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MOVIELAND
23 September 2006
My friend Michael Almereyda was in town this week doing more scouting for the modern-dress version of "The Merchant
Of Venice" he hopes to shoot here this Fall. Michael's friend Steven Soderbergh was in town, too, doing a week of location
shooting for "Oceans 13", and Soderbergh was kind enough to let Michael drag me along with him to watch a night
of shooting.
The location was part of the unfinished addition to the Venetian -- a parking garage still under construction . . . wide
open floors of bare concrete with open sides and a forest of long silver wires hanging down from the ceilings, sort of like
a modern art installation, as Michael described it, lit only by glaring work lights also hanging down from the ceiling at
regular intervals. It looked very cool.
The scene involved Eliott Gould, playing a character familiar from the earlier "Oceans" films, confronting the
new bad guy for this installment of the series, played by Al Pacino.
I've never been on a film set as quiet and mellow as this one. An air of calm and efficiency and collegiality prevailed.
The AD barely had to raise his voice to silence the set for a take. Soderbergh, who sat behind the camera to supervise every
set-up and sometimes operated the b-camera, seemed like a precocious, self-assured kid, just having fun but moving with astonishing
speed. The whole thing had the feel of a bunch of friends getting together to make a movie -- which is sort of startling
on a picture this big. Jerry Weintraub, the legendary producer, was on the set for a while and seemed calm and cheerful himself
-- which is always a sure sign that the director has things under control.
Soderbergh watched the actors work out blocking, planning his shots accordingly and sometimes marshaling the actors into
the right positions for the lighting -- which came entirely from the overhead work lights, already in place. Soderbergh didn't
even use reflectors in the shots I watched being made. And yet, on the video monitors, the images looked gorgeous. All of
this, of course, is quite impossible -- but Soderbergh was doing it.
Gould came onto the set with his reading more or less worked out -- he'd crafted just the right mix of bewilderment, anger
and humiliation for the scene, in which Pacino is trying to cut him out of a big casino deal. Pacino's performance evolved
as he rehearsed and as the takes progressed. It got bigger in some places, quieter in others, but it always played off what
Gould was doing. Indeed, Pacino seemed to be trying to listen harder and harder to what Gould was doing and to react to it
more spontaneously. It was sort of miraculous to watch two old pros work so wisely together -- what might have been just
an exchange of lines to be shaped in the editing room became a real moment, alive and unpredictable, even though the lines
themselves were rarely ever changed.
The screenwriters, Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who wrote "Rounders", were on the set -- at one point I
watched them both watching the video monitors as their lines snapped, crackled and popped in the mouths of Gould and Pacino.
They were grinning like kids.
All movies should be made this way -- almost none ever are. Soderbergh is important for the cutting-edge stuff he does
between his big commercial films -- astonishing experiments like "Bubble", for example -- but in some ways turning
a big high-profile Hollywood production like this into an intimate, humane collaboration is even more radical.
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| © 2006 Paul Kolnik |
RANDOM VEGAS NOTES
14 May 2006
Overheard at a Vegas supermarket at 7am on a Saturday morning -- a woman pushing an empty shopping cart talking into her
cell phone: "You know, I'm starting to think the reason I picked you as a boyfriend was because I like putting myself
in stressful situations."
A 19th-Century journalist on "lorettes", the kept women of Paris, who offered their sexual services on a more
or less exclusive basis to men who supported them: "The lorettes of Monmartre are not women -- they are nights."
A step in the commodification of the female, as she becomes a commercialized "experience", like dining or drinking
well, like gambling. In the covered shopping arcades of 19th-Century Paris, which Walter Benjamin saw as loci of the century's
subterranean dreams, prostitutes trolled for johns and gambling establishments beckoned in rooms above the glittering shop
windows. Today, in Las Vegas, the shopping arcades attached to casinos rank among the most successful malls in America, in
terms of sales per square foot. Benjamin's fantasmagorical arcades have become, in Las Vegas, a model for organizing an entire
city.
As temperatures here in the desert start to creep up through the 90s, a sure sign that the unrelenting and merciless heat
of the summer approaches, I find myself oddly comforted. It's easy to forget that Las Vegas is in the middle of a desert,
what with all the fountains, the artificial lakes, the vast enclosed urban spaces of the big casinos, the omnipresent air
conditioning. But every year the Mojave grabs you by the collar, drags you out into an alley and beats the shit out of you
-- just to remind you who's boss. On some level, it's good for the soul.
Baudelaire had an image of the world, at its best, as an inn -- a place you can feel at home for a while, even though
you're not at home, even though "home" doesn't exist. This ties in with an image I've had of Las Vegas as America's
corner tavern -- replacing the real corner taverns that have disappeared from most places. A million and a half people live
full-time in Las Vegas -- thirty-seven million people visit it each year. It is for this reason, always, a city oriented
towards strangers -- an inn for people passing through . . . and thus, in Baudelaire's terms, an image of the world at its
best . . .
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| © 2006 Paul Kolnik |
TWILIGHT OF THE OYSTERS
1 May 2006
A few days ago I looked at the calendar and was startled to see how few days were left in April, the last month with an
'r' in it until September. I don't eat oysters in months without 'r's in them, so I knew I had to act quickly to fortify
myself for the coming oyster drought.
I took a bus over to the Strip, caught the monorail down to the MGM Grand and walked across Tropicana Boulevard to the
new Hooters Casino. I was headed for the Hooters restaurant inside it, which offers the best oyster deal in town -- a bucket
of about three dozen roasted oysters for $19.95. You have to shuck them yourself, but they're always delicious, dipped in
a little melted butter.
Delighted but still unsatisfied, I took a cab to Joe's Stone Crab in the Forum Shops at Caesars. Joe's does really good
fried oysters and I ate a plate of them with considerable satisfaction. Then I took the bus home.
On Sunday, the last night of April, I decided on one last oyster fling, so I made my way to a place I'd never visited
before, Bouchon at the Venetian -- an upscale French bistro with an oyster bar. Walking into it I had a distinct feeling
that it was going to become my new favorite restaurant in Las Vegas, and I wasn't wrong.
The high-ceilinged room has a Belle Epoque feel, though lighter and airier than a genuine French bistro. In fact, it
feels like a cross between a bistro and a 19th-century English hotel tea room. It has a vast bar covered in zinc, or some
sort of acceptable substitute, and to reach its seating area you walk past a glassed-in bank of ice troughs filled with the
oysters and lobsters served at the bar.
On my way to the Venetian it occurred to me that an upscale French bistro in Las Vegas might actually offer Kronenbourg
-- a French beer (from Alsace) which isn't a truly great beer but whose taste brings back a lot of fond memories of traveling
and dining in France. Not only did they have Kronenbourg but they had it on tap -- something I've never seen in the U. S.
They also had Chimay and one other Belgian beer on tap, as well as Anchor Steam, from San Francisco, which is another great
accompaniment to shellfish.
This all looked very promising, and the promise was more than fulfilled when I ordered half a dozen of the special oysters
of the day -- St. Simons, from New Brunswick, Maine. Small, sweet, fresh and incredibly tasty, they were some of the best
oysters I'd ever eaten. I then ordered a mixture of a dozen of the four other varieties that they had on offer -- two from
the West Coast and two from the East. None were as fine as the specials, and the East Coasters were better than the West
Coasters, but they were all good and interesting.
I glanced over the dinner menu for future reference -- it looked most promising, too -- and drifted back to the Strip
in a kind of pleasure-daze. I wasn't ready to decompress from it just yet, and as I was near the Forum Shops I headed back
to Joe's and ordered oysters Rockefeller. They were scrumptious, washed down with an Amstel Light. Then I had a slice of
key lime pie for dessert. It was the best key lime pie I'd had outside the state of Florida, its filling tart but balanced
by a sweet graham-cracker crust and a dollop of whipped cream on top -- comme il faut.
The return bus ride, with maids and dealers heading home after their shifts, brought me slowly back to reality after my
brief sojourn in oyster paradise. I felt fortified to face the long 'r'-less months that lie ahead.
But I'll tell you what. I'll meet you at the Bouchon bar on September 1st. We'll go wild.
TIME OUT OF MIND
26 November 2005
This past Wednesday was the first anniversary of my move to Las Vegas -- the end of a year that has zipped by in a blur
of neon, cards flying across felt table-tops, reading, writing and filmmaking. This is the price you pay for living in a
place you love too much -- time evaporates around you.
To mark the occasion my friend Jae and I made an expedition into deep Vegas -- Caesars Palace, whose cheerful, inventive
vulgarity is like a slap on the back from a good drinking buddy, or a radiant smile from a half-naked cocktail waitress.
Set amidst the retro, democratic excess is a quiet, cool, hip-moderne restaurant called 808, which offers extremely fresh
seafood prepared in an unclassifiable fusion style. Jae and I ordered tasting menus -- between us we had samples of almost
everything on the menu, and the effect was staggering, overwhelming . . . a medley of odd taste combinations each of which
spoke of deep respect for and understanding of the various fruits of the sea offered. Oysters, scallops, shrimp, lobster,
fish.
Buoyed by this excess of pleasure there was nothing left for us to do but go play poker at the Palms. Jae and I have
both been losing at poker recently, and we lost on this night, too -- but to me it hardly mattered. I spun out a (relatively)
modest buy in for about seven hours, was entertained by strange and hilarious table-mates, many of whom were workers at other
casinos just getting off their late-night shifts.
All too soon they brought out the free donuts, which meant the sun was up outside and it was Thanksgiving. Jae had drifted
away -- disgusted by being dealt super starting cards all night and losing with them to people drawing out with rags. (This
is sometimes the way of things in a $2- 4 game.) I had a sense, on this Thanksgiving morning, of sitting around some bizarre
Norman Rockwell vision of a family dinner table, with a flop at the center of it instead of a roasted turkey.
An attractive but cynical Russian girl, who works as a blackjack dealer at the Hard Rock, regaled us with a litany of
her disappointments in life -- with men and with people in general. Then she suddenly remarked, "Why is this the only
place I ever have fun?" No one had an answer. There isn't one -- except perhaps that the company of fellow misfits
is easily found in Las Vegas, and too easily discounted. I was just happy to be home, betting on another round of cards.
Jae and I slept late, of course -- we'd taken the turkey out of the freezer too late, as well, and there was still ice
inside it when we woke up. The question now was whether we could get it cooked in time to eat it while it was still technically
Thanksgiving.
Tune in to the next report to find out how it all went down . . .
MITCH IN VEGAS
30 August 2005
My friend Mitch rolled into town from Los Angeles Saturday afternoon. Mitch is a filmmaker, graduate of AFI, who somehow
ended up running the Palm Springs Film Festival for a while and now works as a festival consultant, traveling all over the
world for the job.
He is also a wicked, wicked man -- I had forgotten what a bad influence he can be.
We hit the ground running -- with drinks and some tasty appetizers at the Pink Taco, in the Hard Rock. Later we headed
downtown for some fine prime beef at Binion's Ranch Steakhouse, which is a good place to start off a trip to Vegas, because
of the view, which gives you a sense of the mystery of the town, phantom lights in the middle of a desert.
We walked over to the El Cortez and played some roulette. I had a bit of luck, Mitch not very much -- and Mitch suddenly
decided he'd like to play some poker. Mitch had played poker before but never Texas Hold-'em, the only game going at the
El just then. I gave him a fifteen-minute crash-course introduction to the game and he sat down happily.
I was very impressed by this. Playing poker in any Vegas card room is intimidating -- playing a new game in one is rather
rash. But Mitch pulled it off with great aplomb -- winning some big hands, losing a lot of smaller ones. We played until
the sun came up and our financial resources were exhausted. I lost about $80 in about four hours -- which seemed to go by
in 15 minutes.
We managed to find a taxi and make it home in the gorgeous morning light.
When my hangover had subsided sufficiently the next afternoon we went over to New York New York and got some tickets to the
Cirque du Soleil show "Zumanity" -- sort of a combo sex-show/circus. We had some beers and some fried clams sitting
at a table on a replica of a West Village street. Mitch and I have spent a lot of time in the real New York, so this was
doubly surreal -- like being on the set of a low-budget movie of our lives.
"Zumanity" was cool. The theater lobby is themed -- with tiny peep holes in padded walls through which you
can watch erotic images. In the bathroom, a sound system pipes in low voices that seem to be whispering some sort of ecstatic
sexual monologue in your ear.
Once you're seated in the theater -- also themed, with a big apron stage that juts out from the main proscenium stage
-- characters from the show start insinuating themselves into the audience and putting on various lewd displays for the patrons,
with various lewd suggestions thrown in for good measure. This is climaxed by two hefty but cute twins who move through the
audience offering strawberries from big trays. They were delicious.
Then the show starts. There's a crossing-dressing MC who guides one through the various acts, but Mitch and I both agreed
that some semblance of a narrative thread would have been more satisfying.
Two lovely female Asian acrobats cavort with each other in a big transparent bowl full of water. Aerialists fly above
the audience on ropes and cloth ribbons. A ribald comedienne discusses fake breasts -- while exposing her own real ones.
A topless ballerina dances -- a bunch of hunks act out a homoerotic prison scene.
My favorite moment happened when two statuesque dancers holding helium-filled balloons released them, and the balloons,
attached to their filmy gowns, lifted the gowns into the air, leaving them mostly naked.
It was an experience, with lots of thrilling moments, in the Cirque du Soleil style -- but not, in the end, a great piece
of theater. It was just a very stylish and sometimes brilliant revue.
We then headed to the Voodoo Cafe at the top of the Rio, fifty stories up, for some food. The Cajun-Caribbean cuisine was
good but not spectacular and the service was just so-so -- always shocking in an upscale Vegas restaurant.
We then walked up to the very top of the Rio, to check out the Voodoo Lounge. This was once a very trendy joint but has
fallen from grace with the Vegas hipsters. The crowd on this night could have come from New Jersey -- except for random gangs
of girls, presumably attracted to the Rio by its courting of bachelorette groups. (It has added a wing with a Chippendale's
theater to this end.)
These gangs of girls were drunk and wild and off in a girlworld all their own. Guys are sometimes used as props in this
world. An adorable young thing named Danielle, in town from Dallas on a bachelorette spree, came and asked if she could sit
next to me. I said sure. She draped herself more or less on top of me and announced that she wanted to dance. I tried to
explain that I didn't really know how to dance and in any case didn't want to, but it was like trying to reason with hurricane
Katrina. We danced and it was fun. She introduced me to her friend at the bar, who was wearing a tiara and lots of Lifesavers
taped to her skimpy black dress. Her name was Candy.
When I finally got Danielle's permission to go sit down again, Candy came over, wrapped her legs around me and gave me
a modest little lap dance, as we discussed her personal opinions of the live band performing at the moment. It was hard to
talk to these women, because they were so drunk, and tempting as it was to whisk them off to some more exciting club I don't
imagine that either of them were much more than 45 minutes from passing out or barfing.
We watched them direct their sirens' song to other more encouraging guys with a mixture of regret and relief.
Still, it was nice to play a modest role in their night of dissipation. They seemed as vehement and fierce and independent,
in their way, as Jane Eyre -- they were like some kind of primitive female force given free rein to be itself.
The view from the Rio terrace is awesome, but it didn't divert us for long -- we went off in search of a poker game.
This took a while to track down. The Gold Coast, next to the Rio, had a non-smoking room. The smoking room at Arizona Charlie's
was dead -- no action at all.
We ended up back at the El Cortez, where we again spun out our buy-ins most agreeably until dawn -- and this time I ended
$24 up. I felt like a million bucks.
Mitch had to leave the next evening, so we contented ourselves on Monday with a visit to Red Rock Canyon, where we contemplated
our sins amidst the severe scenery. Then we had a splendid meal at Panevino -- a spectacular restaurant at the far edge of
the McCarran Airport runways. There, in a retro-Populuxe dining room, that looks like a set from a James Bond film, but a
bit classier, you can see the lights of the Strip in the distance come on at twilight and watch planes take off on the runways
in startling numbers.
It's all most surreal and romantic -- in a way only Vegas can be. I missed Danielle and Candy then.
Mitch headed back to his responsibilities in Los Angeles and I crashed. Too much fun, too fast -- which is what Las Vegas
is all about.
"Y'all come back, now!"
DEEP VEGAS
27 June 2005
This past Saturday there was an interesting fight being offered on pay-per-view -- Mayweather versus Gatti, a great boxer
going up against a reckless brawler. It was taking place in Atlantic City, so I couldn't attend in person, but it was being
broadcast at a few bars and clubs and casinos here in Vegas, where you could see it for several bucks more than ordering at
home would cost.
One of the venues offering the fight was The Beach, a notorious party-bar just up Paradise from where I live, across from
the Convention Center. I'd always wanted to visit the place so I headed up there just before the broadcast was about to begin,
at 6pm.
The place was totally deserted, except for staff. The big barn-like main room was dark and gloomy, and looked shabby
in the dim daytime work lights.
The fight was being shown at the upstairs sports bar -- which was also totally deserted, except for a sleepy-looking bartender
sitting and sipping some juice on the wrong side of the bar.
"Do you need anything?" she asked, as though she hoped I didn't. I ordered a $3 beer and went to sit in a plush
chair at a table in front of the big projection screen, whose image was muddy and fuzzy, even when they turned off the work
lights before the show started. Another guy came in just before that -- we were the only customers in the bar when the undercard
fights began. By the time the main event rolled around an hour or so later, three other customers had drifted in, and five
or six employees also arrived to watch the featured bout.
There were about 20 TV sets in the sports bar and adjacent pool room -- all of them showing the fight. Three of them
would have sufficed for the audience assembled.
It wasn't much of a main event. Mayweather beat the crap out of Gatti -- who took the pounding like a man but could find
no way past Mayweather's defense and no way of dodging his lightning-fast hands. Gatti's corner mercifully called a halt
to things after the sixth.
No one ever got around to collecting the $50 fee they were supposed to be charging to watch the fight, and I wandered
outside in the dusk grateful for that, at least. Then I realized that Piero's restaurant was right next to The Beach -- and
I decided to go blow the money I'd saved on the fight there. I'd had a great meal at Piero's once, long ago, in a different
lifetime, and I'd always wanted to go back to see if it was as cool as I remembered. It was.
 Piero's is one of the few true old-Vegas establishments still surviving in the 21st-Century town. It opened in 1982 and moved
to its present location in the late 80s. It's always been a hang-out for Rat-Pack era mega-stars -- Jerry Lewis is still
a regular -- and part of the movie "Casino" was shot there. Recently an accused mob hit-man was arrested in its
lobby.
It's clientele, celebrity and non-celebrity, is mostly old -- and people dress up to go there, which is unusual in Las
Vegas. To me it has the exact feel of a trendy Hollywood restaurant back in the 80s, when even the talent could wear suits
and not feel weird.
The food, Italian, with an emphasis on seafood, is superb in an old-fashioned way -- nothing new-age about the dishes
or the way they're presented. The service is impeccable but reserved, with none of the cheerful familiarity you find at most
restaurants in Las Vegas today. I was wearing a T-shirt and a flight jacket, and I felt just the tiniest bit of suspicion
from the maitre d' and the waiter -- not disapproval exactly, but a bit of uncertainty . . . about my motives, perhaps, or
my worthiness to dine at such a place. However, after the meal was done and the bill settled, my waiter came and ceremoniously
shook my hand, as though congratulating me on having passed a rigorous test. I'd left him a very nice tip.
I took a cab to the Hard Rock and, in a very good but very surreal mood, squandered $40 at the roulette tables. I spun
it out for a long time, playing and winning with Michelle, a thirty-something babe -- in town with her husband, alas, but
happy to flirt with me for a few hours, just for fun. Things ended badly, as things at a roulette table usually do. Michelle
lost all her chips, and I started losing mine -- she took her leave, feeling that she was bringing me bad luck, but my bad
luck continued and I was soon on my way home.
An empty pick-up joint, a nearly empty sports bar, a one-sided prize fight playing out on a fuzzy projection television,
an excursion into the 80s, some hopeless dreams spinning off into nothingness at a gaming table. It should have made for
a melancholy night, but it was all delightful for some reason -- like a restful vacation on another planet.
A TYPICAL VEGAS NIGHT
22 June 2005
A couple of nights ago, late, after a few intense hours composing my latest philosophical musings for this web site, I
discovered I was running out of cigarettes and also hungry. I walked down to the convenience store on the corner of Paradise
and Harmon for some smokes and then headed over to Mr. Lucky's 24/7 at the Hard Rock for some food.
As I walked up to the front entrance under the porte cochere and the giant neon guitar I could hear the Beatles' "A
Hard Day's Night" blasting from the outdoor speakers, and it was blasting inside, too. It put me in a good mood.
I had the All-American Breakfast -- two eggs, hash browns, ham and toast -- and a couple of screwdrivers. As I was finishing
the second drink I heard The White Stripes on the Hard Rock sound system for the first time -- "Blue Orchid" from
the new album. The Hard Rock usually plays classic rock songs, and this sounded right at home in the mix -- as though it
had been around forever and would always sound brand new, as the Beatles do.
Then I headed to the bar for a nightcap.
When passing through the Hard Rock I always pull out any spare quarters I have in my pockets and play them in the slot
machines. This is getting harder and harder to do in Las Vegas, since slots increasingly accept paper money only. This is
happening at the Hard Rock even as you read this -- every time I visit, there are fewer and fewer machines which accept coins.
There are still two or three video poker machines on the perimeter of the central circular bar which do take quarters --
I had four in my pocket and played them there.
I lost on the first three spins but on the last I hit a royal flush -- with a pay-out of $63 on the 25 cent bet. I cashed
out immediately -- not being a degenerate gambler. The cash-out was by paper receipt, which has to be redeemed at the cashier's
cage. While the receipt is printing the machine plays a recording of coins falling into a metal tray.
I went up to the bar to celebrate my good fortune. I sat next to a woman who was definitely a degenerate gambler. I
saw her feed $100 in $20 bills into the video poker machine imbedded in the bar in front of her -- she lost it all in about
15 minutes, making very strange choices about which cards to hold before her draws, and finally had to be dragged from the
bar by her companion, as she fished in her purse for more bills.
Her place was soon taken by a hip-looking young guy in a short-sleeved shirt with an elaborate tattoo around his upper
arm. He nursed a drink for a while, looking forlorn, so I asked him what he was doing in Vegas. He said he was in town on
business, from San Diego, for five weeks, doing an audit for a company that was about to make an IPO. "That's really
all I can say about it," he added mysteriously.
As we chatted about cool places to check out in Vegas we were interrupted by a woman on my left screaming. She was playing
some kind of powerball game on the machine in the bar in front of her and had just hit some numbers. She was dividing her
attention between the game and a young man she'd met earlier in the evening, sitting on the other side of the bar. From time
to time she would point at him and yell out, "Hey! You! Don't do it!"
It turns out he was in town for his bachelor's party. The woman eventually explained to me, "I've been married three
times, so I know what I'm talking about." Then her face fell. "I'm forty now. It's all over for me." She
was from Columbia, South Carolina but had recently moved to Boca Raton, Florida. The guy she was with managed to pull her
away from her machine while she was still ahead, and she was too drunk to protest much.
I finished my beer and walked home. Even with the smokes and the food and drink I was $20 up on the night.
You've got to love this town. If you don't, you're way too mature for your own good.
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| 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.
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:
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.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD
26 February 2005
One day I woke up and discovered that I was living in Las Vegas, Nevada, the improbable city. Navigating its preposterousness
is like moving through an absurd waking dream -- I don't think I'll ever quite get used to it.
I can walk easily to the Hard Rock Hotel, with its gigantic neon guitar signs and several good restaurants, and to the
Hofbrauhaus, an exact replica of a Munich beer hall. By bike I can zip instantly to the Double Down, a sleazy but picturesque
punk bar with cheap beer and a totally sick juke box . . . and to some excellent restaurants:
Hamada, a fine Japanese place with a dramatic interior and terrific sushi.
Gordon Biersch -- which looks like an upscale sports bar and has a reputation as a prime Yuppie pick-up joint, but also
has excellent beer of its own brewing and excellent bar food.
McCormick and Schmick, a fancy seafood restaurant with startling specials at certain times of the day and night -- a 1
& 1/4 lb. lobster for $11 and four or five entrees which can be had for $2.
Ellis Island, a casino which has cheap eats but also a shabby, dimly-lit, magical bar with karaoke -- not to mention $2
bottled beer, and $1.50 draft beer of its own brewing. It's populated mostly by locals who belt out songs like practiced
lounge singers and convene for synchronized group dances every hour or so. Old and young, thick and thin mingle happily and
comfortably here. The picture above shows me with two of the better singers on the night I was there. The lady to my left
did a stunning version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" that brought the house down -- but old coots who mangled
Beatles songs got cheered, too. Awesome.
Gandi, a first-rate Indian restaurant in a tiny strip mall.
A slightly longer bike ride gets me to the Crown & Anchor, a fairly authentic recreation of an English pub with fairly
authentic recreations of English pub food. A cozy, welcoming place that's open 24/7.
There are many others just as close that I haven't checked out yet.
I find this abundance of cool places astonishing. Add to them all the places you can get to by motorized transport in
Las Vegas and you have an embarrassment of pleasurable temptations, many of them available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week, and all of them welcoming to a smoker. And none of this is to mention even a single gaming establishment or poker room
or theater or concert hall or boxing venue. At 1.6 million inhabitants (but growing), Las Vegas is a very big, very civilized
town. With 35 million visitors a year, it still has a small-town feel.
It's a dreamland, where nothing makes sense in any conventional way but everything makes sense on some level beyond conscious
thought. It's everybody's secret home town.
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.
SIN AND REDEMPTION
9 December 2004
Tonight I walked over to the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino -- about a two-minute stroll from my front door -- to check out
the image of the Blessed Virgin imprinted on a grilled-cheese sandwich, which is on display there for a few days before going
on a national tour. It was bought by an offshore gambling company on eBay for $28,000 from the woman who cooked it, about
ten years ago.
First I had to check out the casino itself and grab a bite to eat -- because you don't want to view a thing like that
on an empty stomach, as it might arouse impure thoughts, involving eating the sacred object.
I ate at the Pink Taco, which may be the high point of the property. Done up in a fanciful impersonation of a Tijuana
joint, it has good cheap food and the sort of expert service you get to expect in Las Vegas -- even though the staff is made
up of kids. Vegas just has this aspect of things wired.
After my tasty carnitas burrito I went looking for the miraculous sandwich. I walked up to a lady working a totally deserted
"wheel o' money" type game and asked her, "Where is the grilled cheese sandwich?" "What?" she
said, as though I was crazy. "The one with the image of the Virgin Mary on it," I elaborated. "Oh!" she
said -- like, 'Oh, right -- THAT grilled cheese sandwich' -- and directed me to it.
It was in fact on display at the Hard Rock Cafe, which sits off by itself on a corner of the property lot and looks like
a deadly scene. I still had to ask for directions to the sandwich, because it wasn't being advertised in any serious way.
It was sitting in an elegant display case in the merchandise shop. The sandwich itself -- actually half a sandwich with one
small bite taken out of it -- reposed in a cheap plastic box surrounded by cotton balls. The image on the sandwich looked
like a stencilled-on portrait of an old silent film star. But why should the Blessed Virgin manifest herself in some conventional
guise borrowed from Renaissance art? She might well have looked exactly like Bebe Daniels.
Properly edified, I went back to the casino and quickly lost $80 at roulette. Playing roulette at anything more than a
$1 limit table is really stupid -- unless you enjoy flushing money down the toilet (though God knows there are worse ways
to part with money.) By then I had a free drink in my hand, which I went and finished sitting on a sofa across from the check-in
desk, watching the people flow by.
At least at this time of night the crowd at the Rock is neither young nor hip -- thirty- and forty-something males, for
the most part, with younger women, all mostly large-breasted. (The age difference and bust measurements presumably reflect
the liquid assets of the males, according to some complex formula which only a tartlette could calculate precisely.) I was
happy to walk home, light a fire and pour myself some egg nog. I felt bad about losing the money. But then I remembered the
awesome grace of the Holy Mother, deigning to present her image to us on such a humble snack-food variant. Can there be any
doubt that she'll be praying for us, now and in the hour of our death?
What a Gal.
EASY
7 December 2004
I know New Orleans has a claim on the moniker, but Las Vegas is really The Big Easy. The service economy on which it lives
has infected everything -- from the friendly greetings of store clerks to the design of the streets and malls.
The friendliness of strangers has a small-town Western flavor, though, and isn't just a commercial strategy -- I think
it also has to do with the provisional nature of Las Vegas life. In all exchanges there's an undertone of this thought --
"Well, we've all managed to end up here . . . God knows how it will all turn out but we might as well make the best of
it." Sort of like the camaraderie that grips strangers swept up in a public disaster. Male clerks address me regularly
as "pal" or "buddy", female clerks as "honey" or "sweetie" -- and there's a real democratic
warmth in their voices. This is Las Vegas, where anybody can get lucky, where anybody can go bust. That fancy car I'm driving
-- well, I might have to sell it for quick cash tomorrow . . . and the clerk I'm talking to might hit a jackpot next week
and pick up my wheels at a cut-rate price with the proceeds of that lucky strike.
That's the operative theory, anyway.
Driving around is a revelation compared to the experience in Los Angeles -- another car-oriented town. Los Angeles's accommodation
of the car has always been a compromise, ever since the oil companies engineered the destruction of its trolley system, a
model of public transportation, in the Twenties.
Las Vegas wasn't incorporated until 1905 and wasn't much more than a train stop until the introduction of gambling and
the construction of the Hoover Dam in the Thirties. Its first real boom didn't happen until the Fifties and up to now space
was never a problem. The street system reflects that expansiveness and a modern sense of automobile transport. The major boulevards
are the size of Interstates -- rarely crowded except at peak rush hours. The intersection lights are well timed and all major
intersections have left turn signals -- obviating the desperate rush to beat the lights that you find in Los Angeles. The
signage is well designed to be legible from a moving car -- a pattern adapted from The Strip where casinos originally competed
for highway drive-in business from California.
The new malls have spacious parking areas logically arranged, and parking everywhere is free -- another departure from
Los Angeles, where cramped parking facilities function only by charging fees to keep out the merely curious.
I had to visit the new Fashion Show Mall this week and was dreading it -- remembering the pure hell of the Beverly Center
or the Century City Mall in Los Angeles at Christmas -- but the experience couldn't have been easier. There were satellite
parking garages located near each of the mall anchor stores, with wide driving aisles and spaces. There were a lot of cars
there but there was no problem ascending to the less crowded sections and then easy access by foot to the mall itself. The
ease of entry seemed to affect the mood of the shoppers in the mall -- there was none of the desperation familiar to me from
Los Angeles malls during the holiday season. The idea seemed to be -- well, if we don't find it today, we'll just come back.
Why not?
So easy.
BEING NOWHERE
4 December 2004
I love driving around Las Vegas, partly because I love driving anywhere in the Navigator, which is the most comfortable
and best designed car I've ever piloted, and partly because Las Vegas is just stone cold weird, visually speaking.
The high perch of the Navigator with its Cinerama view is a perfect platform from which to take in the spectacle. The
navigation system on the car is such that I rarely get lost, but I love it when I do. I'll find myself is some strange precinct
with gigantic building supply warehouses interspersed with tiny malls hosting shops that sell things like designer g-strings
and fantasy sex costumes -- "Where the Stars Shop" -- and across the road will be a vast area of undeveloped desert.
The city is so flat that you rarely get a glimpse of its setting in the valley floor, but there's a western stretch of
Desert Inn Road where the ground rises -- a couple of days ago I hit this stretch driving east at dusk and suddenly saw Las
Vegas whole, the carpet of lights, the brightly-colored spine of the Strip casinos. It reminded me of a passage from "The
Great Gatsby" in which Fitzgerald describes entering Manhattan by car over the Queenboro Bridge at dusk, with the lights
of the city coming on, and feeling that anything could happen.
I'm not sure there's much of that feeling left in Gotham -- the yuppies have decided that only nice things should happen
there -- but it's a feeling that powers Las Vegas, as crucial to its survival as the electricity for the lights and the water
from the Colorado River. It's a messy town, a dreamer's town -- because dreams are always messy.
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