Some of you may still remember the glory days of Las Vegas when the drinks were free and the shrimp cocktail was cheap. If you do not remember free drinks and cheap food in Las Vegas, you also most likely do not understand the term “glory days”. Today, the only thing that is free in Las Vegas is a business card with a photo of a nude woman, handed to you on the sidewalk. The actual woman is not free, but might be considered by some to be cheap, though not in the same way the shrimp cocktail used to be.
When I was a young pup, my brother and I were roommates sharing a Southern California apartment. We used to ogle the print ads together each week in the L.A. Times, advertising incredible deals in Las Vegas. We would peruse them carefully and plan our next visit, always excited to see how much hotel we could get for our money. Once we were amazed to find an advertisement for round-trip airfare and a two night stay at a Las Vegas hotel for only $59.00 per person! We called immediately, eyes agape with astonishment at what we had just read, and asked if the advertisement was true. The woman on the phone said, “Jess, but jew haff to stay at the Junion Plassa.” With a look of confusion on my face, I held the phone to my chest to quiet my conversation and repeated what she said to my brother. “She says we have to stay at the Junion Plassa.”, I repeated. “Hang up”, he said. “I’ve never heard of it.” We were sure it was a scam. Still, we ended up landing a suite for only $39.00 per night at a brand-new hotel called the Rio.
Once in town, we would turn our eyes to the billboards to find the casino that offered the least expensive food and the cheapest blackjack table bets. One of our favorites became the Golden Nugget downtown. We would sit for hours under swanky chandeliers and play $1.00 blackjack while drinking free beer. Occasionally we would find ourselves as much as $10.00 ahead and would treat ourselves to a $1.99 New York steak and baked potato dinner in the coffee shop. Once after a quick $65.00 blackjack win, we sipped cocktails from the mahogany paneled bar atop the Landmark hotel’s (Google it) 32-story tower and took in the view. It seemed that we always ended up ahead of the game, even if only in the number of Heinekens we could consume before losing our money at the blackjack table. We were shrewd businessmen taking the casinos for all they had to offer.
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to visit Las Vegas again. As you all know, I lived there for many years, so it was a treat to see the city once again through the eyes of the tourist I am now. I was enticed with an email offer I received for a complimentary three-night stay at Aria in City Center, the city’s newest 8.5 billion dollar development. I was stunned when my reservation was confirmed for a holiday weekend! I was sure the deal would only be available on the third Tuesday of a month whose name contained the letter “K”. I snatched up two cheap plane tickets and reserved a car for the weekend. Upon arrival at Aria, I was blown away. The architecture of the complex was beyond compare. The hotel room was without a doubt the finest hotel room I had ever slept in. The next morning, I awoke as the automatic drapes opened themselves, to find a cup of coffee had been brought to me by my caring partner. I couldn’t believe how gullible these casinos were for allowing me to come. Don’t they ever learn?
What I didn’t know was that the coffee was $4.50 per cup. That morning, we had the breakfast of champions, a pair of hot dogs and sodas from Pink’s, the famous Hollywood hot dog stand; they cost $30.00. The dinner buffet later that evening was $35.00 per person. A cocktail at the casino’s bar was $11.00, while a glass of wine was $12.00. Before the gambling had even begun in earnest, we had spent well over $150.00.
We also noticed something odd about the casino’s patrons. They all appeared to be barely out of high school. Men wore hats, turned backwards of course, rendering them useless except when their Elvis-sized sunglasses were rested on the brims behind their heads. I thought this was an ingenious use for a hat brim as their sunglasses were undoubtedly too large to store in their shirt pockets. Women were dressed (if you want to call it that) in skintight dresses and high heels that were definitely intended to be seen and not walked in. Spotting hookers, an old free pastime for many Vegas tourists, was now impossible as they could no longer be discerned from the hotel’s registered guests. (Fashion tip for the ladies: if you have to have a bikini wax before you wear your dress, the dress might be a hair too short – pun intended.)
According to the mobile billboards on the Strip, hot babes were apparently now direct to you. (Had the hot babes been somehow detoured before now?) Minimum bets at blackjack tables hovered around $25.00 per hand. Fights broke out at the craps tables. Rap music blared at the swimming pool. On the way home, I overheard a young lady at the airport brag over her cell phone that she had, “like totally paid like one hundred dollars to like get into like a pool party.” The whole experience made me feel as out of place as a tube of lipstick at an Amish barn-raising.
I miss the old days, when the music at the pool had lyrics that were actually sung. A cocktail was just a free trinket dispensed to keep players at the blackjack tables. A hotel room was simply a clean, cool place to sleep between inexpensive meals. Vegas, you can keep your new megaresorts and Prada stores and Cirque du blah-blah shows. I miss feeling like a king with the city at his feet instead of a pauper begging the bartenders for free drinks. Somewhere, there must be a place for me. If any of you Vegas locals can tell an aging tourist where to go and feel like a king again, I’d sure appreciate it. I’m still too young to go to Laughlin.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Dear Recent High School Graduate
So you think you are ready for the world? You aren’t. Until now, you have been sheltered and protected. The world you have been living in is not real.
To celebrate your graduation, I could send you a gift card, but you would just forget about me after you used it. Instead, I’m going to give you a present that you can use your whole life – the gift of my experience.
The lessons below are in no particular order. They are lessons that it took me all these years to figure out. Some of these lessons came too late in life for me to take advantage of. I can’t go back in time, but it’s not too late for you. Commit these lessons to memory. Print this blog and stick it in your yearbook. Look at it twenty years from now. If you don’t think it’s absolutely true, I’ll refund 100% of your subscription fee to my blog.
1) Get an education.
a. Learn as much as you can about something, even if it means teaching yourself. You need to know more about something than most other people do. If you don’t, you will not be valuable to the rest of the world.
b. Do it while you are young. You will soon be too tired from working all day to sit all evening in a classroom full of 19-year old children who are all texting each other instead of listening to the teacher.
2) Save your money. I know that you think you need the latest iDoodad to complete your life, but in the end it won’t make you any happier for more than a few hours. At some point whatever you buy will become obsolete and useless. If you start saving now, you’ll be wealthy and able to enjoy your life when you are ready to stop working. Plan for that day and never forget about it.
3) Never pay a bill late. Once you pay something late, you will dig a financial hole so big you may never get out of it. If you don’t have the money to pay, be honest about it. Call them and let them know right away. They will work with you.
4) Never loan money out that you don’t expect to lose. The moment the money leaves your hands, consider it gone forever. If it comes back, you will be pleased, but the chances are high that you will never see it again. You should know that in advance.
5) Don’t use your good looks to succeed, either in business or in relationships. You are cute now, but you will be 40 years old in about two hours. (Okay, it just seems like it, but the effect is the same.) One day soon, you will wake up and see things on your face that look like you slept on a piece of corrugated cardboard – and they won’t go away. You will walk into a bar and nobody will pay any attention to you, except to laugh at your clothes. Cute is only temporary. One day, your boss won’t be interested in looking at you. And if your mate is only with you for your looks, you will eventually find yourself alone.
6) Buy your own home. Forget about whining to the landlord about your clogged toilet and learn to fix it yourself. You should never have to ask permission to paint the wall or change the carpet. Everyone needs a place to call their own.
7) The friends you have now are not going to be your lifelong friends. They are just people amusing themselves with you until they find lives of their own. When they have children, they will completely forget that you exist. During your life you will meet one person that you can truly call “friend”. It won’t happen until you have become the person you will be someday. You are not that person yet.
8) Nobody cares about you, as much as you do. My mother shared this one with me when I was a teenager. It’s always been true. Do not think that when you get married or when you have children that someone will take care of you. They have their own lives to live. Go back and read number 1 and number 2 again. If you do these two things, you will never have to rely on anyone else to take care of you.
9) When you choose a career, forget about the money and do what makes you happy. Don’t listen to the people who tell you that you will never make a living doing what makes you happy. If you are happy, the money will take care of itself. It is far more important to wake up and be happy than it is to wake up rich.
10) Get a good night’s sleep every night. Nothing good ever happens after midnight. Most good things happen before noon. Be awake when they happen.
11) Travel to other countries. There are as many different opinions of what is “normal” as there are cultures in the world. Go and experience some of them. Only by exploring other cultures, can you ever hope to have a real understanding of your own culture.
12) Never lie about yourself to please someone else or to gain their acceptance. Do not pretend to be something you are not. Be proud of who you are and what you have accomplished. Do not allow anyone to tell you that you are not good enough the way you are. When you are honest about yourself, some people will turn their backs on you. Those people were never there for you to begin with. You don’t need them in your life. The ones who stick by you, even after they know what you are really like, are the most important people in the world.
To celebrate your graduation, I could send you a gift card, but you would just forget about me after you used it. Instead, I’m going to give you a present that you can use your whole life – the gift of my experience.
The lessons below are in no particular order. They are lessons that it took me all these years to figure out. Some of these lessons came too late in life for me to take advantage of. I can’t go back in time, but it’s not too late for you. Commit these lessons to memory. Print this blog and stick it in your yearbook. Look at it twenty years from now. If you don’t think it’s absolutely true, I’ll refund 100% of your subscription fee to my blog.
1) Get an education.
a. Learn as much as you can about something, even if it means teaching yourself. You need to know more about something than most other people do. If you don’t, you will not be valuable to the rest of the world.
b. Do it while you are young. You will soon be too tired from working all day to sit all evening in a classroom full of 19-year old children who are all texting each other instead of listening to the teacher.
2) Save your money. I know that you think you need the latest iDoodad to complete your life, but in the end it won’t make you any happier for more than a few hours. At some point whatever you buy will become obsolete and useless. If you start saving now, you’ll be wealthy and able to enjoy your life when you are ready to stop working. Plan for that day and never forget about it.
3) Never pay a bill late. Once you pay something late, you will dig a financial hole so big you may never get out of it. If you don’t have the money to pay, be honest about it. Call them and let them know right away. They will work with you.
4) Never loan money out that you don’t expect to lose. The moment the money leaves your hands, consider it gone forever. If it comes back, you will be pleased, but the chances are high that you will never see it again. You should know that in advance.
5) Don’t use your good looks to succeed, either in business or in relationships. You are cute now, but you will be 40 years old in about two hours. (Okay, it just seems like it, but the effect is the same.) One day soon, you will wake up and see things on your face that look like you slept on a piece of corrugated cardboard – and they won’t go away. You will walk into a bar and nobody will pay any attention to you, except to laugh at your clothes. Cute is only temporary. One day, your boss won’t be interested in looking at you. And if your mate is only with you for your looks, you will eventually find yourself alone.
6) Buy your own home. Forget about whining to the landlord about your clogged toilet and learn to fix it yourself. You should never have to ask permission to paint the wall or change the carpet. Everyone needs a place to call their own.
7) The friends you have now are not going to be your lifelong friends. They are just people amusing themselves with you until they find lives of their own. When they have children, they will completely forget that you exist. During your life you will meet one person that you can truly call “friend”. It won’t happen until you have become the person you will be someday. You are not that person yet.
8) Nobody cares about you, as much as you do. My mother shared this one with me when I was a teenager. It’s always been true. Do not think that when you get married or when you have children that someone will take care of you. They have their own lives to live. Go back and read number 1 and number 2 again. If you do these two things, you will never have to rely on anyone else to take care of you.
9) When you choose a career, forget about the money and do what makes you happy. Don’t listen to the people who tell you that you will never make a living doing what makes you happy. If you are happy, the money will take care of itself. It is far more important to wake up and be happy than it is to wake up rich.
10) Get a good night’s sleep every night. Nothing good ever happens after midnight. Most good things happen before noon. Be awake when they happen.
11) Travel to other countries. There are as many different opinions of what is “normal” as there are cultures in the world. Go and experience some of them. Only by exploring other cultures, can you ever hope to have a real understanding of your own culture.
12) Never lie about yourself to please someone else or to gain their acceptance. Do not pretend to be something you are not. Be proud of who you are and what you have accomplished. Do not allow anyone to tell you that you are not good enough the way you are. When you are honest about yourself, some people will turn their backs on you. Those people were never there for you to begin with. You don’t need them in your life. The ones who stick by you, even after they know what you are really like, are the most important people in the world.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Let’s Pray for Summer
I don’t know what this past winter season was like at your house, but here in Colorado we got screwed. It was the most bone-chilling winter I can ever remember. Of course, some of you are probably thinking, “Well yeah, you live in Colorado, dummy.” But wait…for those of you that think we Denverites (Denveronians? Denverolinians?) are used to being cold, think again. You see, here at an altitude of only 5200 feet, we are considered “lowlanders” by our mountain neighbors. And we have this little bump of mountainous terrain that runs down the middle of our state that usually protects us from the worst weather. It’s called the Continental Divide. The rain that falls on the west side of it, runs toward the Pacific Ocean. The rain that falls on the east side of it runs out to somewhere in Kansas, I assume. (I don’t really care what happens to the water after I flush.) And for the most part, the Continental Divide is so high that it detours most of the winter storms that try to darken Denver’s skies.
How high is the Continental Divide? I’m not exactly sure, but I do know that trees are pretty stupid. They spend their whole lives just standing in one spot getting crapped on by birds and waiting to be cut down or burned to death. And even the stupid trees are smart enough not to attempt to grow up there near the top of the Continental Divide. Let’s just say it’s way up there, okay?
So anyway, there’s this mountainous, treeless bump. And every winter those socialist, touchy-feely liberals up in the Pacific Northwest decide they have to share their weather with us, rather than just their coffee beans and ugly sandals. Storm after storm moves over the Rockies all winter long. But the storms hit that bump and they think, “I’m tired and I feel bloated. I think I’ll just sit here for a while and take a dump.” (We call that place Aspen.) By the time the storms decide to move on, they go way, way up in the air (leaving Denver unscathed) until they finally fall back to Earth and begin dumping again somewhere over Nebraska. (Let’s face it, if you decided to live in Nebraska, you were asking for it anyway.) So essentially, we have this big sunny bubble over us here in Denver. People play golf year-round. And the birds sing all the time and everyone smiles. Oh, and did I mention that everyone’s farts smell like lavender?
But this year was different. The cold air wasn’t stopped by the mountains. It settled down here in our part of the world in October and it never went away. We all stared at the bank thermometers and wondered if it was really only 4 degrees at noon. We grumbled and flipped each other off as we drove the icy highways and pushed our grocery carts through the slushy remains of the latest batch of crap that fell from the sky that day. The birds didn’t sing, the people didn’t smile, and everyone’s farts smelled like, well, farts. It was the winter from hell.
But then something happened. The guy on the news announced that spring was here! Sound the trumpets and call the air conditioning repairman, the warm weather was on the way! Oh wait, March is the snowiest month in Colorado you say? So we waited and we grumbled and we trudged through the crap and the muck and we thought, “Hang in there. It’s almost April.” We thought of tulips and outings to the zoo and we marked the days off the calendar one by one until April came! And so did the snow. So we waited and we grumbled and we trudged through the crap and the muck, but we were brave because we knew that it was almost May. We thought of Mother’s Day brunch and Memorial Day picnics. We crossed the days off of the calendar and we held our breaths in anticipation until finally it was May! Sound the trumpets and call the air conditioning repairman for real this time! Oh, wait. Snow in the forecast you say? Really? Really?!
I’m sorry, but this is just not right. I called Pat Robertson. He said God was mad at us for letting women vote. “Christ on a crutch!”, I said as I slammed the phone down. “I knew those dames would screw it up for the rest of us!” God, if you can read this, I promise to start treating women as second-class citizens and I’ll even start watching the 700 Club, if we could just get a little freaking sunshine down here . Is that too much to ask? It’s almost June for Christ sake! Do you hear me up there you fat bastard!? Oh, sorry - I meant, Mr. Fat Bastard. Amen.
How high is the Continental Divide? I’m not exactly sure, but I do know that trees are pretty stupid. They spend their whole lives just standing in one spot getting crapped on by birds and waiting to be cut down or burned to death. And even the stupid trees are smart enough not to attempt to grow up there near the top of the Continental Divide. Let’s just say it’s way up there, okay?
So anyway, there’s this mountainous, treeless bump. And every winter those socialist, touchy-feely liberals up in the Pacific Northwest decide they have to share their weather with us, rather than just their coffee beans and ugly sandals. Storm after storm moves over the Rockies all winter long. But the storms hit that bump and they think, “I’m tired and I feel bloated. I think I’ll just sit here for a while and take a dump.” (We call that place Aspen.) By the time the storms decide to move on, they go way, way up in the air (leaving Denver unscathed) until they finally fall back to Earth and begin dumping again somewhere over Nebraska. (Let’s face it, if you decided to live in Nebraska, you were asking for it anyway.) So essentially, we have this big sunny bubble over us here in Denver. People play golf year-round. And the birds sing all the time and everyone smiles. Oh, and did I mention that everyone’s farts smell like lavender?
But this year was different. The cold air wasn’t stopped by the mountains. It settled down here in our part of the world in October and it never went away. We all stared at the bank thermometers and wondered if it was really only 4 degrees at noon. We grumbled and flipped each other off as we drove the icy highways and pushed our grocery carts through the slushy remains of the latest batch of crap that fell from the sky that day. The birds didn’t sing, the people didn’t smile, and everyone’s farts smelled like, well, farts. It was the winter from hell.
But then something happened. The guy on the news announced that spring was here! Sound the trumpets and call the air conditioning repairman, the warm weather was on the way! Oh wait, March is the snowiest month in Colorado you say? So we waited and we grumbled and we trudged through the crap and the muck and we thought, “Hang in there. It’s almost April.” We thought of tulips and outings to the zoo and we marked the days off the calendar one by one until April came! And so did the snow. So we waited and we grumbled and we trudged through the crap and the muck, but we were brave because we knew that it was almost May. We thought of Mother’s Day brunch and Memorial Day picnics. We crossed the days off of the calendar and we held our breaths in anticipation until finally it was May! Sound the trumpets and call the air conditioning repairman for real this time! Oh, wait. Snow in the forecast you say? Really? Really?!
I’m sorry, but this is just not right. I called Pat Robertson. He said God was mad at us for letting women vote. “Christ on a crutch!”, I said as I slammed the phone down. “I knew those dames would screw it up for the rest of us!” God, if you can read this, I promise to start treating women as second-class citizens and I’ll even start watching the 700 Club, if we could just get a little freaking sunshine down here . Is that too much to ask? It’s almost June for Christ sake! Do you hear me up there you fat bastard!? Oh, sorry - I meant, Mr. Fat Bastard. Amen.
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