A Close Shave In Las Vegas

One of the interesting things about Las Vegas is that time and money lose a lot of meaning while you're there.  You spend more time doing things than you normally would because there are no clocks anywhere and plentiful distractions to boggle the mind and the eye.  You spend more money than you normally would on things that you wouldn't really even consider back at home.  A sort of mania takes over while you're there -- compounded if you've won while gambling, but even in my case without hitting the casinos at all I still was more than willing to spend money on stuff I wouldn't ordinarily have bought.

The epitome of this was reached in the Grand Canal Shoppes in the Venetian and Palazzo complex.  The Wife and I were wandering around there and glanced inside The Art of Shaving.  Everything was hugely overpriced and I was initially more interested in the novelty of straight-razor shaving than anything else.  Next thing I knew, the clerk had stepped aside and the barber was giving me an education about how to hold the blade, the right pattern for getting the best shave, and discreetly getting me to admire his astonishingly smooth chin -- and I was committing to buying all kinds of hyper-expensive product and getting a free shave in with the deal, because as it happened I had decided to skip my shave that morning.

With the Royal Shave, you get not only a hot towel wrap around your face followed by the tender ministrations of the barber.  You get some of the nice aromatherapy oils and a neck and scalp massage and some other product to clean you up and make you look and smell good.  But the shave's the thing.  The complete decadence of leaning back in a comfortable barber's chair and having another man apply an ultra-sharp blade to my face, rendering it smoother than it had been since puberty, was a pretty cool indulgence.  The money was one cost; time was the other.  The whole process took forty-five minutes to an hour.

I'd have thought the shave itself would have hurt less.  But in fact, I experienced some pain and burning on both the with-the-grain and against-the-grain passes over my face.  Worse, the no-alcohol balm applied afterwards was only partially effective at taking the residual burning away; I could still feel the burn several hours later.  I've shaved twice since then using a technique similar to the one I was taught at the Shaving Shoppe, and the burning has been lessened each time, as promised.  But, my shave has been closer and smoother, and that's still using my vibrating Gillette Fusion blade.  Whether that's from improved technique or better product is hard to say.

So no, I wouldn't normally have spent that kind of money on that sort of thing.  But it was an indulgence, part of an indulgent series of days in a city built around providing opportunities for indulgences.

Oh, and Penn Jillette is a tall, tall man:

The Penn & Teller show was a lot of fun.  Much bang for the entertainment dollar to be had there.  I'm pretty sure I know how they did the trick with the cell phone and the frozen fish.  But the bullet-biting trick is damn impressive and I cannot even fathom how they did it.

It Wasn't Me

Yes, I went to Las Vegas for a few days.  And yes, the now-famous Mojave Cross is sort of near the I-15 on the road from L.A. to Vegas, a reasonably short drive from the Cima Road exit.  And yes, I think that the Federal government ought to have no business displaying a cross (that's not on a gravestone) or going out of its way to make sure that a cross it should never have countenanced in the first place stays up through a transparent shuffle. 

And yes, I think that the Supreme Court blew the call, by one vote -- I'm looking at you, Justice Kennedy, for selectively (dare I say, "intentionally"?) ignoring the critical issue of how the cross is actually used, as an object of worship and religious veneration rather than as a memorial to war dead, and instead emphasizing the (to me but not to everyone) irrelevant issue of how long the cross has been there.

But that doesn't mean that I approve of someone stealing the thing.  That's obnoxious, it's inflammatory, it does nothing to reconcile the situation, it does nothing to ease hardened feelings on either side of the issue.  The dispute should be resolved in court, not with some idiot armed with bolt cutters.  After all, cross supporters are just going to go back and build a new one, the same as they have for decades there.  And assuming the land swap is permitted to go through, well, the VFW can put up a cross on its own land all it likes.  So this doesn't solve anything.  It doesn't help the cause of separating church and state.  It's not political speech.  It just pisses people off without accomplishing anything thereby.

A Room And A Show

Reservations made yesterday for a hotel room in Las Vegas and a show while we're there to meet up with my mother-in-law and her sister.  The show (Penn & Teller) cost nearly twice what we spent on the room (Luxor, in the Pyramid).  Cirque du Soleil shows were out of this world.  Why stay at a mid-to-low-range hotel like Luxor?  The rooms are perfectly fine, and it frees up more money for other fun things.  While, like the last three trips I took to Las Vegas, are likely to include only minimal time in the casino.

Soldiering On

Iran falls into national paralysis as the nation reels from apparently-corrupted elections. Initially, there's little way for us in the West to tell if the elections were less democratic than expected, but over time we learn that the returns came in way too fast and many cities reported more votes counted than there were people registered to vote, and that pretty much can't help but look suspicious. The candidate who officially lost the election, Mousavi, issues statement after statement denouncing the election and the government of the Islamic Republic. Ahmadinejad sends out thugs to break up the resulting street protests. Mousavi's denouncements continue, the protests continue. Then, Supreme Leader Khameni tells Mousavi, "Toe the line, bitch."* Mousavi replies, in effect, "Or what? You gonna kill me? Dude -- you think I'm more dangerous to you alive... or dead?" Just then, a young woman is shot to death by one of Ahmadinejad's thugs and the event is captured on a cell phone's camera and tweeted all over the world. Gasoline, meet fire.

All this has been a little bit overwhelming to see. I'm not entirely sure that the importance of this youth revolution in Iran is of such surpassing importance. The young voters are not protesting the institutions of the Islamic Republic. They are not protesting against theocracy, at least not yet. They are mad because they thought their guy was going to win and it looks like they got the election stolen from underneath them. So far the clerics who ultimately run the show there haven't given them any reason to be worthy of trust. If the kids were out in the streets demanding a secular democracy, I'd be very excited. Until then, this really looks to me like election violence as we'd see pretty much anywhere. It would be really cool if Iran stopped being a theocracy but at this point it doesn't look to me like that's in the cards.

President Obama, meanwhile, takes his daughters out for ice cream on Father's Day, and seems to be concentrating on a health care reform package of at-best questionable wisdom and at-most dubious affordability -- so much so that even Democrats are starting to be concerned about the price tag.

Well, what's he supposed to do? The U.S. and its leaders have been demonized for more than a generation in Iran. Whatever we say or do, Iranians reflexively want to do the opposite. And we're a huge political bogeyman against whom the worst of the bad guys over there rally their minions. Silence is about the best possible policy imaginable from the White House. I may not be real fond of the health care reforms coming down the pike, but give the President the credit he's due when he's making the right call and keeping his mouth shut on this one. Maybe he should be concentrating on...

As the nation sinks further into crushing debt, a preview of what's to come appears to be playing out in Sacramento. The nation's largest state is still far away from making the additional cuts and tax hikes needed to solve what has now grown to a $23 billion budget deficit. That's a deficit on the order of what the United States had to deal with as deficits -- within living memory. Ultimate cuts are clearly going to be made in law enforcement, education, social welfare, and infrastructure. There is talk of a constitutional convention to re-structure the state government from the ground up.

Well, I've been saying for a long time that we need to make cuts and that they're going to be painful. I'm of two minds about the idea of a constitutional convention -- on the one hand, yeah, we clearly need something radically different than what we've got right now, but on the other hand, what evidence is there for the proposition that a convention be any better-equipped to solve the problems of the state than the Legislature is right now? Who gets to pick the delegates to the Convention, anyway, and if it's going to happen, where do I sign up?

Oh, and the mayor of Los Angeles will not be running for Governor in 2010. Not that I blame him; I wouldn't want the job, either. Tom Campbell and Meg Whitman have both got to be insane if they think they stand a snowball's chance in Death Valley of winning the general election. It'll either be San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom or Attorney General (and former Governor) Jerry Brown.

What? Didn't I say a year and a half ago that it was the 1970's all over again? Huge budget deficits, revolutions in Iran, disco music, a popular Demcoratic President unable to rein in a runaway liberal Democratic Congress, teenagers with really bad shaggy haircuts and strange clothing, inflation, politicians arguing about abortion and gun control, massive pop-culture resentment to the previous Republican Administration, John Travolta a major star falling into obscurity, unemployment, and tiny unattractive cars -- and it looks like Jerry Brown is going to be the Governor of California. Anything I miss? Oh, yeah, this time around no one's talking about the metric system, other than now everyone knows how much soda you get in a two-liter bottle.

South Carolina's governor, a widely-touted Presidential candidate in 2012, vanishes. No one's seen or heard from him since Thursday. His wife has no idea where he is, but she says she's "not concerned," he's just "recharging" after a tough political battle. His political enemies are ready to start drawing blood. His bodyguards have, well, some egg on their face. And his Presidential prospects are at serious risk.

If the guy is sane, he's looking out at world events and looking ahead to the debt the country will be saddled with from 2013-2016, and the bizarrely high level of popularity President Obama enjoys despite the Carter Administration-like problems that are emerging during his Presidency. I'd be on a flight to Vegas, saying "F*@% that noise. You want it in '12, Sarah Palin? It's all yours. I try and do the right thing and get stabbed in the back by my own party? No thanks, I'll take wall-to-wall hookers and desktops full of blow instead of dealing with this government crap. Oh, what, my future? Shit, even Elliot Freaking Spitzer's making a comeback, so maybe I'll just grab me a room at the Venetian, have them send up a baseball steak medium rare, a fifth of Jimmy Beam, and a brunette. I'll come back when I'm good and damn ready to."

...Oh, wait, he's hiking the Appalachian Trail? Damn, that's not nearly as interesting as what I wrote. It's not even in South Carolina at all.

Pat Buchanan was the keynote speaker at an English-only event. The banner misspelled the word "conference."

Sometimes these things just write themselves. In fact, no one would have paid much attention to the English-only conference if it hadn't been for the amusing mistake.

So that's my news roundup from the past four days or so.

Truth be told, it's exhausting keeping up with current events. I've considered putting the blog on hiatus for a week or two because I need to recharge my creative batteries and focus on some other projects instead. Hell, if Mike Reynolds can go for three months doing nothing but a squib bragging about referring to "sport peppers" in a British newspaper, then damnit, I can take a week off, too. You don' t owe us anything, but we miss you, M. Takhallus.

* An admittedly loose translation from the original Farsi.

Templum Obamicum

Barack Obama is now officially the Democratic party's nominee for President of the United States. Which is good. Nice that Senator Clinton moved to have his nomination passed out of the convention floor by acclamation, which avoids a roll call vote. This was not, of course, a spontaneous expression of support and party unity but rather a tightly-scripted move to present the appearance of being a spontaneous expression of support and party unity.

But as I've observed before, he is not yet President. It is a little bit presumptuous for an aspirant to the office of President to surround himself with the trappings of that office. Erecting the "Temple of Obama" in Invesco Field at Mile High -- one that, as you can see, is reminiscent of the off-white neo-classical columns and colonnades famously located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is as much jumping the gun as was the once-used, never-seen-again faux seal trotted out to much derision at the National Democratic Governors' Conference in Chicago two months ago.

However, it is less pretentious than "vero possumus," the Latin insignia on Obama's faux seal. Hey, I dropped my share of cryptic Latin after Gladiator was a popular movie too. Difference is, I got over it, realizing that heraldry is only very occasionally appropriate.

Obama is still the odds-on favorite to actually be elected. Once he is President, the use of the heraldry, symbols, and images associated with the Presidency will be appropriate. But it's a bit premature yet to set up photo-opportunities in front of a life-sized mock-up of Air Force One, which is currently parked outside the football stadium in Denver.

Hat tip to Sister Toldjah, who defends the use of a more subtle architectural reference to the White House at the 2004 RNC because George W. Bush was actually President at the time. Photo credit to Congressional Quarterly by way of its flickr site.

UPDATE: See more of the Temple of Obama here, starting at about 3:50 into the video. A conservative friend sarcastically asked me if it looked more Greek or Roman to me. My response: neither. In the video, it reminds me nothing of so much as the east face of Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. But the orange and blue soundproofing screens are a nice touch -- it is where the Broncos play, after all.

Where Do The Whales Eat?

There’s good eats to be had in Vegas, and then there’s really good eats. Where do the whales eat?

Turns out, some of them eat here, at least, the Chinese ones do. My strong guess is that every major casino in Las Vegas has something like this, catering to different kinds of crowds. Chinese here. Japanese somewhere else. English-speaking somewhere else still. I’ve heard that there are private bungalows of palatial luxury at Caesar’s Palace, each staffed with its own butler, who is actually more like a mini-concierge assigned to your specific unit – and instructed to not eat garlic so as to preserve good breath. This level of service is apparently very impressive for some people and I guess the very wealthy expect it. A good restaurant, with good service and high-end food, maybe even a celebrity chef working the menu? I’m cool with that. But the formal private club is different kind of animal entirely, and it doesn’t seem like it would be so comfortable.

I remember eating at the now long-gone Charlie Trotter’s at the MGM Grand while on a rather luxurious junket from the wingnut factory where I used to work. This was somewhat different than the restaurant described in the linked article – Charlie Trotter’s at the MGM had most of its tables filled, and was located on the casino floor. But it was quite discreetly located and most of the staff at the casino claimed to not know who or what a “Charlie Trotter’s” was, maybe some sort of a cocktail from Alabama that our bartender might know how to make?

In fact, the restaurant had been intended to be a semiprivate club for high rollers, but that didn’t attract enough business so it was later opened to the public and today I think that a high-limit blackjack and baccarat pit can be found where Trotter’s Tower of Truffles used to be. Pity. (But hey. Charlie's back, baby! You can now dine at Restaurant Charlie in the Palazzo. For those times that the Venetian just isn't expensive enough to impress your friends.)

Anyway, this was about as high-end as I would really care to go in most imaginable circumstances. And yes, this is still quite high-end. But it’s not like the secret club. I just don’t see the value to it.

Get Real People

The linked article is about Brits, but the phenomenon is happening here in the States, too -- weddings are becoming out of control expensive and elaborate. Enough so that couples are delaying getting married so that they can get all the money they need to put on the show. Where on earth did this ethic come from? (Don't answer that, I already know. It was the Romans, damn their eyes.)

Seriously -- what's more important, the wedding or the marriage? The wedding is a party. It lasts a day. (Maybe more than that.) In the UK, people rent castles and manor houses and have fireworks displays. I'm sure here in the States there are fireworks and orchestras and instead of castles, people rent wineries or the Hollywood Bowl or some crap like that, so you can get married in front of 100,000 of your closest friends and then have to pay to feed them all.

Hey, go ahead and invite me and The Wife to your wedding. We'll go. We'll sit through the ceremony and make nice at the dinner you buy for us and we'll send you a nice gift. Spend all you want. But we still think we did the right thing with our wedding. Vegas. Low stress planning it, you just pick up the phone and paid professionals do all the work for you. more than enough accommodations for everyone as long as you don't feel the need to get married during the NCAA Final Four weekend. You just invite the people you want because they'll all actually go, and moreover, it's pretty much equally inconvenient for everyone to go there so it's in that way very democratic for all of your guests. The banquet food from the casino-hotel kitchens is more than good enough; no one's going to remember the food anyway. You can have a tasteful ceremony so you aren't stuck with blackjack dealers on their cigarette breaks for your witnesses. Four hours is plenty of time for a reception. Relatively affordable prices (even then, we still needed some help, so thanks Mom and Dad). None of this nonsense about getting hot-air balloons to drop off the bride at the start of the ceremony or the groom riding up wearing a coat of armor.

And, a very interesting anthropological experience waiting in line at City Hall to get your license.

Penn Says...

...Hillary doesn't have a chance. He knows because he told an offensive joke and didn't get the reaction he expected. Yes, that Penn, one of the guys who makes Bullshit! and does magic shows in Vegas. Well, what works in a Vegas lounge act is as good a pulse on the popular culture as any, I suppose.

The Vegas Run

Yesterday The Wife and I rode with some friends in their RV out to Las Vegas, so The Wife could compete in the speech contest and tell her tall tale. She did very well in the competition, but it was a home-town crowd and with one exception, all Vegas people won. Not much you can do about being home-towned; it was a big weekend and it is very inconvenient for people from California to get to Las Vegas, especially on short notice for a holiday weekend and particularly when there is a big event going on.

The RV was a good way to go -- in part because I didn't have to drive it. The Wife and one of our friends sat in back and chatted the whole way out, while us menfolk sat up in the cab and spoke.

One thing we noticed was that the Joshua trees seem to come in two varieties out in Nevada; there are the relatively narrow-branched kind we're familiar with in the Antelope Valley, and another kind with shorter trunks and wider leaf-spikes crowning their tops. I found an example of the two varieties next to each other.

I can't speak too highly of the Crestwood Suites on the South Strip. About the best adjective I can think of would be "adequate." But there isn't a lot you can do on short notice. The days of plentiful, quality rooms in casino hotels available for cheap are gone forever, I think; most of the big hotels are going to give you a runaround and tell you that they're sold out for the weekend you want to be there.

Now, there is a whole lot of nothing out on I-15 between Barstow and Las Vegas. Empty road, bleak, Martian-looking mountains, and dry lakebeds. It's particularly not fun to drive in heavy traffic on the way back on Sunday, which is one of the reasons why I was very happy to not be doing the driving myself. Right about the time we got to world-famous trivia answer Zzyzx Road, we hit twenty miles of heavy traffic, caused by a bad accident in which a BMW flipped over into the median. I saw two civilian-looking guys walking around the wreck, who I took to be the driver and passenger, so it looks like they walked away, but the car was a twisted hunk of metal barely recognizable as a Bimmer. It reminded me of why I liked my old BMW so much -- besides being a fun car to drive, I could have confidence that it would be safe if the worst happened.

We dropped a lot more money in the outlet mall than I did in the casino. At least we have something to show for that. I would have liked to have seen a show -- Penn & Teller, maybe, or one of the Cirque du Soleil shows that are up and down the Strip -- but The Wife didn't want to go out at all, and she did have to get up really early to make it to her competition.

So, I didn't do very much gambling -- I lost eighty dollars in a few short rolls of craps while waiting for The Wife's event to start this morning. I need to remember to never play on Sunday, even if I hadn't played previously on Saturday. I wouldn't have played at all if it weren't for the fact that Toastmasters events always start late. When I tried to get in the room to talk to The Wife rather than just hang out and sit on the couch with nothing to do for the two hours it took these people to get their shit together, some guy blocked me from entering the room and told me, "You have to leave." So I did, and sat around with no coffee next to a bored osteopath from the meeting next door, feeling unwelcome.

That's not to say the weekend was a total loss. I got a few new shirts and some cooking toys from our excursion to the Vegas outlet mall. I got to see The Wife give her speech and it's important to me to go support her for a big event like this. We got to hang out with some friends and I didn't have to drive. I suppose had I won this morning I would have enjoyed the gambling more.

RV Picnic to Vegas

Our friends are driving their RV out to Las Vegas and taking us along with them. We're bringing the food -- cold cuts, cheese, and fruit. They eat pretty healthy so that should be pretty good all around. The trip ought to be fun.

Vegas itself is a prospect I look forward to with a mixed attitude -- I usually enjoy Las Vegas, but it's a bother leaving the critters behind and having to trust others to care for them. Gambling is fun but I probably won't do any of that at all -- it's Cinco de Mayo and fight night tonight, so it's going to be an absolute madhouse up and down the Strip. We found a room near the outlet malls and The Wife seems pretty excited about that for some reason that makes me wonder if we'll come home with as little money as if we did go gambling.

Vegas Wedding

Today's comic suggests that there's something tawdry and shotgunnish about a Vegas wedding, albeit also romantic in its desparation. I'm here to tell you it isn't so. (At least, not necessarily.)

The Wife and I got married in Vegas and I still think it was one of the best decisions we've made. We were married at the Luxor, and everything about our experience was good. So based on that, I'll give you ten good reasons to do what The Wife and I did.

1. Nice Chapel. The chapel was attractive, and elevated away from the noisy casino floor. Nothing tacky about it; there were no Elvises (Elvii?) or showgirls in sight; no tacky cupids or gaudy hearts anywhere.

2. Good Minister. The hotel provided a minister, who wisely ignored our request for a secular ceremony and made all our our families comfortable and at ease. He presided over a very nice, dignified, and brief ceremony, and gracefully guided nervous newlyweds through the proceedings.

3. Photographer Included. Indeed, the photographer was professional, quick about his business, and produced some really good-looking pictures.

4. Special Treatment for Guests. There was a special escalator from the chapel down to the reception area so again, our guests didn't have to wade through the casino floor to get from point A to point B.

5. One-Stop Shopping for Catering. The catering department took care of everything but the D.J., and they helped me find a good one in spite of that. What they did do was arrange for decorations, the cake, and the food. The prices for the meals for our guests were quite reasonable (but we're still grateful for the help, Mom and Dad!) and the food was of good quality, considering what most banquet halls put out. They were also accomodating with my desire to have special wine served (I bought it specially from my favorite winery) and pleasant to work with.

6. Accomodating to Family Requests. When my family put together some special decorations for the reception, they were quite happy to give them access to help set up for the event.

7. Free Jacuzzi Suite. In a corner of the pyramid to boot. You can't beat that with a stick.

8. Everyone Likes Vegas. Almost no one invited to the wedding declined the invitation, and almost no one who accepted the invitation flaked. There is always something for everyone to do in Las Vegas. Some people gambled, some people hung out at the pool, some people went to shows, some people played golf, some people drank too much, some people got to spend some quality time at the spa, some people just sat back and enjoyed the spectacle that is Las Vegas. Some people, like us, spent all their time doing stuff for the wedding, too. But no one was bored. They all could get flights in and out of Las Vegas easily; they could all find hotel rooms within their budgets. And no one had to crash in our house.

9. Affordable. The whole package -- wedding ceremony, honorarium for the minister, fee for the D.J., reception hall rental, and catering -- cost somewhere between one-half to one-third of what we would have paid for the same thing would have cost us in the Los Angeles area. And we didn't have to book the reception hall a year and a half in advance -- about three months' notice was quite sufficient for them. Of course, if you want to spend more money on your wedding, there's places in Vegas that will help you do that, too.

10. Low Stress. There was not a great deal of stress in putting it all together; yes, there was some planning and some decisions to be made, but nothing particularly onerous. Much less complicated than putting a trial presentation together, that's for sure. Our wedding, at least, had little tackiness and it was neither tawdry nor desparate. Hopefully it was romantic (The Wife and I were both pretty happy) and enjoyable for everyone.

So that's my advice to young couples looking to get hitched, despite the implied joke of the comic strip today. If E-L-O-P-E can't be in your vocabulary for family-political reasons, the next-best word is V-E-G-A-S. Vegas rocks, especially for weddings.