Yappy New Hear's

Happy New Year's! As the coaster on my nightstand blithely reminds me every day:

New Year's was a fairly peaceful event here.  Outside of a week of messy commutes in the afternoon, the crowd of 350,000 revelers bothered me not at all.  I stayed in, of course, with some champagne and nibbles...and a project!  My last two hours of 2015 were dedicated to building a Lego version of the Flatiron building in New York.  

Do I know how to rock in the New Year or what?  The fireworks on The Strip lasted 8 minutes and were visible from my perch on the second floor of the house.  Meh.

My weekend wanderings took me to a different casino today on the near east side of town.  It's close to the strip but far enough away that it's a locals' hangout.  I wish I could have photographed the outside of it, but it is of course rather large and just so happens to sit smack in the center of a rundown residential area that doesn't afford many good views of the place at a distance.  Picture a rundown wild west town, and that's what this casino looks like.  Heck, it's not even called a casino--it's a "gambling hall."  Like many casinos, looks on the outside can be deceiving.  Don't misunderstand me, though, the inside was rundown too, but it had a cool sort of courtyard in the center of the casino floor.  

The courtyard boasted a small fountain that was choreographed to music (a sort of poor gambler's version of the Bellagio fountain?) and animatronic grizzly bears in Santa hats.  Who comes up with this stuff?  

Toys for Tits....wait, wrong fundraiser. Toys for Tots!

There's always something new to learn, and this week my coworkers taught me a little something about international snacking.  It turns out that a pet peeve of my office manager is that American words are mispronounced in Spanish, and then this word becomes the word for the item.  Case in point: donas.  What is a dona, you ask?  It's a donut.  Check it out:

Of course, I found it even more amusing that these so-called donas are made by Bimbo.  "You guys like Donas made by Bimbos?" I kept taunting the front office crew.  "Shut up!  We're Mexican!" they told me goodheartedly.  Apparently Bimbo also makes toasted bread, and not like melba toast, mind you.  It's packaged toast.  Huh?  I'd go in search of one, but my curiosity does not extend to doing research in the neighborhood ghetto 7 Eleven.

As happens all throughout the country in December, Friday night was Toys for Tots night at one of the casinos (of course).  The show packed the 850 or so seats, and no crowd would be complete without the elderly ladies in their tiaras and sashes. 

I have no idea what the whole Miss Elite Endeavor thing is, but the other gal is a Miss Senior Nevada.  I have a theory that those sashes are like the Red Shoes -- once you put those sashes on, you're doomed to wear them forever.  I see these gals from prior years' competitions around all the time.  They wear this stuff to go shopping at Walmart....kid you not.

The show featured a couple dozen singers, magicians, comedians and burlesque dancers who are all well known in Vegas.  They're not well know like Donny and Marie or Mariah Carey (though several of the performers work on their shows), but this is what Vegas entertainment on The Strip but outside of the megastars looks like.  The show was a little under three hours.  You can watch the highlights of it below in 10 minutes.  My bar buddy Laura made the cut in the highlight reel, and it's worth watching just to see the vintage gown she had on.  

Besides Laura, I'm friendly with David, the trumpet player leading the band.  Though I don't know any of the other acts personally, I run into about 50% of the other performers every week because, as I've said before, this is a small town when you get right down to it.  

The thing that got left out of the highlights reel was the pre-show entertainment, which featured an 11 year old Michael Jackson impersonator named Natalia.  Put her in the running for Best in Show -- the girl is a formidable dancer.

That's entertainment.

You Ignorant Chimichanga!

There's a sign at work that I can't photograph because all hell might break lose if I did.  The text, verbatim, goes like this:

Por Favor De No

Entrar Cuandro La

Puerto Esta Cerrada.

Gracias.

It never ceases to amaze me that with as many native Spanish speakers as we have on hand, as a business our Spanish is absolutely atrocious.  The sign has been up for a very long time, and I'm guessing that one of my fellow employees just couldn't take it any more.  I came in last week only to find that the sign had been defaced!  Horror of horrors, all of the mistakes had been corrected with a Sharpie marker.  My lead tech thought it looked tacky corrected, so she rubbed the marker marks off and the sign went back to its illiterate [tacky?] self.  

Fascinated with the end of the road as I am, I returned this past weekend to the Skyline for some polka goodness.  As I've noted in the past, it's an elderly but a lively crowd.  Free popcorn abounds, which no one can eat because practically everyone in the audience (so they tell me) has diverticulitis.  I was not given any complimentary popcorn during this trip, and I suspect I was being discriminated against for being under the age of 80.  In a fit of good temper, I decided to hold off on a lawsuit.

The trombonist to the right took a tumble off the stage at one point as he dismounted from his stool.  No one, myself included, made a move to help the man up because, frankly, we'd all expected the fall to kill him.  No need in hurrying to pick up a dead body when there's free popcorn to be had.  As it turns out, he was only slightly dazed from the fall and lived to play another set. 

At the end of the first set the lead singer announced all of the polka dancers who had died since the previous Sunday.  (If necessary, I imagine she would have announced the death of the fallen trombone player as well.)  Then she sang happy birthday to all of the dancers who had hit 90 that weekend and were likely to be dead by next Sunday.  And then it's Carol's turn!  As soon as this woman plugs her accordion into her amp, she's unstoppable!

This stuff ain't right.

Second Verse, Same as the First! or, Another Trip to The Peppermill

First things first, I'm sure you're all wondering what followed in the saga of the Christmas tree.  After assembling the monster, Pam asked me if I'd be willing to hang the lights, which she warned me is the most god-awful job ever.  No problem, I told her.  The only catch, she told me, was that I'd have to watch a video on how to hang the lights properly.  I thought this was a joke until I walked over to the Christmas tree and found Pam blocking my path and holding her cell phone in hand, YouTube video on deck.

Lulu: You're really going to make me watch a video, aren't you?
Pammy: Yes.
Lulu:  Pam, I'm not watching a video on how to hang lights.  I just won't.
Pammy:  Fine, you can do it anyway you like, but you have to do it my way.
Lulu:  Fine.  *hmph!*

So of course after agreeing to do it her way, I proceeded to do it my way while she wasn't looking.  Sadly, I got caught in my act of decorating insubordination.  Pam took over, and I was demoted from light strand hanger to light strand de-tangler.  I was at work when she finally put up the actual ornaments.  You'll see the result below.

But on to other adventures.  This weekend was the office Christmas party.  Like damned near everything else in this town, the party was held at one of the casinos.  Big room, big buffet, big door prizes (of which I didn't win any!).

The theme of the party was prom.  I have mixed emotions about themed Christmas parties.  On the one hand, it's a burden to make one's outfit conform to the theme, but on the other hand it adds a Halloween element to Christmas.  That's highly acceptable.  After being inspired by one of the local piano players in town, I decided on the velvet tuxedo jacket look.  Unfortunately from the photograph, you can't tell that my pants are glitter pants.  (I now have a glitter mess in my truck, by the way.)  How my little legs sparkled!  It's also hard to tell, but I did my hair in faux hawk fashion, with middling success.  I didn't love my hair up like that, but after putting the glue in it I couldn't get my hair to go back down without rewashing it.  

Please to note the decorated Christmas tree with 1000 lights as well.

The party itself was pleasant.  It consisted of hugging a lot of coworkers for no other apparent reason than we weren't wearing our normal work clothes and that this seemed to excite everyone.  I was stunned by the number of grown women who did go out and by actual prom dresses/ball gowns to go to this party. 

The party wrapped up around 11, which is right when the city starts to perk up.  My coworker and I couldn't resist a breakfast run to The Peppermill.  The waffles and french toast and neon lights are just too inviting.  

We hung out on the restaurant side, but I finally took a gander at the bar side, which has an interesting fire pit surrounded by a blue lagoon.  It was a lot more crowded than the restaurant side, and it's entirely possible that the neon lights are a little too overpowering at the bar.

After taking my prom date home, I finally pulled into my driveway around 2AM.  I'm an exhausted little Lulu, but there's always more to do.  I'm off!  

Desert Turkey

My holiday started Wednesday evening when one of my coworkers and I decided to have a Misfits' Thanksgiving.  What does it take to be a Misfit?  Well, you have to want to be on The Strip with all of the other displaced souls, so that's where we went.  Toward the northern end of The Strip is a club from the 60s called The Peppermill.  It's been through many incarnations, sets of neon lights and color schemes.  I thought the place was super cool.  (It was also super dead.  Not as many Misfits out as I thought there would be.) 

The restaurant part of The Peppermill serves everything 24 hours a day, but I think most people think of it as a breakfast place.  Below is my Mediterranean omelette, which was stuffed full of shrimp and crab and topped with Hollandaise sauce.  Yum!  And not only was it delicious, it was also roughly the size of a football.  The hash browns were just so-so.  The Vodka Twilight (top right) was delightful, and my coworker said her fish and chips (to the left) were excellent.  

Pam started Wednesday evening sauteing gizzards to turn into broth, which in turn went into the stuffing that included pureed turkey neck meat.  It all seemed very exotic and medieval.  Anyway, Thanksgiving dinner was delightful. Dawn set up her 6' Christmas tree Thursday morning.  I didn't help much outside of singing along with the Christmas carols on the radio for her.  

Pam dragged out her decorations for the house today.  The centerpiece is her 9' Christmas tree.  It used to be 10' but Dennis had to cut out a foot so it would fit in the house here.  I put it together over the course of a long hour.  Pam and I are still negotiating about how to hang the lights on the thing.  She wants everything strung up from the inside and brought out.  Way too much work!  I told her if I'm hanging the lights then I'm doing them my way.  At this contentious decorating impasse, we both walked away from the tree until a future hour.

Pam also pulled out a little pre-lit Christmas tree for my bedroom.  The cord for the lights on the tree was too short to reach any of the outlets, so I had to illuminate the tree by connecting it to my Halloween lights.  Isn't the bringing together of all the holidays what Kwanza is really about?  Wait, what is Kwanza about?

From the Cheap Seats

The adventures continue, but being out of tourist mode I don't often have my camera with me.  Below  are some fleeting moments I've caught on my phone.

I went to a little shindig on Halloween Eve at one of the casinos.  A funk cover band was playing that evening.  The lead singer was dressed in a pimptastic suit.  I thought the guy was black; Pammy protested and told me the guy was white.  Someone butted in and informed us the singer was from Puerto Rico.  We both claimed to be right in our racial evaluation after that.  I didn't snap a picture of the dude's sparkly suit and white shoes, but I had to get video on the best dancer out on the floor.

This 70 something year old was hot and she knew it.  She staked out a sizeable portion of the dance floor and owned it.  Nary an amateur was allowed to approach and degrade the quality of her performance.  I had a little sitdown with her at one point.  When I asked her her secret, she confided, "It's all God-given, honey."  

At this same shindig I also sat down with a woman dressed up as a cross between Stalin and Castro.  Turns out she was a Vegas entertainer veteran.  As she told me, due to her advancing age her gigs aren't as glamorous as they used to be.  She invited me to see her perform the next weekend.  How could I refuse?

The casino was outside of Vegas in a place dismissively referred to as Hendertucky.  True, the casino itself wasn't much to look at, but it boasted a random (and completely awesome) classic car show in the parking lot that afternoon.

Following the sound of the music, I came upon my new acquaintance's less-than-glamorous gig:  an aging polka band.  The combined age of the two guys on the right is 167

Truth be told, I like a good polka.  The songs were a lot of fun, and it was a lively over 80 crowd of sprightly two-steppers.  Good time.

Meanwhile, back at The Big Time, I went to see Celine Dion on Wednesday night.  Her residency in Las Vegas has been going on the past 400 years, and still she sells out every night.  Because we couldn't get comp tickets, we watched the show from the control booth.  The word "booth" is highly misleading because it is, in fact, a huge corridor that runs the entire back length of The Colosseum.  True, this is where nosebleeds go to have nosebleeds, but I liked the relative seclusion of the surroundings.  

Did I mention that Liberace guards the entrance to the restroom?

As I'm not a huge Celine fan and have no real desire to get up close and personal with her, I believe these seats presented Ms. Dion at the proper remove.

After the show we walked around The Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace for a bit.  I spied with my little eye an art gallery which, I was delighted to see, was selling Andy Warhol's painting of Annie Oakley from his "Cowboys and Indians" collection.  Not sure if I would have been allowed to take a photo of it if I'd wanted to, but did I even bother to try?  Heck no!  I was too caught up with the tack-a-rama.

Let me know if a plastic Venus de Milo made anyone's Christmas list this year.  I can oblige.

You're singing my song.

With only five weeks of Vegas under my belt, it isn't often I get to take Pam to something she's never seen before.  Last night was one of those nights.  How could I resist?  The show looked right up my alley.

The poster is from a different location (and obviously a different date), but you get the idea.  The act  aims to recall old Vegas, and her repertoire is 30s, 40s and 50s standards (mostly).  What a great show!   Best of all, no one licked my ear during the course of the evening.

I worked at the realty office for the better part of the day today.  I was delighted that in a day and age of electronic bookkeeping, I spent most of my time copying over figures by hand.  I felt like a latter day Bob Cratchit without the tyrannizing presence of an Ebenezer Scrooge.  Best of all, no one licked my ear during the course of the workday.