Sometimes the people who find themselves in the Hangover movie paradigm are real issue babies, problem children who probably deserve the scorn you are heaping on them as you read this and little of the envy you may feel when you think about it.

Just so there is no doubt

The Lifestyle
Like the one gentleman a few months ago who stumbled into a local hotel three days after the event he was supposed to be in left town and or the one who crawled into another person’s bed in the wrong hotel and few months after that.
Sometimes they are just ordinary people who found themselves in the one city where they won’t ( did you know wont and aint  are officially proper English now hmm) be judged any harsher than any other hedonist in a town full of them and got in over the heads.
Like the woman whose friends ditched her when he was stone drunk and left her not knowing where her room was, her purse was or the room key she was supposed to have was or the medicine or money she left in the purse was or why she slept in her car the entire night etc etc etc ….
A hint to all you coming to Vegas if you are going to ditch your friend in Vegas make sure they are dozing in the right room in the right bed with the right person  with all their stuff before you leave them its just the right thing to do. It is part of the hedonist code..I think …..
Also this week …..I consider myself to be a calm person not one prone to silly belligerence and quite frankly I am too freakin old to be busting knuckles for the sake of …well anything ….but there are times when it seems the right thing to do.

Arrrgggggggghhhhh

This week I had to tell a cab driver he couldn’t do something. I wont go into detail because its  a workplace policy but this is _ what happened. I had a cab drive up to someplace he wasn’t supposed to be and I had to tell him he couldn’t do,  something he most likely he wasn’t supposed to do.
First this idiot mumbles something I can’t understand and when I get tired of trying to figure out what he is trying to tell me with his Monte Python routine “nudge, nudge, wink wink..you know what I mean ,” no I really don’t dude you cant pick up or drop off here….
Then this genius says no dumb ass I mean …well those of you who understand what it means to work with such people will understand when I tell you I stopped listening right there and told him to move his ass more or less and when he continued to make veiled threats I said either get out of the cab or get out of the garage.
Jmore to the point he said something about “No speakie English,” or some red neck BS.
Just for the record in case I haven’t made it clear I am 50-year old white guy  from Texas with what is quite literally an Anglo Saxon surname. I was born in a town that might accurately be called a modern day Mayberry. You just don’t get any more white bread than me and my family.
I mean I’m so white when I was younger  Ronald Reagan once called me a honkie mo fo. You honkie mo fos are always trying to keep the out of touch middle aged white guy down…
No really  I never met Reagan but when I worked at that newspaper in Texas I once paid a young man musician to help me be cool and have soul.
He took one look at me handed me my money back and said man I cant cure the rain ( see colorful southerner vernacular.

           The new Las Vegas motto–photos by Royal
The point is if you are trying to do something you are not supposed to do and have to ask to do it don’t mumble and don’t tell the red neck security guard you think he is an illegal alien.

This weeks jogger report:
I have always been of the opinion that if you want to look at yourself in the mirror and admire what you see try your bedroom or someone else’s bedroom or the bathroom of whatever useless trendy restaurant you want to overpay for mashed potatoes in.
Jogging past the slightly reflective doors of an older Las Vegas casino staring at your image in the somewhat reflective length of glass at its Las Vegas Boulevard entrance is not cool and its kind of weird. Even if you are minor celebrity and if you happen to be just short of a heart attack stop jogging. There are no security guards on Las Vegas Boulevard to call an ambulance for you if you go unconscious and stop breathing. You are going to die as people fumble for their cell phones and take pictures of you for their facebook page. 

Man up strange looking dude with clothes from an I love the 80s garage sale and tell your wife you have to stop jogging or your going to fall on the ground. Woman up chick with the Kurt Cobain ensemble jogging suit and tell your jock boyfriend with the crew cut and the triathlon T-shirt you cant breathe.
Get a clue drunk guy who clearly doesn’t recognize what city he is in. Pretending to jog because you realize you look weird walking around in a pair of someone else’s female jogging shorts and an unbuttoned $3,000 Armani shirt doesn’t really fool anybody here and more importantly no one here cares.
Just ask the guy who stood at the corner of Flamingo and Pecos in a huge straw hat, long sleeve ladies western wear button up embroidered shorts with pink trim and floppy sandals…..boring and yawn…

Such is life in the City of Sin

Til Next Week

Take Care

I’m a ho when it comes to writing. Give me some cash and a byline and royalties if it applies and you can use me all you want. I walk away with a smile and a wave like any good pro. In other words if I can make money writing I will

 By Royal Hopper

Question how often do you pack up the family and head out for a day on the infamous Las Vegas strip, a day trip to the center of the City of Sin no less and end up shopping for an hour and a half ?
Answer your wife and daughter want to go shopping and manage to drag you along under threats of a chick flick marathons and long sessions of meaningful conversation about feelings, fashions and first times. ( babe remember the first time we….. insert meaningless chick obsessions like the first time we held hands or the first time we watched television or played monopoly arrrrggggghhhhh)

Is this really a problem ????

Themed Shopping in the City of Sin

Las Vegas is home to vast seas of immorality, Disney like adult ( an adult means exactly what you think it does) tourist traps, legendary debauchery, themed gambling halls larger than many towns, prostitutes, billion dollar bets ( not really) and non stop drinking.
It is also the home of the state’s largest Coca Cola store and an M & M emporium that comes complete with a free 3-D movie and two hyper active Mcs . M & M coffee cups, M&M baseball caps, M&M tops bottoms and so on and so on and so on and all the cheesy themed shopping stores you can possible imagine.
  It is a truly bizarre thing to see people who were likely gambling their rent money  and gazing at the cocktail waitress …assets hugging Coca Cola Polar bears, and stuffing  Coca Cola T-shirts, Coca Cola coffee cups, Coca Cola dog tags, key chains, newspapers and machines that make any kind  Coca Cola flavor made in the known world in Coca Cola shopping bags.

The M&M store was truly an interesting experience. The teenie bopper hosts looked and sounded a great deal like living M&Ms and most of the people shopping in the store were well into their 40s. 

 The Pill
Did you ever work with someone or have a customer that made you want to pick up a tire iron and cave their skull in simply by walking in the room or speaking for more than 20 seconds?  It would be a mercy killing you say to yourself as you chant your inner peace mantras and humm you favorite Ozzie song as a way of distracting yourself from what you know is a righteous desire to…I’m going off the rails of a ….see it’s working….

There is an old saying that stress is the mental conflict that occurs when the mind interferes with the bodies desire to strange the crap out someone who desperately deserves it and anyone who works with the public or works with the people who work with the public has to develop the skill of distracting yourself from this righteous rage.
The kind of people who for some reason seem to know your name even though for six months you even see them in the same Vegas casino on a regular basis you thought his name was bald angry fat guy.
This is the kind of person whose own family probably refers to them as the bald angry fat guy. “Were here to see so and so,” ( I still don’t remember his damn name)
I’m sorry I don’t know that person…You know the bald angry guy…” Oh him..I think he went home….
This week alone I can count at least three times when I had to tell a tourist something was closed or moved or they couldn’t park somewhere and had them ask ‘why did they do that???” I suppose referring the magical fairies who make all the decisions at to hotels in the City of Sin.
You want to say something like, “you know its all my fault. I knew you out of the millions of tourist who come to this city every year were coming here from Okawalaphodog and did all this just to piss you off. Or maybe …Dude I’m dressed in a polyester uniform that hasn’t been in style since disco was hot and new and lava lamps were cool how much do you think people who own this hotel tell me .

 Las Vegas on the run. No not really I was just experimenting with the focus

       Photos R.M. Hopper

The jogger report
This weeks jogger report. The number of people jogging down Las Vegas Boulevard increased by the inverse of ooh my freaking God how OCD do you have to be to travel hundreds maybe thousands of miles to the City of Sin to go jogging.
Not that I mind watching the better looking lady joggers and you can always tell the real runners from the fakers like me who look at old pictures of themselves in military uniforms   and forget that it isn’t 1986 and hasn’t been for a long time.

 The real runners have thick well muscled legs and actually look good in running shorts. The fakers among us will pretend to run for a couple of blocks get that to hell with this look and then pretend they were actually just trying to catch the bus or beat the light crossing the street and just didn’t make it. I swear I saw one guy holding a soda and running suddenly cut across the intersection so he could pretend that’s what he wanted to do all along and he wasn’t jogging down a deserted Vegas road in the wee hours of the morning and ran out of gas.
Also in the City of Sin a lonely plastic mini bottle of Vodka was spotted sitting on the window sill where it was deposited the night before a lonely metaphor for this city, the city of Sin. Like Sin City this tiny bottle of booze is cheap, cheesy potent and powerful, brightly colored and difficult to ignore but in the end all about the fun and payment and regretting tomorrow…. tomorrow …..

Such is Life in the City of Sin

Til Next week

Take care

By Royal

 Think about the City of Sin inundated with waves of pony tailed marijuana fans, T-shirt salesman hocking shirts bearing iconic portraits of world leaders, people shucking and jiving for money, shoving their resumes in people faces and important people rallying their troops for an  barrage of upcoming November battles.
That’s exactly what happened this week as Clark County’s ( that the county where Las Vegas is) version of the democratic convention. 
“End our Calamitous War on Drugs Re-legalize Hemp to Create Jobs Fund Gifted Education Fully Support Our Veterans,” read one sign posted in the Convention Hall on behalf of congressional candidate Stephen Frye.
While Beau Biden ( a military vet) wowed the democratic crowd with a warnings about how the role of government in this nation will be shaped by the next election Las Vegas continued to be Las Vegas.

The Vegas Dilemma Beer Versus Light Beer photo RM Hopper

In Vegas all things cheesy and out of date, naked and/or drunk are not looked down upon. In the city that gave you Metal Elvis, Karate Elvis,  Asian Elvis and Impressionist Elvis ( I kid you not) the same city which gave you burlesque Pirates, phony volcanoes and streets full of cartoon characters, the same city where old acts go to die (just ask Andrew Dice Clay)  people who live in the past are celebrated, cheered and even admired.
So in light of this I have something to say to the gentleman who came to Vegas rocking that late 70s stoner chic look, salt and pepper pony tail, stoner T-shirt, bell bottoms and all.
“While pony tails and bell bottoms don’t go with gray hair, seriously dude as someone who had 17 Ocean Pacific T-shirt as a teen including a purple one the seriously don’t) Rock on 70s stoner dude…”
When I was 17-years-of age lots of guys had long hair feathered in the sides and often wore Ocean Pacific T-shirts long bell bottoms blue leans, pony tails and manly looking 70s style mustaches and flip flops, but I haven’t been 17 for 33 years and the look is over my friend trust me. That being said if that is how you Roll and more importantly how you roll then I say again Rock on 70s Rocker dude ( actually I was never really a stoner my parents were strict and my old man ran the best scary strict dad routine on the Gulf Coast.)
There is an old saying in Las Vegas I may have had some part in beginning (okay maybe its not that old) Lots of people here talk to themselves its not a big deal. The problem comes when you answer yourself especially if you answer yourself in a different voice like the gentleman I saw walking down Flamingo Road in Sin City this week. He was having a hell of an argument with some invisible friend or another and from the looks of it the invisible friends was winning the argument, of course he could have been a really scruffy badly dressed  ghost whisperer with a stubborn ghostly client but I kind of doubt it. Or another very young attractive woman who among other things stood in the lobby of a local hotel giving directions to people who hadn’t asked for them and who weren’t going in that particular direction.  
Along that same vein I have noticed yet another trend in couples more specifically when same friends go out there is trend for one to be dressed to the nines and the other to look what might be generously described as frumpy.  Guys sometimes call this the wingman theory. Perhaps the theory is that if one of them looks sharp dressed and the other looks like a six year old on his first sleepover the sharp looking one may score as the guys in my generation put it.
Of course this belies the fact that you see many female friend couples dressed in the same paradigm. I wonder if this paradigm applies to those people like the gentleman above who have conversations with imaginary friends. Is the imaginary friend better dressed than their frumpier more tangible buddies.

The afternoon commute home from the City of Sin because its cool

and this is my blog. Photos by Royal

Ah well we can only assume that somewhere in the far flung future some far wiser, far more famous and better dressed pop philosopher will provide the long awaited answer to this riveting question.

Such is life in the City of Sin

Til Next Week

Take Care

This weeks jogger report….
I swear I saw a jogger running with a cup of coffee in his hand. Maybe it was water but it sure looked like coffee. Now that’s a feine head (caffeine lover)
Anyone so determined to have that first drink of caffeine laden coffee in his hand when he is ready that he brings it with him on the morning jog is a dedicated feine head. Sin City might run on ego, alcohol and hormones but it survives the morning on coffee, old music and bad lighting.

Self Explanatory---Photo R.M. Hopper

 Self explanatory —Photo R.M. Hopper

“Do you want another card sir?…Sir do you want another card?”   “One minute,” might be the response as he takes a huge gulp of coffee looks at the woman beside him and asks “who are you???”  No not really..well sort of …

This week in the city of Sin I discovered long shaggy dye jobs are not just for chicks anymore. I saw a young man with a really attractive woman  on his arm and bright blue dyed hair walking across a local casino. For a moment I thought he was a giant life sized blue haired Cupie troll doll or a well dressed Anime character.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=troll+dolls

I think he was Canadian or a mutant same thing really. Canadians are always trying to swim when locals consider it freezing cold and passing out from heat exhaustion on pleasant 100 degree Southern Nevada summer days.

You see a lot of working girls here in Las Vegas, and no I don’t mean working girls, I mean working girls. After awhile you can spot some of them. They dress differently and know how to walk down a busy city street in six inch heels without tripping and falling on their ass, no mean feat.

Pun intended….. One morning, very early in the morning, I saw a woman dressed in a striped form fitting disco evening gown with wild frizzed hair, that was a little flat in the back if you get my drift.
It could be she was a rabid Tina Turner fan rocking that retro look at 6:00 a.m. or a business woman with shockingly bad taste in clothes and make up getting her groove back  but probably not. She was stumbling a little as she walked and I can only guess that she had a busy night.

Silliest crimes of the week. Someone at a local casino risked the wrath of the Buddha by trying to take pennies from a small shrine of the same sitting on  a table near a group Asian themed table games and one woman bummed a cigarette from a tourist and then quizzed the poor man on his life, saying she wanted to get to know him. They both smoked after all and had so much in common.
This tourist who I will call Starchild after my late mother-in-law a genuine Starchild for the New Age who will be very much missed, later stood facing the sharp, gusting winter wind blowing that day, spreading her arms wide holding her open palms to the wind and closing her eyes as if to truly feel the wind and embrace it like a loved one.
I have one thing to say about that. “Rock on Starchild,”  If makes you feel, if it helps you deal, if it sees you through the day, don’t change, or sway . If that’s the weirdest thing you do in this city of sin, your not all that weird no way…..

Such is Life in the City of Sin

Til next Week

Take Care

PS I just heard that Nevada is the first state to approve self driving cars. Scary thing