Notes from the desert.......
(as per usual....click on the fotograffs to enlarge them....you know the drill.....)


......went to Las Vegas this weekend.

Hung out with my father and our buddy, Jack Fertig. Hadn't seen Jack in 20+ years, but he's still a weird cookie.....I mean, this is a guy who, after a game we saw his son play basketball in a tournament in Vegas, Jack's son was complaining to him about how an opposing player was talking trash to him during free throws.

Jack went ahead and quoted the movie BASEketball to his son.......only Jack Fertig.....although, if I had chosen to have kids, it's probably something I, too, would do.....

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Few interesting things I noticed .....


Well...that's what I get for Pricelining a car.....

Got to my rental car counter at 11:50pm, a bit tired, just wanted to get my old-man car (I had Pricelined a "full-size car - Mercury Grand Marquis or similar" for $22 a day). Apparently, so had several dozen other people as EVERY SINGULAR, SOLITARY CAR RENTAL COMPANY counter in the McCarren Airport car rental centre was dead empty!!!!! Except the one that Priceline stuck me with (I ain't gonna say who, but suffice to say, their TV adverts used to have a former Buffalo Bill running through an airport in them). Three car rental people at the counter (one of them SPECIFICALLY serving "#1 Club Gold" customers and only two serving everyone else) and the queue of customers was WELL OVER 35 people!!!! Well, it took me well over an hour to reach the front of the queue! By the time I was being waited on, the counter agent tried to fucking SELL, I repeat, SELL me an upgrade!! This was probably not E's most shining moment.....but it did get me a nice car for no additional charge!! When I saw what they gave me, it shut my ass up good....and I now recommend Hertz Car Rental for ALL of your transportation needs whilst traveling!



















I mean, this thing just SCREAMED testosterone!!!! There is something to truly be experienced by cruising the Las Vegas Boulevard Strip in this car with the top down.......or flying off into the vast emptiness of the Nevada desert at 100+M.P.H. also with the top down!


Great Expectations.....

Made a side road trip to Death Valley, 'cause I had (for some bizarre reason) always wanted to go there......ever since I was a child! This was NOT the best planning on the part of this blog! Generally, doing a convertible with the top down, into Death Valley, in the end of July, whilst wearing a black t-shirt is NOT the brightest idea.......fuck it! I did it anyways! 117 degrees is kind of interesting....never knew just HOW much I would learn to like water!









However, I was extremely unimpressed. The $20 entry fee (I think The Great Sand Dunes National Park in Southern Colorado is, like, ten bucks) really didn't do much to change my mind.......there are FAR more stunning, spectacular, and unique places in Colorado, Utah, Northern Nevada, Western part of South Dakota and even in Central and Eastern Oregon than Death Valley!!!! Fucking Californians......always over-hype everything.....still, though, being a Geographer, I really get off on the silliest shit.....like being at thee lowest point in North America, Badwater, which is basically a salt flat, but still, kinda neat (from my perspective, anyways)....

Great Expectations Redux.....












A friend of mine who ventured recently into Northern California, told me about how he had gone to a fast food restaurant called "In-N-Out" and he couldn't stop raving to me about it. I would later hear that former Californians kill for this place (as the chain is located almost exclusive within the state borders of California), and even Jack Fertig praised this place! Apparently, there's a couple of 'em in Vegas.....all right...let's have a go, then.....

From everything that I had been told, I was literally expecting this restaurant to send me into Excited Delirium (a.k.a. - That orgasm-like feeling one experiences whilst being Tasered by a Cop)....

Errmm......no. I mean the burger itself was pretty decent (far better than, say, McDonald's or Burger King...but certainly NOT thee best burger I have ever had [THAT, bar absolutely fucking NONE, belongs to CityGrille on Colfax in Denver]), but not amazing! The french fries possessed the appearance, consistency, and taste of grey sculpting clay......rather disappointing given all that I had heard about this place.....but still, they do very Lefty things like buy from suppliers who practise sustainable farming techniques, buy products locally, etc. etc. so kudos to them for that!



Man, how some things change in a few years.....

Went to Bally's to watch the Colorado Rockies match vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers (literally, the ONLY thing I would bet correctly on whilst I was in Vegas) and was a bit appalled. They used to have, ON CASINO PROPERTY, this weird high end shopping mall (no, literally, think Cedar Hills Crossing or The Boulevarde Mall) that had slot machines dead in the middle of the hallways (like, where the kiosks would normally be positioned) and you could sit there with a beer or mixed drink and a cigarette and play the slot machines right in the middle of a mall (I know this because in 2001, I actually DID just that). It was the weirdest thing.....

Today, I guess Bally's took the slot machines out, and the State of Nevada declared the mall a "public area" so they banned smoking in it.......man, as one bartender told me "This place is becoming more and more Californicated every day!"


This ain't Disney World.......

I actually remember Las Vegas' ill-fated attempt to try to actually lure FAMILIES to town....reasoning being (I assume) that mommy and daddy would gamble away the children's college fund whilst junior and juniorette would be in any number of video game arcades, bumper cars, go-karts, etc. etc. sort of attractions that places around town had put up! Thank Christ they now went back to pushing Vegas as thee true sin city ("What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas").....because that is what appears to have taken hold.

There are now 'Hos all over the place, and, whilst I guess that I don't get out much, I had seen my very first hooker pick-up live. Nope.....never seen that before live in my life!! I mean, yeah, we'd all seen the movies and TV crime-drama shows where the hooker is just standing around in a sleazy mini-skirt on a street corner and some John stops by and she jumps in his car. But I swear, I had NEVER seen that live in real life before!

I was on West Tropicana Blvd. when I was pulling outta a gas station and lo-and-fucking-behold.....first, two ladies of the evening standing directly in front of the convenience store entrance wave me over with a coy smile (I pretend to not notice them) and then, as I'm pulling out onto Tropicana Blvd. after fueling my 'stang, this S.U.V. with New York State plates slams on it's brakes and picks up this skanky-ass looking girl who hops right in! I mean, this guy literally avoided by inches getting crushed to a pulp in a rear-end near-accident by the pick-up truck directly behind him....it was just bizarre!!!

Nope.....sex still sells big in Vegas! Just go to The Library and research it yourself...









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Gettin' ya coming and going.....

I had never noticed this before 'cause I almost never check baggage when I go to Vegas. At the baggage carousel in McCarran Airport in Vegas, whilst you're waiting for the baggage monkeys to finally toss your bags onto the belt, you can drop a few bucks into a slot machine......holy shit! HOW ingenious is THAT? Man, if they did that at Buffalo, they'd pull the city AND the county out of the fiscal black hole they're both in now!












I had read in several places that you're never supposed to play the slots at the airport. The reasoning being that most casinos want YOU to make SPECIFICALLY THEIR casino your prime (and preferably only) destination....therefore, they treat you VERY well, and they have a bit of a vested interest in ensuring that you win a reasonable amount of times!

The airport, on the other hand, KNOWS that you are NOT going to gamble primarily at the airport because of the swimming pools and the great stage shows and the general ambiance (if you do make McCarran your primary place to gamble, then you've got serious issues), so, thus, they have ZERO incentive to see that you actually win anything at all, ever!!

I stupidly went against my own advice as my flight was twenty minutes delayed.....dropped a five into a "Wheel of Fortune" video slots machine, and walked away with $23 a few minutes later.....go figure!! I guess I was destined to gamble at airports!



Ain't no thing as "Old Vegas" anymore......


....and that absolutely blows!!

I was cruising around with the top down looking for old school dives to go play and drink in! I remember some.......The Stardust, The Frontier, and a whole bunch of others!


Not anymore....


Now, The Stardust had been imploded in the spring of this year, The Frontier (where I had once stayed) just closed down July 16th, 2007, The Sands closed on June 30, 1996, then got imploded, then that atrocity The Bellagio was erected on the site, and the Klondike (pictured below - a place I loved: 10-cent roulette, $1.99 FULL breakfasts [like eggs, toast, bacon, sausage, homefries, etc.] and a starring role in the movie Vegas Vacation) was officially shuttered June 28th, 2006!

Pretty much, thee only things left of Vegas former glory is The Sahara and The El Cortez and anything downtown. That is sad, really....when you see places like Steve Wynn's pretentious steaming heap of shit going up all over the place....it just ain't the same!

And, the final disillusionment in the land of illusion......


That fucking SIGN!

Yes, you know the one I'm talking about! I'd been to Vegas about four or five times before this, but I had NEVER been able to see the sign live. I mean, judging by TV, movies, magazine photographs, video games and everything else, damm.....well....that thing must be absurdly large! Christ, that's gotta be, like, AT LEAST 100 feet in height....like, 60 feet wide and 30 feet from the bottom of the white diamond to the top of it!!











Christ, was I ever disappointed!

And, not only that, but there's fucking TWO of them (so much for the "one and only" concept)!! I found this out by driving around town.....the other one's on Boulder Highway!!!

What a sham......I want my money back!!!

-E-

"In the desert, In the dry
before the breaking of the rain
the temperature in the shade has reached 110 again"

Midnight Oil
Bullroarer