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.