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.

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.