We Hoovered up the water in Lake Mead ...

"Well," the astute gentleman said upon surveying this scene, "that's a lot of water that isn't there."


Still, this ain't gonna stop me from taking a long, hot and totally pointless shower tonight.

... and winners never — die?

There was a hearse parked in front of one of the crappy weekly apartment places on Sixth Street the other night — not one there on official business, although that wouldn't have been surprising. It was old, something from the 1970s, maybe, with the paint blasted off the hood by years of sunlight and frayed curtains in the back windows.

Still, the owner went the extra mile and got a vanity license plate.

Which was this: QUITTRS.

It really said that.

See: Redundant

The second one bothers me more because somebody paid a professional to make it. That means nobody involved took the time to say, "Uh, dude?"


Full disclosure: I've been walking past this sign almost every day for most of a year and only noticed the goof last week. So, overall, not a lot of attention to detail on this block.

Mr. Helpful

He had a smile on his face as he sat on the street corner, feasting on takeout noodles and laughing a henchman's laugh to himself.

As I walked by, he said, "How far is it to Memphis from here?"

"A long way," I said.

And he thanked me.

Not quite a civil rights struggle

Oh, the humanity:

When Todd Phillips looks to the future in Las Vegas, he says he sees a day when everyone, regardless of gender, will have to pay the same price to get into a nightclub.

That vision, he says, became clearer Monday when a decision was handed down by the Nevada Equal Rights Commission on a complaint he brought a year ago after his wife got a free gym membership and he didn't.

To paraphrase Office Space: Who the @#*! is this ass-clown?

The Las Vegas Athletic Club, our local chain of very fine megagyms, regularly runs a special in which ladies can join free. This wanker apparently has a problem with that. And because of his problem, now an entire sector of the economy is in a dither because of the NERC, in its wisdom, said the practice is discriminatory. So what does this do to ladies nights? What about our fancy nightclubs and "adult" pools, which charge different admission prices for men and women? There are lawsuits a-comin'.

Phillips ... said he thinks letting women into health clubs or nightclubs free is demeaning to them. It reinforces the idea, he said, that women do not earn as much money as men.

Actually, it reinforces the idea that these businesses want female customers. Because then they'll get more male customers, who will spend money trying to meet the female customers. (Also, according to LVAC, women are more diligent about paying their membership dues, so the club doesn't feel they have to get the money up front.)

Like I said — Ass. Clown. And he has a wife! Isn't your spouse supposed to let you know when you're being an ass-clown? That's one of the benefits of having a partner — there's someone who can pat you on the arm and say, "Take a deep breath, dear," and you'll actually listen to them!

Okay, two more things:

1. I joined LVAC and paid, I think, a $1 signup fee. (Phillips paid $10; his wife was free.) I think most gyms will waive the fee to get your business. They make far more on a membership than they would with a fee.

2. This has been covered in other states as well, but it was handled best by the Daily Show, which covered the well-known Colorado case:



Wankers.

Freakish

The last few days there have been strange formations in the sky. Fluffy, amorphous, ranging in color from bright white to dark gray. They block out the sun. And sometimes, when they're covering the sky, water falls out of thin air!

Yes, it's been that long since it rained.

So why aren't we all blind by now?

I was at the Fremont Street Experience with an out-of-town friend a little while ago, and she was highly amused at one of the light shows — the one with the bikini girls dressed as firefighters who are tugging on a fire hose, making it longer and longer. I just shrugged, but it made me think about how much of this stuff you're bombarded with living here — and it's not just the free porn all over the streets.

Take the "adult" pools at the various casino resorts, with their "European" or "Brazilian" (at the Rio) experiences. Translated, that means "bare titties." The pools are heavily, and sexily, advertised everywhere, and raise barely an eyebrow. The Pond at Green Valley Ranch has the best ad I've seen:


No, I haven't been, and I probably won't until I have washboard abs — which is to say, like, never. (And if it's skinny dipping, why does she have clothes on? Not that I mind the heels.)

Green Valley Ranch is actually out in the suburbs, so I'm a little surprised they've got the naughty pool. I'd just assumed those were reserved for the raunchier Strip-area properties. Sadly, the truth about these places looks a little bit more like what's delicately called a "sausage festival," at least according to this photo in a recent Las Vegas Weekly:


Not quite what I had in mind.

Thing is, this stuff is everywhere. Like, at the shuttered-for-now Lady Luck casino, there's this sign:



See? They'll be back soon. Which of course calls for a picture of a naked lady's back. Makes perfect sense.

But my favorite out-of-place, wacky, sex sells example is off the beaten path a little — it's in the industrial part of Main Street, a bit south of all the downtown lights:


Look, if I ever do need bail, it's going to be BECAUSE of a girl dressed as a slutty cop. Who's wearing heels.

Numerology

"Excuse me," the woman said, motioning me to stop. "Can you help me with something?"

Since I'd already slowed down and made eye contact, I figured I didn't have much of a choice. Besides, she looked like a tourist — purple flowery shirt, makeup spread with a frosting knife — and I figured she just wanted directions.

She did. Sort of.

"If I wanted to tell what bit me, a mouse or a rat, when I was sleeping, how would I do that?" she said. "Would I get a tetanus shot?"

You see, I'm not a doctor, but I look like one to strangers when I'm walking down the street.

"I have no idea," I said, grinning in spite of all my efforts not to. Then I strolled off.

"It cost me $600 at the hospital to ...." — do something. She was calling after me, but I was out of earshot quickly.

But ... wait a minute. $600? That's weird.

That's the amount this woman ranted about the other day as she complained about a jaywalking ticket. Then I get Random Mouse Lady, and of course in the next 10 days I'm expecting $600 from the federal government as President George "Winkerbean" Bush makes good on his second attempt to bribe people into believing the economy's okay.

Is it a warning? Beware of jaywalking, hospitals and mice? (And/or rats?) Is Bush going to jaywalk and end up in the hospital?

Is Cheney going to shoot someone in the face again, necessitating a tetanus shot?

Maybe it's just that I was raised on devil rock and any grouping of 666 gets my attention. But I'm a little confused on the math.

Do I use 600/600/600, which would be the power of the devil multiplied by 100? (Scary!)

Or do I use 1,800, which would be the power of the devil times 2.7? (Not so scary.)

Somehow, the decimal point makes Ol' Scratch less intimidating. HA!


OVERHEARD ON THE STREETS OF VEGAS: "I figured if I was down here, I'd remember where I was. I remember that beer."

Worth 10,000 words

I love this picture:


It's from this story in the R-J last week about a bunch of college kids from Lynchburg, Va., who are on a nationwide field trip for the American Culture Program at Randolph College.

They're at the Chicken Ranch, a brothel in Pahrump.

I'm guessing you can tell which one's the working girl and which one's the college student who doesn't what the hell to make of it all.

Now, if Lynchburg, Va., sounds familiar, that's because it's home to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. And the news coverage of the semester-long course (they do a lot more than visit brothels) apparently generated some heat for Randolph College, which issued this release and referred to news coverage as "news" coverage.

Yeah, blame the messenger. Most news stories did, in fact, put the trip in context and show that students were probing a sensitive issue. But since some blowhards got mad about it, then it's obviously the media's fault. Weak.

A blog at the Daily Herald in Everett, Wash., had a nice take on it, though, under the headline "Brothel gives college class a group rate":

American Culture students at the tiny liberal arts school attended seminars given by prostitutes. Topics included "Preventing Politicians From Leaving Paper Trails."

The class was actually very practical. Students got to see firsthand what kind of careers are available right now to American Culture majors at tiny liberal arts schools.

Neighborhood amenities

A friend mused the other night that I have a radically different view of Las Vegas than many people who live here simply because I live downtown. The area's changing, but it's still fair to look at much of it as a dump. Though not where I live, of course.

I'll bet most Green Valley residents aren't accosted by Ozzy Osbourne's twin sister (complete with round granny sunglasses) outside the video store and asked for either $5 or 50 cents. (Like Ozzy, she was mostly incoherent, so I'm not sure what the denomination was.)

Aliante dwellers aren't treated to rants like this one on their way to work:

"I've lived in Nevada for 42 years and I've never had that explained to me until that cop did it. They don't do it that way in Reno, in Sparks, in Pahrump, in Ely ... all I did was step one foot in the street when the light started flashing, and now I have a $600 ticket ... I'm a nice person, and this upset me! Six hundred dollars! I wasn't even crossing the street, I was just thinking about it ... I'm a good person. I am."

(I sincerely doubt the fine for jaywalking is $600, but just the same I'm going to be more careful. Thanks, ranting lady!)

And the folks out by Red Rocks Casino aren't greeted by this scene when they're walking down the street: A weathered woman with teased blonde hair, wearing tight clothing over the kind of painfully skinny body made possible only by years of drug use and malnutrition, standing next to a beefy black guy while yelling at a woman across the street.

"That's my DADDY on the phone!" she screeched. "That's my DADDY on the phone!" (The black guy was using a cell phone. Or maybe Daddy was on the other end of the call?)

At the time I thought she was happy about something, but looking back, I'm pretty sure she was trying to trash talk the other woman. And this wasn't some dark side street. This was Fremont Avenue, just outside the El Cortez and a block from the tourists at the Fremont Street Experience.

Nope, none of this out in new suburbanland.

Poor bastards.

UPDATED: Okay, maybe it's not very nice of me to use these tales a fodder for entertainment, so allow me to kind of make up for it. This discussion points to Nevada's acute shortage of treatment options for the mentally ill, and I think my musings above are directly related. In most parts of the city you don't see the impact that untreated mental illness has on people. Therefore, there's not much of a constituency to make noise about it.

Cruising the Strip

Woman: "It's just ... I can't compete with that."
Man: "Look, it's not like I'm saying, 'I looked at that, and I think it's better.'"
Woman: "But, just that you would look at her ass, and like it —"

Poor dude. She wouldn't let up. This conversation had been going on for a while when they got within earshot of me near Harrah's, and it kept going for as long as we were walking near each other. He'd noticed a girl with a nice ass and now he was paying for it. She wouldn't even allow him to claim it was an involuntary glance.

And I thought, "You know, if you can't stand your man lookin' at a nice butt every now and then, you'd better not come with him to Vegas. Or the beach. Or, um, the mall. In fact, you should probably just be single."

They were heading south at the time toward Flamingo, and we all know what billboard's at that intersection:




Here's hoping our beleaguered friend didn't look up.

I wanted to take someone to task myself that evening:

GUY: (singing) "Jeremiah was a bullfrog!"
GIRL: "Is that, like, a song?"

Seriously?

Pretty and not-so-pretty pictures

This is the view from the roof of my new apartment building — the north end of The Strip, in all its glory. Those construction cranes on the left side are for Phase 2 at the Wynn (modestly dubbed "Encore" by ever-understated owner Steve Wynn), and at the very edge on the right side you can see the new Trump tower, a condo and hotel project. New stuff going up all the time on Las Vegas Boulevard South — which makes a couple of news stories troubling.

This story reports on a study estimating that Lake Mead, our primary water source, has a 50 percent chance of running dry by 2021. (Remember when 2020, or 2010, seemed like sooooo far away? 2021 is 13 years from now. Yikes.) As the reporter notes, that 50 percent chance is "better than your odds of winning at any casino."

Not everyone agrees with this, of course, and they make the point that Lake Mead won't be allowed to run dry because it's too important. There's a complicated series of water agreements requiring other Colorado River users to take less water as the lake level drops.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman touched off a little bit of a firestorm by talking about that aspect of the story, singling out California farms: "The Imperial Valley farmers will have their fields go fallow before our spigots run dry." The response from California people was along the lines of, "Oh yeah? Try it, tough guy." (See here and here.)

Like Mark Twain said, in the West, whiskey's for drinkin' and water's for fightin'.

There probably will be less of it to fight over, though. This National Geographic story cites studies showing that future flows in the Colorado River will drop to levels well below what's taken out now for the 30 million or so people who depend on that water. This goes well beyond Vegas — lump us with Denver, Phoenix, and pretty much all of Southern California.

What's most interesting to me is the fact that, according to the researchers in that story, Vegas and SoCal developed during exceptionally wet years for the Colorado River. All of our data and agreements about the river are based on a time period that, historically, was a freak anomaly.

This is potentially dire news that portends an ugly dismantling of major population and economic centers. But I also think it's funny. It's not as though our country has been especially responsible in the West, either to the environment or to the native people. Even though I benefit from all that irresponsibility today, I can still have fun thinking that our Manifest Destiny is, ultimately, to have the rug yanked out from under us.

Tainted

The energetic young clerk at Best Buy was flapping her hands as she came to the register to ring me up. I must've looked quizzical, because she explained: "Hand sanitizer," she said. "It needs to dry."

I must've still looked quizzical — after all, the store was surgically clean — because she kept talking.

"We handle Vegas money all day," she said. "God only knows where it's been. And I see people putting money in their mouth, I'm like ...."

God knows? I thought what happened here, stayed here!

She had a valid point, one that I'm loathe to think about. What body parts touched those dollar bills in my pocket? What did the stripper do with those $20 bills before she bought groceries with 'em?

Yep, pleasant thoughts all. And that doesn't count the cocaine contamination.

Let me call you .... sweetheart?

Valentine's Day is often a big day in Las Vegas, with all the wedding chapels and the quick marriage license service and all. (Not so much this year, unfortunately, but historically that's true.) But Love Day didn't start out quite so swimmingly for one couple I ran into not far from the marriage license office.

Cory was skulking down Bridger Avenue, trying to shrink his lanky frame into a baggy Green Bay Packers jacket. His squat, blonde girlfriend was half a block behind him, screaming like a banshee and making sure everybody knew what a fuckup Cory was.

"The next time you need money," she yelled, "it's going to be, 'Fuck You!' "

She repeated it to make sure he got the point. "That's it. I'm done," she continued, while still following him. "I'm not carrying your keys, either!"

Cory kept walking, so she kept carrying his keys. At Fourth and Bridger he turned right, probably on his way to a Fremont Street casino for a much-needed (though maybe not deserved) drink. The lady screamed something at Cory about the hotel, even though he was two blocks away by then. She went left — and into the lobby of a Bank of America branch.

Now, this is pure speculation, but I like to think she was pulling out money for a marriage license, which is $55, cash only. The idea has a compelling symmetry to it. A couple's in town for Valentine's Day, on their way to the chapel, and they can't make it two blocks without screaming, skulking and going their separate ways.

That's my kind of Valentine.

Behind the show

Our caucus is long gone now — Jan. 19 is so ancient history — but I keep going back in my mind to a certain place on that day, a rare, ephemeral place that usually exists only in New York and Washington. Sometimes, though, like during a presidential nominating contest, this strange universe pops up in new places.

I'm talking, of course, about the mediasphere.

This time it took shape in a convention hall, a grey, dim space about as big as a football field. One half was filled with rows of tables where reporters hunched over laptops, scarfed sandwiches and chatted on cell phones. The other side had a big stage in front of three gigantic television screens that showed election results, and in front of the stage was a tri-level riser packed with television cameras and people.

It was actually a very quiet space. I imagine in days of yore these places were a lot noisier, with clanging phones, clacking typwriters, people shouting copy into phones to be heard over the chunk-chunk-chunk of wire service printouts. Laptops, wireless internet and mobile phones did away with all that.

Almost all the activity was on the TV risers, where well-coiffed correspondents filed updates almost continuously. I guess it's a glamorous job — some of them are on the road almost full-time for election season — but it didn't look like a lot of fun. They were lined up before banks of lights, sometimes standing on a utility case to add a couple of feet to their height, talking continuously to an audience they can't see who may or may not be paying attention.

Language barrier

This is on a construction site near my office:



So, do you have to demonstrate that you can sign in complete sentences? Or will a simple "How are you" suffice?

Walk on by

The young man seemed close to frantic as he hurried across Las Vegas Boulevard downtown, one block north of Fremont Street, his arms held open in a pleading gesture.

"Please, gentlemen!" he cried. "You've got to help me!"

There was something about him that made me disinclined to acquiesce to his request. He was a little too wide-eyed and slack-jawed to be functioning normally, so I walked past him, only to be stuck at the corner waiting for a "walk" sign.

"Don't hide," I heard him say behind me. "You don't need to hide." I'm not sure if he was talking to me or the other guy at the corner, but we weren't hiding. He could've been talking to himself. Then he asked for help again: "A cell phone! I need the police!"

Maybe he's got a real problem, I thought as I crossed the street. But look! His problem's solved. There were two police cruisers waiting at the light, and as I walked north the police drove south, right toward the man in need.

He did not, however, flag them down. Ha! Big surprise there, I thought.

But then I thought about another troubled man I met briefly about three years ago. He, too, was very worried about something, and even went so far as to place an ad in the local paper asking for help identifying the people he said were spying on him from his backyard. He asked me if I'd seen them too; when I (politely, I hope) said no, he dismissed me as part of the conspiracy. I found him amusing.

And I remember this, too: Finishing up work at a farm in Oregon, and a woman was there loading food for a nonprofit she was heavily involved in. She wanted some assistance, so she said, "Hey, are you into helping the homeless?" And I said, "Not really." It was the honest answer, though it elicited a chill of disapproval from her. Which, in retrospect, I find amusing.

So maybe I am part of the conspiracy. Do I want the homeless to get help? Sure. Am I going to contribute? Probably not. Will I stop and render aid when confronted with this situation again, which in downtown Las Vegas will surely happen? No.

Does that bother me?

Not really.