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.