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.

Saturday chores and more

Yesterday was chore day, so Pammy got out the vacuum cleaner and we all took quadrants to clean.  In the course of moving things about, I discovered that Pam owns way too many bottles of fingernail polish.  Sadly, this isn't even the entire inventory.  There are another nine bottles in the fridge.

It's not right to have all work and no play on a Saturday, though, so in the evening we went out to Caesar's for the Rod Stewart show.  Before going to The Colosseum, we cut through the Forum Shops (those high-end stores with the bouncers in front of them), and I couldn't help but wish that money were no object.  

Money is an object, though, which is why I ended up going to the free Rod Stewart Show and won't be going to the one night only Placido Domingo show in September.  (Nosebleed seats start around $225.)  

I've never been a Rod Stewart fan.  I can think of a few of his songs that I won't switch the radio station if they come on, but that's the most I can say for the guy.  As a concert performer goes, he's ok.  Just ok.  In the beginning he was hard to hear because the guy just doesn't have that much of a voice left.  He joked that it was the dry Vegas air that was killing him.  Not sure what excuse he has for his thin voice outside of Vegas the rest of the time.  He warmed up eventually, and while his singing isn't my thing, the production value of the show was high and the backup band was completely awesome.

At one point he did a few acoustic cuts, and again it's the backup band that interested me more than Rod.  The violinist in purple to his right also played mandolin and did backup vocals.  She was a really impressive performer.  The blonde violinist in black in the back row plays at Fremont Street on Friday nights.  I'd seen her through a haze of fried twinkie before.  

Rod also had one of his daughters come up and sing a few songs, and I know Mom would be cringing at the nepotism.  The girl could sing, but it is a heck of a boost to one's act to be given an open mic night at a Rod Stewart show.  The show clocked in right at an hour and a half, which means that Mariah Carey gives you thirty more minutes than Rod and she does it in ridiculous heels.  Still, not a terrible show by any means.

The second part of the evening I'd almost rather not mention.  We went to a blues bar (complete with "soul food") cooked up by a really awesome woman named Vanessa.  I've never know a fried chicken and mac'n'cheese meal I could resist.

The place was a total dive, but the band was excellent and the dancing pleasantly comical.  You can see a sample of both below.  I could kick myself that I didn't have my camera ready when a tipsy woman got out to dance and completely fell on her butt.  She'd danced earlier with the guy she came in with and apparently refused to dance with her any more.  She ended up grabbing some other random dude, who was with her when she fell.  After it was all over, he slipped by our table and muttered, "That's my good deed for the day."  

Everything was going splendidly until a random, vagrant musician started hitting on me and wouldn't buzz off.  I'm sure he's nice enough, and some of the other musicians said he's harmless, but seriously, leave a girl to her fried chicken!  After a while he announced he was leaving and gave me an unpleasant kiss in (not on) my ear.  I thought that was that until he came back ten minutes later to extol my good looks.  Come to think of it, Vanessa said she gave me two breast halves (as opposed to a breast half and a couple legs that the meal was supposed to come with) as a special treat just for me, so I guess I must have been having one of my "on" nights in which I overpower the crowd with my good looks and winning personality.  (Oh brother...)  Good gal pal that she is, Pam announced to the guy that we were leaving and to push off.  He apologized for being out of line....and then he started with the same lines as before.  Too bad we had to retreat--it was a good club otherwise.   

Dennis was in the mood for another field trip, and I told him one of the places I wanted to hit was my new job site.  Even the idea of going to my new office excited him since he said it involved showing me a "secret" shortcut through the downtown area to get there.  I'm not sure how secret the route really is, but it does involve taking a tunnel underneath the airport runways.

After hitting my office, we went through North Las Vegas, a.k.a. the rough side of town.  Parts of it are blighted and I have heard on the local news about the crime that goes on there, but it looks about a thousand times nicer than 38th Street in Indy, let alone East Chicago.  "Oh, well there are bad areas of town, but they aren't as bad as THAT," Pam and Dennis reassured me.  Northeast of North Las Vegas is Nellis Air Force Base.  You can't seen a lot of it from the road, but we did see the fighter jets flying in formation, presumably doing training exercises.  We pulled off of the road at one point to watch them, and even at a significant distance those are some loud planes.

From Nellis we circled back south through Lake Mead and on to Boulder City.  Yes, they've shown me Boulder City before, but it is a very pleasant place to hang out just because.  We ducked into a surfer-themed restaurant called The Coffee Cup.

The place has a sizeable breakfast menu.  The "Hangover Breakfast" intrigued me on paper.  It intrigued me on my plate as well.  

Let me tell you how it's done!  The layers, from bottom to top, go something like this:

Gravy

Two biscuits, open-faced

Two sausage patties

Two fried eggs, over medium

Cheddar cheese

It was disgustingly good.  

After lunch, we went to Hemenway Park in search of the indigenous bighorn sheep.  In Indiana you see deer crossing signs.  In Wisconsin you see cow crossing signs.  In Nevada you see oodles of bighorn sheep crossing signs.  They wander down from the mountains and foolishly try to cross the highways, or so I'm told.  I'd never actually seen any until today.  I wouldn't have recognized them if I had seen them anyway--they look like big goats rather than sheep.

There was a conservation officer on duty, presumably to keep us from doing anything stupid like taunting the sheep.  Apparently, they can get pretty feisty.  (The sheep that is, not the conservation officers.)  Ergo, the photos above were taken at a good distance.  If you zoom out, you get a fuller picture of the area overall.  Lake Mead is in the background to the left, and the outskirts of Boulder City are to the right.  

Boulder City boasts some spectacular views of both Lake Mead and the mountains, and I'm told the property values reflect it.  New lots with a view are valued in the millions, and small bungalows without a view from the 1930s (when the dam was being built) start in the high six figures.  The bighorn sheep and hangover breakfasts are but an added local bonus.  

  

Hmmph, Pahrump!

It isn't the excesses of Vegas that surprise me these days; it's the restrictions that shock.  I knew that soliciting sex was illegal in Vegas, but I thought for sure that prostitution itself was legal.  Dennis corrected me today and told me that prostitution is illegal in all of Clark County.  Where does one go to find legal, paid companionship in this state?  One goes to Pahrump.

I like the name "Pahrump."  It sounds like the sort of sound you'd make when you're feeling really miffed.  Pahrump lies about 50 miles west of downtown Las Vegas.  It has a couple wineries and casinos, a golf course, and a bunch of small restaurants.  It's also home to a couple bordellos.

The bordellos are about 7 miles outside of the main drag in Pahrump, and I guess they're strategically situated to being as close as they legally can be to Las Vegas.  The first one we came across is called The Chicken Ranch.

A block down the street is Sheri's Ranch.

They both have bars attached to them, but you have to be buzzed in to get into the building at all.  Much to my disappointment, Dennis was WAY to antsy to go in to either one of them for some lunch.  "It's just too weird," he protested.  "I'd feel uncomfortable....How on earth would you guys NOT feel uncomfortable?"  Pam rolled her eyes.  "Dennis, it's just a bunch of women.  Why would we be uncomfortable?"  So while I looked forward to a hot tuna lunch at The Chicken Ranch, Dennis remained obstinate.  No way were we getting him to set foot in either establishment.  Pahrump!

A History Lesson

Pam informed me yesterday that it was time that I "embraced" Las Vegas, by which I think she meant that I needed to work on my tan.  Dennis took this suggestion in a completely different light and declared, "That's right!  You need to watch "Casino" and start learning about the mob!"  So now I've watched the movie, and Dennis took Pam and me for a drive through Lefty Rosenthal's old neighborhood.  Dennis also provided me with a small stack of books to educate me on the city's patriarchs.  I'm on it!

The Wild Comes Indoors

I've mentioned before how amazingly still the desert is, but we all know that something must be crawling around out there.  I've not seen a whole lot of fauna in the wild, but today the wild came in to us.  It's called a camel spider.  It's large, and it's absolutely disgusting.

Gross, gross, gross.  Scorpions are also common out here, though thankfully I've yet to see one.  Employees warn you when you walk around the greenhouses to pay attention to where you put your hands and feet as you look through the plants.  It's not just the goblins that will get you if you don't watch out.  

Primmest of the Primm

Pam asked me what I wanted to do today, and on a whim I said I wanted to go to California.  Dennis suggested we dip our toes into California territory via Primm, so off we went.

Primm, like so many small towns in Nevada, is inexplicably settled in the middle of nowhere.  It's a tourist trap 30 minutes outside of Vegas consisting of three casinos and an outlet mall.  It also boasts exactly one apartment complex, but outside of that there is no residential housing so practically everyone who works in Primm must commute from Vegas.

For me, the big tourist draw was the fact that Primm is home to the Bonnie and Clyde death car located at Whiskey Pete's.  Like The Excalibur on the strip, Whiskey Pete's looks like an oversized White Castle.  Classy.

The death care makes it totally worth it though.  Plunk down in the middle of the casino floor is a nice showplace for the car.  I didn't count, but supposedly 167 bullet holes riddle the thing.

The small exhibit also includes the shirt Clyde was wearing when he was shot in Louisiana in 1934.  The tag sewn into the shirt reads, "Wasson's Towneshirt, Indianapolis."  Good ol' Wasson's!

Close inspection of the shirt did reveal a few blood stains, but obviously the shirt had been cleaned at one point.  The long cuts across the chest and the sleeves were made by the undertaker.  The shirt also revealed that Clyde was a small guy--the shirt almost looked too small for me.  The sign said that Clyde was 130 lbs. and Bonnie was only 4'11" -- a tiny but tyrannizing couple.  

The small exhibit at Whiskey Pete's also included a bullet-proof 1931 Lincoln used by Al Capone.   The glass is bullet-proof and the panels of the car are lined in lead.  I wish I knew how much the thing weighed and what kind of miserable gas mileage it must have gotten.  While sporting quite a few bullet holes itself, it was indeed in much better shape than the Bonnie and Clyde death car.  Better design through engineering, better engineering by design.

Part of the parking lot at the outlet mall in Primm spills into California, so I literally went 40 feet into California then back out again.  What lies 40 feet within California territory?  A small building that sells lotto tickets.  You have to go to California for lotto tickets because it's illegal in Nevada.  Lewis Carroll couldn't write these jokes...or these laws.