Power walking on Las Vegas streets has become a little noticed fad in the City of Sin especially by brightly dressed older couples and drunken tourists who really have to pee and are worried about making it to a restroom.
It’s the beginning of the ‘’’uhhh warm season in this season and therefore the beginning of the crazy season and what I like to call the season of the jogger. Joggers are everywhere you cant pass out or fall down without tripping over some preening, prancing princess in a $2,000 white velour jogging suit shaking her hands like Whinny the Pooh standing over a half empty honey pot as she jogs down a city street at 6:00 a.m. oblivious to the dangerous looking stranger staring at her from the shadows where he stumbled unnoticed by anyone. Well no one noticed except the 70-year-old drunken reprobate still wearing the same buzz cut and muscle shirt he wore the last time he was on the Strip in the City of Sin and JFK was romancing Marylyn Monroe and hair oil was still a convenience store standard and he was a Merchant Marine stud and the most expensive pro on the boulevard cost less than a good ham does today.
Does anybody know what the bag limit is on overdressed over, groomed joggers is these days I wouldn’t want to get fined for nabbing to many of them to many of them on the way home from work. There are joggers everywhere you look these days. I even saw a Goth jogger, a heavy metal jogger and a young tough looking power walker,  although they may have been a showgirl  and a stripper who were late for work and gambler running from his wife after staring at the stripper and showgirl on their way to work.

  Tripping
This week I talked with a co-worker about the glory days of Haight Ashbury and the glories of tripping the light fantastic acid. By tripping I he meant the kind of tripping where you see sounds and hear thoughts of nearby pets and long dead poets named Freddie J. ( Don’t ask me. My ambien makes me dream about other worlds and alternative realities and I don’t get near scary stuff like Lucy and the Sky with Dudley Moore. Okay I’m a nerd sue me… )
Apparently this veteran hippie, who now wears a suit and tie and has even less hair than I do said there was a way of soothing people who were on bad Lucy and the Sky with Diamonds acid trips. They would take the trippers outside at night and focus them on the moon. This seemed to calm them down and give them something positive to focus on. Of course some brilliant idiots decided the sun was a good thing to trip on and went blind goes the HA legend of the day.

The same guy who enjoys standing in the intersection of Flamingo and Eastern holding his sign is back again. I couldn’t read the sign this time but he was standing smack dab in the middle of the road scant feet from a four thousand pound SUV with a driver who was probably tried, hungry, horny and/or drunk or all four.
While I don’t  care for the fact he was standing in the road for all kinds of reasons but you have to admire his delusional courage whether it was spawned by devotion or desperation because standing in the road in the City of Sin is a risky undertaking at best.
People will ran you over sometimes even if they see and almost always if they don’t.
Such is life in the city of sin.
In closing I would like to make a fond wish for someone I saw in a Las Vegas casino today. I hope the outfit you were wearing was some kind statement, because seriously dude, red plaid and a slouched red beret isn’t cool on a man with white hair unless he is somehow reliving the glory days with the 82nd Airborne or as a roadie with Nirvana.
The city was filled with hard

No Pedestrians with floating detached heads a very common sign in Las Vegas

No not really…..Photo RM Hopper

drinking pool players, biker babes, and hordes and hordes of tourist making fools of themselves posing for pictures in front of fake clowns, giant lion statues, phony tropical islands, fake cityscapes and giant modern art sculptures.

Such is Life in the City of Sin

Til’ Next Week take care

By Royal Hopper

One of the weirder things that happened in the City of Sin this week was a conversation about penis length and the way women feel about it.
. I had this conversation with a man who will remain anonymous for what I should think are obvious reasons.
Anyway this gentleman,  I think I can use that word, was complaining quite loudly about a girl he knew who was a decided snob.

Three scottish guys …Photo by Me
She wasn’t a social snob or a fashion snob or even a purse or shoe snob. Apparently this chick was what this acquaintance called a SIZE snob. She was as he put it really into guys with big weenies.
This gentleman must have been somewhat of a romantic because he complained that this chick was missing out on the possibility of romance with someone shall we say smaller in stature.
“What if she falls in love only to find out the guy has a four inch penis. Does she leave the love of her life because he has a small organ?”  He posited  (Love those old phony G rated curse words. My mother used them all the time. This is a woman who refused to crap for most of her adult life)
“I just feel sorry for her she  has never been in love and probable never will, he pined looking at me for an answer to this uncomfortable conversational question.   “I’m married for 17-years to the same woman,” was all I could choke out before he grimaced a scowl at me and ranted on about the injustice suffered buy the small of penis.

Some Scottish Guys Photo by RM Hopper
A report on the national news portrays Las Vegas as a light drinking city. I would really hate to be in the heavy drinking cities on a busy weekend if that is true. It could be that the people we constantly find laying on

 the sidewalk every week are from out of town. Locals I’m guessing go some place safe like their own home to drink some much they cant remember their names.   
It was St. Patrick’s Day in the City of Sin ending up passed out drunk in a strange place is strange enough and common enough in the City of Sin on an ordinary day.
Doing that ignominious thing in a ladies restroom is a step further down the road of hedonist stupidity, but passing out drunk on the floor of the ladies restroom bare naked while your erstwhile lady friend is nearby having her hair held by a friend so she can throw up without getting it dirty is stupid even by Vegas standards.
Doing all this drunken tom foolery with a  green hat, green socks, green shoes green face paint and green hair extensions doesn’t change anything except the color you turn when you pass out.

        Refuse from a long days night in the city of sin—Photo by Me RM Hopper
All that and more happened in the city this week. I personally saw a group of younger Las Vegas patrons race imaginary cars across an empty street while their less inebriated friends strolled calmly across the empty intersection laughing and high fiving and chest bumping each other as they reached “safety” of the other side.
Later that day employees of a local casino walking into work reported witnessing a man being struck by a car while crossing against the light and not at a cross walk. Advice for all those visiting the City of Sin. Fully one fourth of the drivers in this city are under the influence at any time. There is a reason they put barriers on the median on Las Vegas Boulevard to prevent people from crossing the street.
I might add that jay walking is against the law in Nevada. That’s what the pedestrians crossing the street on the strip found out when they crossed the street in front of a man dressed in a bright green leprechaun outfit. He was a cop waiting for just such crimes to be commited so he could write them tickets. Reports say he wasn’t even Irish oh the scandal.
Many see the City of Sin as a cute movie where no one remembera running naked through a random parking lot with a strange person’s underwear  on their head or get so plastered they forget what decade it is. They see bright lights and Disney themed adult play lands where gambling and drinking are okay and even expected.
It is all that and more. It is also people who get picked off of crosswalks by drivers on their way to work, homeless guys who get run off from respectable properties because they are weird even by Vegas standards and people sleeping on the sidewalk because they have no where to go. Yes it is jackpots and whirlwind romances. It is also hookers, drug dealers, bums and broken dreams.
On one side of the street families stroll taking in the truly impressive sights, and on the other side two guys who don’t know each other meet on the street.
One fishes something out of an expensive suit and shows it to the other they exchange something and walk off in different directions. Old Army buddies??? Really friendly tourists  ?????

Oh well such is life in the City of Sin                              

Til next Week

Take Care

                                                                 Refuse from a long days night in the city of sin—Photo by Me RM Hopper

By Royal Hopper

How does a man end up in the women’s restroom laying on the floor? To drunk to read ???? So determined to meet that perfect certain someone they will follow potential candidates anywhere ???/
Well you’ll have to ask that gentleman at whatever hotel he ends up being trespassed from on his next trip to the City of Sin.

A red heel and an abandoned drink glass resting on a counter near the front of a Las Vegas hotel

Random dancing
Don’t you just love people who sing random songs in random places at random times and for random reasons and without reason cause or meaningful skill break into dance.
If the answer is No, then you probably shouldn’t ever come to this city, the city of sin  ever.  People here sing songs and break into dance at the oddest times even when they are stone cold sober and doubly so_

 Man Nagging

_ when they are not.  I discovered a new term this week and a new social paradigm. Have you ever heard of Man nagging. Apparently this weirdness occurs when one man in a platonic friendship with another is a constant nag. Going on and on like some stereotypical nagging wife of chauvinist mythology of decades past. I saw this occur Saturday when one man was nagging his friend so intently that even the nagging man’s wife or girlfriend that was standing nearby seemed to cringe in sympathy.  I guess what comes around does truly go around even if it is not in a totally symmetrical way.
Of all people it seems NASCAR fans are the biggest Man Nags….. On the planet. The NASCAR fans were here in Vegas all week Man Nagging each other and drinking until they couldn’t see and apparently couldn’t read..

Stayin’ Alive Stayin’ Alive ah ah ah ah Stayin Aliiiiiivveeee
In one way or another it seems the 70s are returning in style, in fashion and in force to the City of Sin. Even the New York Times sees the 70s coming back.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/arts/music/a-band-called-fun-with-a-period.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120310

This week as I was sitting at the pool of the hotel where I work I thought I saw my mother striding determinedly across the pool deck with a clip board in hand and rocking the retro let it be decade fashion to the freakin Sin City hilt.
  She had that 70s soccer mom trying to look cool in the face of disco, nylon and feminist self expression.
This woman was wearing the same faux hipster hand made red white and blue nylon pullover sweater, the same Soccer Mom Feaux Hippie Chic rayon blouse beneath it with the same abstract 70s designs, the same knee high leather boots; ( I hate semi colons) and the same blue jean shorts and the same black tights. (You should have seen the outfits she handmade us for Christmas and made us wear can you say The Osmonds meet the Wizard of Ozz.  I knew you could)
 Of course I immediately realized  this woman was not  my mother. My mother is not Asian, was in fact at least 30 years older than the woman I was looking at and being a good Baptist would never wear short shorts or black tights even in the cold.

Also I doubt this woman even knows who Willie Nelson is much less expends much energy denying that the Red Headed Stranger ever smoked marijuana on the White House roof.
(Does anything represent the 70s more than smoking a J in the White House)

Peacock Rock
This week’s epiphany is based on the simple fact that all the weirdness you see in the City of Sin keeps it from being a bland city of sin. These days everyone is, untucked, sweat shirt and cliché Wal-Mart frumpy. Even the slick guys are kind of boring these days with their buzz cuts and designer sun glasses. 
Being plain is the chic thing now and sometimes it sucks. I’m no Peacock as a rule, I don’t strut the look unless I’m on a stage of some kind but Las Vegas should be a place where you at least occasionally see something unique.
For that reason I salute the man I saw wandering around that very same pool in a long black coat, black shirt, black pants etc, etc. when all around him were dressed in standard pool side cliché wear including standard muscle boy buzz cut with the look at me I’m cool sunglasses.
. I’m not sure if his couture was some kind of neo Goth  styling or he was a doorman from another property who was stopping by on his lunch break but I salute his Gothic boldness.
  I don’t smoke but I salute the couple I saw toking huge stogies side by side rockin that cliché Vegas image to good effect
I salute the couple with the wedding party decked out in the 1920s style new York gangster theme even to the point of effecting a fairly accurate New York accent, their Aussie origins only being revealed when one of the party stopped to take bows.
Remember those brightly colored homemade get ups your mother and/or grandmother wore and dressed you in  in the crazy, hazy days of the 1970s. For those of you who are not old enough to remember the 70s fashions take my word for it, they were hideous. but in the bland under and sometimes over dressed ambiance of the early 21st century, I kind of miss it and wish all those bright goofy bigger than life fashions would come back, well except maybe for the puce  leisure suits and disco jogging outfits.
They can stay in the cultural graveyard  along with bad toupees and wide collars and tie dyed mullets.
On the way home another protest sign at a corner of Flamingo and again only the fact they were standing in the street made anybody notice them.

Such is life in the City of Sin.

Til’ nest week

Take Care

Did I mention I hate people who are happy all the time

By Royal Hopper

When was the last time you saw a golfer walking across a Las Vegas swimming pool  in the wee hours of the morning with a look of red eyed hung over determination guarding his precious clubs like a mother bear guarding her cubs.
It’s not all that uncommon here in the city if sin when there is a convention of Scottish cow pasture pool enthusiasts in town. The one fellow I spied appeared to have just checked into the hotel and the only luggage he did not check were the tools of his beloved pass time.
My father was a Golf enthusiast. He even managed a couple of courses when I was young and although my father assures me Golf is a sport, the sports editors of the Orange Leader, the newspaper where I worked for five years, say it is either a pass time or a secret cult on line with the Illuminati, Pyramid Society and the League of Women Voters. (This is Texas keep in mind)

Tall tales in Sin City
One morning I met an older woman who was roaming around the hotel pool. She was 80 at least and had obviously had led a life that was not exactly easy. She said her name was Anita. Anita is German. When she around 10-years old , she and what remained of her family,  found themselves in the Russian sector of a occupied Germany surrounded by Russians who hated them and she says herded them into “camps” in other countries for awhile.
It is a story of hand to mouth existence and of friendly small town folks who helped them have enough  to eat.
The story has faded in memory but she says her family was rescued by what she calls American Daredevils who refused to believe what Soviet officials told them. Because the clear lines of the cold war had not yet materialized and the barbed wire barriers and border guards that would later characterize cold war border tensions were still ten tense years away Anita and her family were saved, rescued from the Russian controlled sector and brought to the west.
As a adult she made her way to Canada where she now lives and  spends part of her Golden Years vacationing in the city of sin and telling bored security guards about her family’s life story.
A quick Google search with the words she gave Glatz the Vertreibung reveals there was a great flight of German settlers from Poland after the war and the Russians did control the eastern sector of her homeland and Poland half of which they conquered in agreement with Adolf Hitler. Life was indeed rough for Germans in the early years after the war the articles say. However I did notice that the last name she gave me, Lasko, was the same as the heater that was sitting next to me. Perhaps she just didn’t really want to be bothered. Perhaps the old memories were just a little to strong  or perhaps she was just eager to flag down the  Mickey Mouse look alike that spent part of the day walking down “The Strip” posing for pictures with eager camera toting tourists.

 Passing out on the sidewalk
This week was a lot like the last week in the City of Sin it was weird. Sunday as the shift started at one local casino a man was discovered passed out on Strip sidewalk. Apparently he and Jack Daniels decided this is far enough and laid down on the side walk to sleep.

This was just to cool to leave out a junction between two towers at one of Sin City’s Landmark                           properties—Photo R.M Hopper                                                                                                               

Odd Couples
Later that day I saw a mother and son standing together.
The son was about ten or twelve maybe thirteen years of age. He had a huge green Mohawk with six inch spikes and Mom for her part seemed fine with it. They were actually a cute couple and I wanted to  snap a picture pf them but by the time I secretly fished my cell phone out of my pocket and turned the camera on they had moved on.
I also noticed that the 70s seemed to be coming back with a vengeance. The same tight fitting fashionable knee length leather coats with the sashes and the dark sun glasses and long straight 70s style hair and boots with high heels that independent women, including a lot of my mothers friends wore in the decade of neon earth tone appliances, bell bottoms Brady Bunch lunch boxes and is officially back in style.
I wonder if my mother still has any of my old bell bottoms.  I could break out the leisure suits and the disco lights or maybe find my old tie dyed Led Zeppelin  T-shirt or Alice Cooper concert tickets.
“You know I was such a boring kid that my parents actually drove me to see “Alice” at the civic center alone and left me there without concern. I hesitated as I got out of the car waiting for the lecture that never came. I actually think I wanted them to lecture me worriedly about the dangers of  smoking weed at the concert.
“We’re not worried our wonderful boring child, you‘ll have a small coke and a bag of peanuts and sit in the back?” their smiles seemed to say and I even moped a bit as they drove away unconcerned…Sigh
Incidentally what does blurble la gundago zonta…mean???  Is it some kind of Stars Wars lingo.
I had a Sin City visitor express those very words to me with great conviction and although I had no idea what he said to me I pointed toward a nearby elevator and said “up there I think.”
It seemed to satisfy his curiosity but he was far to “tired” walk to the elevator. 

 Such is Life in the City of Sin ‘

Til next week

 take care