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.

Senseless in another city

I was leaving the men's room at gate C2 in the D/FW airport. Another guy was walking in — and singing.

"Don't," he sang. "Don't you want me ..."

Kudos for directness, dude, but you should stick with tapping your feet and assuming a wide stance.

We love the rain in Las Vegas ....

..... no matter what it does to the pool.