a big market, and better-heeled today, but destined to diminish
rapidly as the next few years go by.
It's not just a question of demographics, either. The hipper off-Strip joints are keeping alive and revitalizing the
edginess that has always been at the core of Las Vegas's appeal -- even back in the Fifties when the big Strip resorts were
patronized by older folks in coats and ties and evening dresses. The attempt in the 90s to market Las Vegas as a family-friendly
fun destination was a violation of this core appeal, and quickly abandoned -- but the stodgy respectability of the Bellagio
represents the same sort of violation.
The "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" advertising campaign was wildly successful, and the line became a
national catchphrase because it zeroed in on Vegas's primary appeal -- as a place that doesn't just offer delirious excess
but also the lure of the forbidden, indulged lightly and safely by most but still delivering the frisson of sin lurking dangerously
close at hand.
It's hard to imagine anything worth hushing up ever happening at Wynn Las Vegas -- except perhaps for a scandalous credit
card bill run up at Louis Vuitton. It's interesting that the Maloof brothers, who own the Palms, and Peter Morton, who owns
the Hard Rock, both took out full page ads in the front section of the Las Vegas Review Journal the day of the new resort's
opening, congratulating Wynn on his achievement. Partly this might be set down to two of the last remaining privately controlled
casinos saluting a fellow maverick. (Due to a recent series of mega-mergers, most of the Strip resorts are now owned by two
large casino consortiums.) But I think it also reflects relief that Wynn Las Vegas isn't going to be competing with the hipper
establishments for the Vegas visitors of the future.
What Wynn Las Vegas lacks is a sense of action, of possibility, of risk. Wynn talks about the place as a series of "experiences"
but they're not really that, because true experience destinations require the potential for genuine surprise and an edge of
danger. The bold colors and dramatic spaces of his new resort seem like cosmetic holiday decorations in a dreary old-folks
home.
The place will make a lot of money in the short term -- Wynn knows his market well. But it doesn't mark the beginning
of a new era in Las Vegas -- as the Mirage once did. It marks the end of one instead.
TALES OF THE FANCY
26 April 2005
Pierce Egan, chronicler of the prize ring in Regency England, called it The Fancy -- that improbable crowd of swells and
degenerates, experts and amateurs who followed the sweet science in his day. (It is sometimes said that the modern term "fan"
derives from "fanatic", but I think it's much more likely to have come from "fancier", as does Egan's
term.) I doubt if this crowd is much different today and you can find it on parade at any notable prize fight, particularly
one held at a Las Vegas casino.
Casinos host prize fight not so much for the gate, or the publicity, as for the impact a big fight has on the house drop
-- the amount of money put in play during a particular gaming cycle. Fight fans like to gamble and drink and eat well --
just the sort of folks a casino likes to have hanging around its attractions.
My friend John Sosnovsky, a member of The Fancy in good standing, flew into town late Friday night (actually early Saturday
morning) for a fight card at Caesars on Saturday night that had the makings of a corker. True to form, John likes to play
poker, so after dropping off his bags at my place and grabbing a bite to eat at Mr. Lucky's 24/7 at the Hard Rock, we headed
to the poker room at the Palms, which was quite lively at 2am, as it is at most times of the day or night.
John took a sudden notion to sit down at a $4-8 table, the highest stakes game he'd ever played in. He did extremely
well, as he usually does, and when morning dawned he was up about a yard. I had a great night, too. For me a great night
means not losing -- and at this session I actually walked away five dollars up. It felt like a major triumph.
We went back to my place and got a little sleep -- the fight would start early, at 4:45pm, to accommodate the East Coast
pay-per-view audience, and we wanted to leave a little time beforehand to place a few wagers on the scheduled bouts.
We got to Caesars early enough. John and I put down a little money on David Estrada, a good and tough young fighter going
up against Shane Mosley, who has dropped back down to the welterweight division, which he once briefly dominated, after making
a poor showing (but lots of money) in the light middleweight division. Estrada was not likely to defeat the wily older champion
but he had a chance to, so the better than 3 to 1 odds made for an intriguing bet. John also put a little money on Calvin
Brock, a promising heavyweight going into his first really tough match, against the much bigger veteran and almost-contender
Jameel McCline.
We had a couple of drinks at the bar at Cleopatra's Barge, a bizarre little lounge at Caesars, where the musical acts
perform on a replica of an ancient Egyptian barge set in the middle of the club, with a moat around it. This prepared us
for the surrealism to come.
We walked over to the venue, where there was already a long line forming outside the open-air amphitheater in which the
fights would be held. As we waited for the doors to open, a small platoon of beefy guys in full Roman centurion regalia escorted
the rings girls, wearing terrycloth robes, into the arena. The centurions' armor and weaponry set off the metal detectors.
When we got inside we found that the amphitheater was tiny -- there wasn't a bad seat in the house and we had terrific
ones in the third row of the elevated bleachers, very close to the ring . . . a bargain, by boxing standards, at $100 apiece.
This was to be a night of matches between fighters highly regarded among The Fancy but, with the exception of Mosley, virtually
unknown to the public at large. The crowd was thus made up of what Egan would have called "knowing coves", true
students of the sport, or those who fancied themselves as such.
My friend John is a genuine knowing cove, and he quickly became the resident expert in our section of the stands, pointing
out the many boxers in attendance as spectators, filling folks in on the backgrounds of the lesser known fighters on the card,
and offering well-considered previews of the contests of skill and character about to unfold.
As it turned out the three featured matches, and one of the bouts on the undercard, were superlative and fascinating in
the extreme.
The only really negligible fight was an eight rounder between an unseasoned young heavyweight named Malik Scott and an
"opponent", Shane Swartz -- one of a class of fighters whose job it is to give up-and-coming kids a work-out under
the lights, and be defeated. Scott did not look good -- tentative and sloppy -- against his opponent, but the opponent was
duly defeated, by unanimous decision, and maybe the kid learned something in the process . . . if only that he's got a lot
to learn.
The first televised fight of the evening was between Raul Martinez, of San Antonio, and Jose Tirado, of Culiacan, Mexico.
It was a six-round bantamweight slugfest between two courageous boxers -- but Martinez was the harder puncher over the long
haul and won the decision in a very close fight. This was in some ways the most exciting match of the evening, though the
three that followed, in presenting starker contrasts of style and character, had greater philosophical and scientific interest.
The colors were presented by a Marine guard -- all veterans of Iraq -- who were accompanied into the ring by the Roman centurions.
Between fights, and sometimes during them, the centurions also escorted a man dressed up as a Caesar and a woman dressed
up as Cleopatra around through the aisles. The impersonators waved regally at the patrons and sometimes paused to let their
photographs be taken. There was something delightfully cheesy about this -- with the air of an old, ridiculous Las Vegas
promotion from the Fifties. The innocence of the Caesars brand of vulgarity is genuinely charming.
Calvin Brock was an untested heavyweight prospect who'd only fought "opponents" before going up against Jameel
McCline in the next bout. McCline is not quite a heavyweight contender, having lost a decision to Chris Byrd, a bona fide
player in the heavyweight ranks. But it was a split decision, and McCline sent Byrd to the canvas at one point in the fight
-- so he promised to provide Brock with his inaugural test, and he delivered on that promise.
McCline is a lot bigger than Brock, with a lot more experience. He's known to fade if he gets hit hard, and he showed
up in the ring at Caesars looking a little flabby. But he gave Brock almost more than he could handle Saturday night.
He didn't fade when Brock hit him hard, as Brock did often, and he adopted the wise though not quite legal tactic of tying
Brock up and leaning on him, tiring Brock visibly by the middle rounds of the contest. (Referee Joe Cortez really should
have stopped this monkey business after a few rounds, but for some reason he didn't.)
Brock had the best of it in the early rounds but seemed to be punched out by the 7th, when a vicious uppercut by the bigger
man sent him down to the canvas for the first time in his professional career. It was a defining moment in the young fighter's
life -- a chance to see what he was really made of.
Stern stuff, as it turned out. Brock got up before the count ended and went back to work like a man reborn. He attacked
McCline methodically and effectively for the rest of the round, to a degree that had some judges giving him back one of the
two points he lost by way of the knockdown.
Brock went on to dominate the last rounds and to win a unanimous decision on all the judges' scorecards. I saw the fight
as closer than the judges did, but I was no more inclined than they were to give McCline any more credit than absolutely required,
because of his unseemly tactics, effective as they were. Leaning on a man is not the same thing as fighting him, and it would
have been ugly to see McCline rewarded for the strategy.
Brock has much to learn about ring generalship, as they call it -- he should have found a way out of playing caryatid
to McCline's architrave -- but he showed tremendous spirit and will in his late-rounds comeback. It was inspiring.
The next fight, between the veteran Mosley and the prospect Estrada opened with four rounds of extremely beautiful boxing
-- and for those 12 minutes the fight looked destined to be a classic. Mosley had his old hand speed back but Estrada was
a match for him in that department -- one had the impression of watching two swarms of bees attack each other. It was old-style
boxing at its best and aesthetically thrilling.
But experience told as the fight wore on. Estrada tired and his punches lost their zip. And he started missing -- a
lot -- which never goes down well with judges, no matter how many times, and how hard, a fighter hits his opponent between
punches gone astray.
Mosley hung in there and built up points with his jab -- not a punishing jab but sharp enough to register as a clean scoring
blow. Clearly Estrada hadn't paced himself psychologically for a contest like this, against a fighter with Mosley's years
of experience and genuine skills. Mosley looked rusty himself at times, and his footwork wasn't always energetic or effective
as a defensive tool, but he had what it took to overmaster the younger man mentally, and he won a unanimous decision from
the judges. I had the fight much closer than they did, but an old favorite like Mosley always gets the benefit of the doubt
in a match like this.
Now it was time for the main event and the atmosphere was electric as Kermit Cintron and Antonio Margarito made their
ways to the ring. Margarito, from Tijuana, came out very gay, as Egan would have said -- grinning and bouncing on his toes
and high-fiving the people crowding up to the aisle he proceeded down.
Cintron looked grave and menacing by contrast -- ready for serious business. And serious business the fight was -- right
from the start.
Cintron is thought by some to have the hardest punch in the welterweight division at the moment. The problem is that
he doesn't have the ring savvy or boxing skills to go with his power. Margarito is known for terrifying combinations, delivered
with surgical precision, that can render a man unconscious just as effectively as Cintron's bombs.
As soon as the two men started mixing it up the fight engendered a mood of excruciating suspense and dread. It was like
watching a duel fought with razor-sharp machetes. Cintron landed some terrifying blows to Margarito's head. "That one
rocked him!" I remarked to John. John shrugged dismissively. "He's from Tijuana," John explained -- meaning
it would take more than a couple of terrifying blows to put Margarito down.
In the end it was Margarito who put Cintron down. He opened a bad cut over Cintron's eye in the third. It didn't seem
to affect Cintron's vision so much as his concentration. Margarito went to work with his combinations, and after a few of
them Cintron's legs seemed to disconnect from his body. He was punching cleanly and scoring, but his legs were executing
some alien choreography of their own design -- perhaps trying to find a way back to the dressing room.
Cintron fell to his knees three times -- not so much from hard blows as from the discombobulation of his stems, though
that discombobulation was brought on by many hard blows delivered with speed and power and accuracy by Margarito.
The ref stopped the contest in the 5th -- not a moment too soon. Cintron just wasn't all there anymore.
So it wasn't the epic fight many predicted -- rather a case of a better-rounded fighter outclassing one with more limited
weapons at his disposal. It was exciting to watch, but not entirely pleasant. There was something chilling about Margarito's
methodical destruction of Cintron. Bigger names in the welterweight division will certainly feel the same chill, watching
tapes of the bout, and it will be hard for Margarito to make a money fight. But when he does -- and it will have to happen
sooner or later -- it will be worth much to watch.
Exalted as one usually is after a fine display of boxing, especially if one sees it live, John and I went off in search
of superlative food and drink, fit for the occasion. We found it at Joe's Stone Crab, in the Forum Shops arcade at Caesars.
A branch of a famous Florida eatery, Joe's has a wonderful bar section with high tables, dark wood paneling and vaguely
deco appointments. There we feasted on fried oysters, lobster, stone crabs and key lime pie -- all of which were sublime.
(I found out later that Sugar Ray Leonard, who'd done color commentary for ESPN's broadcast of the fight, was dining there
at the same time, with a big party in a private room. This was not surprising, since members of The Fancy usually have good
instincts for the most righteous places to hang.)
After a meal like that there was nothing to do but hit the poker room at the Palms again. Sleep was simply out of the
question. I got good cards all night and played them extremely well, I must say, and left the room $108 up. John, having
moved down to a $2-4 game, couldn't get a streak going. He moved back up to $4-8 and recovered his lost buy-in, but not a
lot more, standing about pat as we staggered home in broad daylight and collapsed.
It had been an awesome night -- million dollar stuff.
We visited Sonny Liston's grave the next afternoon, to pay our respects and to remind ourselves that glory and pleasure are
fleeting. This did not stop us from going back to the Palms poker room to spend a few hours before John's return flight to
New York. John chanced into a tight game with little betting, and watched his buy-in dribble away in small increments. I
lucked into a table with spirited bettors and a couple of dolts in the mix, and made $30 on the session. At one point I was
down to my last three chips and went all in on a full-house -- sixes full of sevens. The pot had grown enormous because one
of my opponents had trip sevens and another a flush to the ace. I thus went from nothing to $10 up in a matter of minutes,
and added another $20 to my winnings after that. (I am now down $97 at poker -- lifetime -- after my birthday reset.)
The Fancy is an occasional congregation, brought into being by a prize fight at a venue surrounded by action of one sort
or another -- betting and public houses in Egan's day, the all-purpose degradathon of a big casino in ours. But when The
Fancy assembles, and I take my place in it, I feel as though I've never been away, and as though I'm with friends . . . all
those congenial strangers who share a taste for life in extremis, for delirious excess -- of courage and skill and chance
and food and drink (and other less innocent pleasures of the flesh.)
They live like kings (like Caesars!) for a brief moment, then return to the daily grind, and all the cost of it is accounted
as little enough beside the exhilaration gained and pocketed forever.
ROCKING
24 April 2005
Had a particularly bad day at work last week -- decided I needed to change my head around, so I went out in the early
evening and got a buzz cut. I felt like a new man -- and had a sudden urge to eat a really good steak. I decided to try
A. J.s, the retro steak house at the Hard Rock. It's a terrific place, as it turns out.
Small, with the feel of a vintage Vegas joint, complete with cool paintings of vanished or utterly altered Strip casinos
from the 50's and a tiny piano bar, the room was slow on this Thursday night, though the Hard Rock itself was jumping.
I had an excellent New York strip steak -- not as well aged as the one served at Binion's Ranch Steak House but much better
than the one served at N9NE, the hipper joint at the Palms, whose retro-80s style leaves me totally cold.
I had a few drinks at the center bar before going home -- always an adventure when it's crowded. I stood next to a guy
who hit a straight flush on the video poker machine embedded in the bar in front of us, which he was playing to pass the time
as he waited for his drink.. A $2,000 pay-out on $2.50 bet. I ran into a friend of his later who said he'd moved on to roulette
and won $2,000 at that as well.
I bought a shot of vodka for a young woman in honor of her 21st birthday -- her first legal drink at the Rock. She was
making her inaugural visit to Vegas, from San Diego, to celebrate the occasion. The bartender carded her before sliding the
shot her way and when he examined her driver's license his face lit up. "O. k.!" he exclaimed.
On the way back from a trip to the men's room I was more or less corralled by an overly talkative guy who lived in the
neighborhood. He was drinking a 16 oz. beer from a can in a paper bag. "I bought it at the deli across the street --
it's cheaper," he explained. I asked him what he did in Vegas. "Oh, I got lucky, " he said. "Injured
my back on a moving job -- now I'm just collecting." He seemed well pleased by his good fortune.
Overheard at the bar, from a very attractive 20-something woman talking to her female friend -- "He won't fart around
me or anything. He's so uptight."
Freud was right to be puzzled by the mystery of "what women really want" -- and sometimes you just don't want
to know.
HABEMUS PAPAM
HABEMUS HOOTERS
19 April
The College Of Cardinals may have seen the elevation of Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy as a kind of holding action. Closely
associated with John Paul II as his right-hand man and one-man brain trust -- and basically in charge of the Vatican during
the past four years of John Paul's failing health -- Ratzinger is also 78, the oldest pope in over a century, and thus not
likely to have an epic tenure as head of the church.
I think, though, that the cardinals may have made a colossal miscalculation.
Ratzinger and John Paul II shared a timely and well-considered horror of moral relativism, which they saw as a primary
threat to their church and to humane society as a whole. It was Ratzinger who provided the intellectual and theological rationale
for John Paul II's response -- namely, a rigid adherence to traditional doctrine, traditionally interpreted, and a stern reinforcement
of it through the centralized power of the Vatican hierarchy. (Ratzinger was himself in charge of the disciplining of overly
liberal priests.)
Though their apprehension of the dangers of moral relativism may have been profound, it can be argued that their response
to it involved a contradiction equally profound, and perhaps almost as dangerous. For by associating absolute moral values
with the definition of such values by an earthly institution like the Catholic Church, they were in the position of judging
others without a corresponding ability to judge themselves -- as their inadequate response to the child abuse scandals seemed
to prove.
This is a contradiction inherent in traditional Catholic doctrine, which presumes that a man-made organization, the Catholic
Church can, by virtue of its presumed unbroken link to to St. Peter, first "bishop" of Rome, speak with infallible
authority on certain matters -- and also that its failings must be judged in the light of its divine nature, as the sole official
arbiter of God's wisdom on earth. I don't think it's too extreme to say that the very idea of this would have made Jesus
barf, or at least weep -- since one of the principal burdens of his teaching was the inadequacy of earthly religious institutions
in comprehending and codifying the mysterious will of God.
I think the cardinals may have failed to see how much John Paul II's personal style -- his ability to charm the young
for example -- and his credentials as an activist on behalf of human liberty served to paper over the contradictions of his
official doctrinal and ecclesiastical edicts. Ratzinger was once a member of the Hitler Youth, and though he can certainly
not be judged harshly for this, and has done much to atone for it, it doesn't constitute the kind of bona fides that John
Paul II's role in the toppling of the Soviet empire represents.
Ratzinger's intransigence on doctrinal matters, without John Paul II's charismatic style and political track record, may
open up an era of unprecedented bitterness and schism in the Catholic Church. The only way it might not is if Ratzinger,
as Benedict XVI, does something radical but theologically defensible -- like abolishing the rule of celibacy for priests.
Celibacy for priests is not based in church doctrine per se, but rather in church discipline, which is theoretically amendable,
and Ratzinger has never expressed an opinion on the subject publicly. But I don't see this happening.
"Habemus papam," the Vatican has announced, in the traditional Latin formula -- "We have a pope."
"You have a problem, too," I would add.
Hooters, the slightly naughty national restaurant chain, where the ogling of well-developed (but well-covered) female breasts
is celebrated, has two outposts in the Las Vegas area -- one in Henderson and the one I visit occasionally, in search of roasted
oysters, on West Sahara Avenue. Now Hooters has decided to go into the casino business -- taking over a moderately successful
casino on Tropicana just east of The Strip called the San Remo. It will be curious to see how the almost innocent Hooters
ethos -- which I wrote about in the report of 16 April -- plays in the neo-brazen atmosphere of 21st-Century Las Vegas, which
has seen a resort like the Palms install dancer poles in some hotel rooms, and mayor Oscar Goodman propose lifting the ban
on strip clubs in Strip casinos.
Will the Hooters Girls have to show more skin -- and if they do, will they still be Hooters Girls, all-American girl-next-door
babes?
Stay tuned . . .
SHARKS
18 April 2005
15 April is the most wistful day of a wistful month. It's not just that taxes are due but that, for disorganized persons
like myself, they must be filed at the last minute, which involves baleful waiting in long post office lines. The enormity
of the checks I had to write this year made the day especially grim.
That's why my heart leapt up last Friday morning when I read in the paper that the Shark Reef attraction at the Mandalay
Bay Casino was sponsoring its own post office station where returns could be mailed -- between noon and 10pm -- and offering
anyone who mailed them there a free ticket to visit the shark-infested aquarium, which I've always wanted to go see. The
motto of the promotion was "We'll take your arm and a leg." (The regular motto of the predator-based aquarium is
"Kill an hour or two.") The idea of waiting in line in a casino seemed so much more delightful than waiting in
line in a post office -- in fact it seemed downright surreal.
But there was no line, early in the afternoon when I showed up, just a reporter with a video camera interviewing the Shark
Reef's director for the local news. I bought my postage and had my envelopes postmarked at a tiki-themed booth and was then
told to visit an adjoining table for my free ticket -- but because I was mailing two returns (state and federal) I got two
free tickets and two free T-shirts as well. (Clearly they were having trouble moving the things.) Once I got the promotional
items I was then free to drop my returns in a sidewalk-style blue mail box next to the table.
It was over in moments and time for lunch. I tried to get an outdoor table at the Border Grill, whose lower-level terrace
has a view through iron railings of the famed Mandalay Bay pool complex, jammed on this 80-degree day. But the wait was too
long so I wandered inside the casino complex looking for another possibility. None of the very fancy restaurants were open
for lunch, the buffet seemed like overkill, and Raffles, the 24-hour all-purpose cafe, was way over-priced.
I was about to head home when I noticed the House Of Blues and remembered that it served food -- breakfast, lunch and
dinner, as it turned out.
I went into the fantastical roadhouse-joint -- filled with an amazing collection of Southern folk art -- and got a table immediately.
I had some terrific chicken gumbo to start, then delicious fried catfish nuggets and sweet-potato French fries, served with
a fiery-hot Cajun remoulade to dip them in. A cold beer and wonderful blues and zydeco music on the sound system made the
meal enchanting.
Can this really be 15 April, I wondered? For dessert I decided to have a pina colada at the Orchid Bar by the casino
entrance -- something about the tropical theme of the resort put that strange idea in my head. It was a very good one, though,
and I sipped the frozen drink with a great sense of satisfaction, watching the casino patrons file past, or into the Orchid
for refreshment.
I felt like taking a nap afterwards, right there in the big soft arm-chair at my table, but instead I went home and got
back to work. This is April, after all -- you don't want to push contentment and peace of mind too far.
|
| A picture of an otherwise anonymous "Jeff" pulled at random off the Internet |
HOOTERS
16 April 2005
One can be forgiven for feeling a little wistful in April -- the time of taxes and that promise of eternal Springtime
which Autumn will eventually revoke. For those people, like me, who love oysters and other tasty mollusks but will not eat
them in months without "r"s in them, April opens a window onto that long stretch from May to August when shellfish
are out of bounds.
They say one doesn't really need to follow this old rule in the age of modern refrigeration techniques but I like the
antique discipline of it, with its reminder of loss and hope, and I don't know enough about modern refrigeration techniques
to accurately assess their effectiveness in keeping off-season shellfish safe.
Some such thoughts as these sent me off to Hooters a few nights ago, in search of roasted oysters.
Hooters has established a place in our culture by dealing openly, if a bit slyly, with the fact that men like to look
at women's tits and are almost childishly grateful when this biological quirk is accepted with a measure of good cheer.
I don't think the male obsession with tits is fundamentally sexual or misogynist in nature. I think it represents an
imaginative reconnection with the mother's breast, a magical source of constancy, not to say survival, amidst the bewilderments
of infancy. Men and women both must recollect that rise of the mother's bosom as an emblem of first joy, first desire, first
need. It is only men in our culture who obsess on it, however, because of infantile insecurities connected with the general
collapse of manhood. It has been noted that the American Cult Of the Very Large Bosom arose in the Fifties, among a generation
of men shaken to its collective soul by the experience of WWII. Before the war, female icons were not required to possess
this attribute.
In all this men are more to be pitied than reviled -- though that's hard to do sometimes, when the shame of their own
need embarrasses men and causes them to revile and belittle the emblems that evoke it. In the cheerful, ritualized flirtation
that goes on between the busty female servers and the leering male patrons at Hooters, and most other places in Las Vegas,
the whole troubling phenomenon is defused.
A Hooters in Las Vegas is a special case, though -- and an odd one. The orange hot pants and tight T-shirts of the Hooter's
costume seem almost demure in this town, where cocktail waitresses routinely go about their business half-naked. There is
a gym-class innocence at play with the Hooters girls, and it has very strict limits.
A guy at another table whispered something out of bounds to my waitress. She turned on her heels and walked away. "Hey!"
he called after her. "Are you still talking?" she asked. "I stopped listening to you five minutes ago."
She went and got a broom leaning against the bar, returned and brandished it over his head. "You sure you want to go
on talking to me like that?" His whole body seemed to shrivel like a deflating penis. This was not making him look
good to his pals.
Later he went over to her sheepishly and asked if he could take a picture of the two of them with his cell phone camera.
She cheerfully acquiesced, snuggled up to him and kissed him on the cheek just before he snapped the picture. The boundaries
had been reestablished.
Flirtation between female servers and patrons is part of the coin of the realm in Las Vegas, but most everyone knows the
rules of the game and, more importantly, that it is a game. But just try and cross the game's foul lines and you will see
very quickly how efficiently and ruthlessly the unwritten social mores of Las Vegas can be enforced.
Pathetic, isn't it, how the thought of tits can distract a man into a labyrinthine digression like the one above -- even
from the subject of oysters, which is what lured me to Hooters in the first place? The oyster roast offered there is wondrous,
all the same. You get a bucket filled with about three dozen lightly roasted bivalves, served with drawn butter and a shucking
knife.
"Baby, you know you've got to shuck them yourself," warned my waitress with motherly concern when I ordered,
placing a sympathetic hand on my shoulder and swinging her tits into my line of view like a gunner swivelling the barrels
of an anti-aircraft piece . "Are you sure you're up for some shucking?" she asked, with just a trace of insinuation.
"Shucking is sort of my specialty," I allowed. She squeezed my shoulder, winked and went off to place the order.
The oysters were, in the end, perfect -- medium-sized, not overcooked, tasty and filling. The whole bucket costs $19.95,
which is remarkable when you consider what a half-dozen raw oysters will usually cost you at a place you'd feel safe eating
them.
Already I'm planning a return visit to Hooters before April expires and the "r"s vanish from the calendar for
a spell -- a wistful thought if there ever was one.
VERITATIS SPLENDOR
12 April 2005
Though he was the unrepentant CEO of a deeply corrupted corporation, Pope John Paul II was nevertheless a great man.
His role in toppling the Soviet Empire in Europe will earn him a permanent place in the pages of history, and his mystical
thought will live on as well.
In his 10th Encyclical he wrote a great meditation called "Veritatis Splendor", "The Splendor Of Truth",
in which he argued that there were no degrees of evil -- that all evil was the same in nature, from simple malevolence towards
one's neighbor to the greatest acts of mass murder. It was a bracing and timely corrective addressed to an age in which small
moral failings are excused, in which the mere act of refraining from outright crime is seen as a kind of moral triumph.
The pope's argument was useful because it shed light on the phenomenon of how great evil comes to pass in the actual workings
of the world -- how a lack of charity can lead to prejudice and discrimination, and eventually to a dehumanizing of the oppressed
in which previously unimaginable crimes against them can be contemplated and carried out.
In the 20th Century, an age of mass murder on scales previously undreamt-of, this lesson seemed to have been wholly forgotten.
Each culture appeared to believe that its prejudices alone were explainable and benign -- though all the while they were
leading on by imperceptible increments to unspeakable horrors.
In its list of acts which were "intrinsece malum", "intrinsically evil", the Second Vatican Council
named "whatever is offensive to human dignity such as subhuman livings conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation,
slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat laborers as mere instruments
of profit and not as free and responsible persons: All these and the like are a disgrace," the Council concluded, "and
so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and
they are a negation of the honor due to the Creator."
To take such ideas seriously would be a first step in the redemption of modern culture, and John Paul II quoted them approvingly
in "Veritatis Splendor", to make his point about the indivisibility of evil, which encompasses both the corporate
CEO's craven idolatry of the bottom line and the atrocities of the Rwandan death squads. Acts of intrinsic evil, he argued,
cannot be excused on the basis of "a higher good" -- they are the negation of the very idea of a higher good.
It was his fear of moral relativism, and the ruination of humane culture it portended, that made John Paul II hew so dogmatically
to received Catholic doctrine, and to insist so implacably on hierarchical discipline within his church, on obedience to his
rule, which he clearly saw as the last bastion against such relativism among the the faithful.
It is the most melancholy of ironies that John Paul II was thereby trapped, theologically, in a profound contradiction
-- laid bare most revealingly in the child abuse scandals that still rock the American Catholic Church. That church most
decidedly "trafficked in children" to satisfy the lust of degenerate priests. It guarded the priests from prosecution,
inflicted them on new victims and wrote off the lives and psyches of those victims in the interest of a "higher good"
-- protecting the Church, sole bearer of the received truth which alone could save the world.
John Paul II's failure to respond adequately to the evil thus exposed was a failure predetermined by his theology, which
sanctified his church above all other human institutions, insisted that its failures alone were explainable and benign --
though all the while they were leading on by imperceptible increments to unspeakable perversions.
We might set it down to the taming of Jesus by the church. Can there be any doubt what Rabbi Jeshua bar Joseph would
have done in the face of the child abuse scandal? He would have stripped every Catholic sanctuary in the world of its treasures
and turned the priests into the street to beg for mercy and forgiveness from every passing child. He would have razed the
temple and started building it again from scratch.
John Paul II, great man that he was, was still a CEO -- he could not follow Jesus that far. Perhaps now he understands.
The glory of his beloved church on earth must look pathetically insignificant from his current perspective -- but the splendor
of the truth that much more ravishing.
VEGAS GIRLS
10 April 2005
That's Melanie in the picture above, wearing the black tank top and competing in the girl's beer drinking contest at the
Hofbrauhaus. The front of the tank top reads "Who you tryin' to play?"
She won the contest last week and returned to defend her title, but lost this time. She said the girl who won spilled
most of her beer down the front of her shirt, a clear violation of the rules. She said it didn't matter, but she was dejected.
She's a Vegas girl -- a local, but that's not what I mean. Girls turn into Vegas girls wherever they're from and however
long they're here for. They all seem to subscribe to Melanie's tank top motto: "Who you tryin' to play? I created the
game."
Here's a report about some of them I've met recently:
I was running out of cigarettes at the end of my work day on Saturday. It was time for a trip to the Paiute Smoke Shop
in North Las Vegas but my car wouldn't start -- dead battery. I hadn't driven it in a few days and I guess the two Ionic
Breeze air filters connected to electrical outlet plugs had drained the system.
That meant walking over to the deli on the corner, passing the Hard Rock. On the way back I decided to get a nightcap
breakfast at Mr. Lucky's. The Rock was jammed with cute girls dressed to kill and with guys swarming around them like bees
on a honeysuckle vine. Just observing the exchange of energy was exhausting.
I had some terrific eggs benedict and a screwdriver, then decided to take a cab over to the Palms for some poker -- it
had been a while since I contributed any money to the general Vegas poker fund. But the line of people waiting for cabs in
front of the Rock was almost a block long.
What could I do but go back in to the bar and wait for the line to diminish?
There I started talking to Mark -- a forty-something guy from Chicago. (All names here have been changed -- because what
happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. I will refer to myself as Biff for the purposes of this report.) "Look at them,"
he sighed. "LOOK at them." He meant the girls of course. "I can't do anything about it," he added,
"because I'm married. My wife is back in Chicago, but still . . . look at them! God, I love this town. The only trouble
is, it takes me a week to recover from it when I get home. I don't mean the hangover -- that goes in a couple of days. But
the buzz . . ."
A group of girls standing in front of us asked Mark to take a picture of them with their camera, which he did. "I
just want to go to a strip club," said one of the girls, "and buy myself a lap dance." Mark and I did not
pursue this opening. Instead Mark corralled a couple of college-age girls, Laura and Donna, and we started talking to them.
Donna was from North Carolina, where I was born -- from Greensboro, where I once lived. We had a long discussion about religion
in the South. She asked to bum a cigarette and when I gave her one she threw her arms around me and kissed me on the cheek.
Then she said she had to meet some friends but would be back. She threw her arms around me again and kissed me on the lips.
"What about me?" asked Mark. "Am I chopped liver?" "No," said Donna, "it's just that
Biff and I had a really good talk." She hugged Mark and ran off -- we never saw her again.
I went to the bar for another beer -- was standing behind two luscious and underdressed women sitting together at the
rail. "What do you want?" one of them asked. "We can get the bartender's attention." "Of course
you can," I said, "because you're total babes. God bless you." They ordered the beer and we introduced ourselves.
"He called us total babes," said Clara. "Aw . . ." said Lisa, as she got off her chair and began shaking
her tush. "Isn't that a great ass?" said Clara. "It's a thing of beauty," I admitted. "And you've
got to love her disco boobs," said Clara. I did. Then Clara and Lisa started French kissing.
Often hookers in Vegas work in pairs, and put on displays of affection between each other by way of advertising the possibilities
of a threesome. But I think Clara and Lisa were just into each other. Mark drifted over and we spent some time talking to
the girls. At one point a big dorky guy tried to shove past Lisa to grab a seat next to Clara. Lisa was deeply offended.
"That's my bitch," she said. "You want to get to her you go through me." The guy looked at me in offended
innocence. "Through me, too," I said gallantly. He looked crestfallen and slinked away. Lisa hugged me and kissed
me on the lips. "What a dork," she said. "You crushed him," I said. "I know," she said.
"That's because he's a dork and you're a man. Dork, man, dork, man," she continued, pointing back and forth between
the guy's back and me. The implication was clear that she could crush me, too, if her opinion of me shifted -- but I knew
that already.
I can't remember what happened to Clara and Lisa but I soon found that Milly from Minneapolis was sitting in one of the
chairs where they'd been. "I'm really tired," said Milly, "which is a drag, because this is my last night
in Vegas." I told her she needed a vodka-Red Bull and bought her one. It turned out she wasn't so much tired as depressed.
Her boyfriend back in Minneapolis had just dumped her. "Why?" asked Mark. "You're so beautiful and you have
such nice tits." She nodded in agreement -- because she was and did, and was displaying them prominently in a low cut
bimbo dress. Why bother with false modesty? "I don't know why," she said forlornly. She was visiting Vegas to
forget and perhaps get some revenge. She wanted to call the guy up -- wake him in the middle of the night -- and tell him
what a great time she was having. I advised against this, on the grounds that it had an air of desperation about it.
Then a friend of Milly's joined us and revealed new dimensions to Milly's plight. She'd met a really cute guy earlier
in the evening -- he'd given her his cell phone number and they made plans to go to a club later, but since then he'd been
studiously ignoring her. "I thought he really liked me," said Milly. "He did!" affirmed Milly's friend,
"I could tell he did!" "Look at me," said Milly. "I'm twenty-nine. I'm not going to play games
like this." Moments later Milly's friend was on her cell phone, calling the guy's number, saying she'd lost Milly and
wondering if she was with him.
Note the seriousness on the face of Milly's friend as she initiates the call.
She gave our location at the bar and the guy showed up instantly. Milly had gone to the ladies room, as part of the ploy,
and when she returned all was well again. She and the guy began talking animatedly and headed off to Drai's together.
Mark meanwhile had been talking to two hard-looking but attractive girls who'd squeezed in next to him. He edged away
from them and warned me, "No good, Biff -- they're hookers."
"These girls . . ." said Mark again, looking around at them all. "They weren't like this when I was in
my twenties." Nor when I was. But maybe it's just Vegas. Earlier in the evening I heard a young guy tell his pal,
"I grabbed her ass and she slapped me and said, 'Don't grab.' Then she came back later and offered to buy me a beer."
He seemed bewildered. The thing about girls in Vegas is that they're in charge and they know it. Nothing a mere male can
do fazes them in the slightest -- with the possible exception of ignoring them. So one raises a toast to them as they flash
by and does what one can to contribute to their fun -- and if they decide you're going to be part of it for a while, well,
good for you.
The Eternal Feminine leads us on . . .
BANG SUGAR BANG
2 April 2005
I knocked off work about 8pm yesterday and headed off on my bike for some dinner at Mr. Lucky's 24/7, at the Hard Rock.
The restaurant was jammed but they gave me a booth all to myself when I asked for it -- because this is Las Vegas. It was
my favorite booth, looking out over the casino and the throngs passing around its circular perimeter.
The Rock was hopping, even that early. I heard a guy in line for Mr. Lucky's say to his pal, "You see more first-rate
boobies here than any other place in Vegas. Young, dumb -- and you know the rest." A woman passing by leaned over the
edge of my booth to announce breathlessly that she was celebrating her 38th birthday. "You look a lot younger,"
I said. "Yay!" she screamed and hurried on.
Had some tasty shrimp cocktail and chicken satay -- then remembered that this was the night Bang Sugar Bang was going
to be playing at the Double Down Saloon, the notorious dive bar in my neighborhood. I'd never heard them but liked the name
a lot, and the night seemed electric -- so I decided to give it a try.
Pedaling over to the saloon, I passed this slightly detumescent beer bottle outside the Hofbrauhaus:
As I was going inside the Double Down the bouncer said, "We've got a wedding going on -- but it'll be over soon."
Damned if he wasn't right. When I walked in, Eddie was just finishing his declaration of love to Kyrsten up on the stage.
"I used to say I didn't believe in God," said the young groom, who had the face of a choir boy, "but now I
think that God is everything -- us, this bar, this city, the whole world . . ." He finished up by saying, "Kyrsten,
you know I love you -- now everybody else knows, too."
Then the minister joined Eddie and Kyrsten in holy matrimony. Champagne was poured and offered to everyone, even the strangers
present. I was already working on a beer, so I declined, not knowing how big the supply was.
Afterwards, a friend or sister of Kyrsten's got up to testify that after her first date with Eddie, Kyrsten called her up
to tell her she'd met the man she was going to marry. "Remember I told you this," she added. A little over a year
later, she did.
Kyrsten's dad got up and said he was glad Eddie mentioned God. "Your love comes from God," he explained. "Sooner
or later that well will run dry -- and you'll have to go to God to replenish it."
It was all very sweet and endearing -- and the last thing I expected to run into at the Double Down.
Afterwards there were congratulations, much picture taking -- then Kyrsten and Eddie cut the cake, which was laid out on one
of the pool tables.
Then the live music started -- with a great group called Underwater City People, who did a set of strong high-energy songs,
before the next group came on . . . and this group, called The O. A. O. T.'s, was fronted by Eddie, which sort of explained
the wedding venue. The choir boy became a devil and delivered sly punk vocals over a raging beat. They did a cool cover
of "I Fought the Law and the Law Won."
The O. A. O. T.'s (which stands for The One And Only Typicals) is based in Los Angeles, but I guess a dive wedding in Los
Angeles wouldn't have had the same bizarre cachet as one in Vegas -- not to mention all the extra paperwork.
Bang Sugar Bang came on next (I think) but I was too drunk by then to really hear much. I wished the bride endless happiness,
went out and bicycled home.
Was that wedding some wild and brilliantly elaborated April Fool's prank? Or was it just Las Vegas being Las Vegas?
Riding home with the wind in my face, I realized it didn't matter. This whole town is just a wild and brilliantly elaborated
April Fool's prank, and I'm just one of the happy April Fools . . . young, dumb -- and you know the rest.
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