By Royal Hopper

At one Las Vegas casino a desperate patron asks hotel employees to help find his wife. She is elderly and frail and has Alzheimer’s he explains and he won’t know what to do if he doesn’t find her. He is desperate.

“Have you seen my wife/husband,” I haven’t heard from them in hours and they never do this,” are words I have heard a hundred times in my 14-year off and on association with the city of Sin. Usually Ma or Pa or boyfriend is passed out in a random sports book or playing back all the money he or she won playing black jack for 12 hours straight or just lost track of time. Now to this weeks theme….

Last week giggling was the order of the day everybody was giggling. This week the giggling turned into full force from the belly laughing and they did it in pairs sometimes at each other sometimes at the air.
Couples are a fact of life in the City of Sin. Everyone in Vegas who doesn’t live behind a dumpster or sit in a corner muttering to themselves has a wingman or a couple of wingmen. Anyone who comes here alone or in very large groups are usually troubled or in trouble or causing trouble or looking for trouble like the man who got peed on while solo sun bathing in the middle of the night by some equally lone wolf who for some reason decided a peeing out a convenient window was easier than walking an extra four or five yards to the bathroom was to much trouble or the woman so desperate for companionship she reported she was assaulted at a gaming table when incontrovertible evidence shows she was there alone.
It’s just the way things work here.

Sometimes couples make sense like the cute older couple who spent ten minutes at a local casino staring at menu posted on the wall reminding each other that the other did and didn’t like to eat. Others not so much. I don’t usually judge anyone on looks but when one member of a couple looks like the creature from the black lagoon in heels and the other looks _ well normal you gotta wonder. Hats off sister you must be caged dynamite behind closed doors because you like a Freakin’ Klingon in public.

Couples include friends like …
One young man dressed all in black yuppie gear was seen stumbling across a half empty parking lot started to laugh so hard that even his intoxicated wingman stared at him incredulously.
He was staring at his wingman because he was laughing out loud at imaginary people when they are stumbling across an empty parking lot in the middle of the night?? What makes someone want to be friends with them.
“Dude you got issues,” the friend said as he himself began to laugh uncontrollably perhaps encouraged by what Carrie Nation and her crew would have called the demon Jack Daniels.

About the older man looking for his wife. Casino personnel undertook a search for the man’s wife and did indeed find her stumbling around the casino with no idea of where she was or who she was. They brought her back to her husband and in spite of not knowing her own name she knew his and according to witnesses spent several minutes hugging and adjusting each other’s clothing. Accounts say that every eye in the area was fighting back tears of awe which amazed the wife because she didn’t remember who they were.

Las Vegas Boulevard through a dirty windshield on the rare chili day _ Photo by Royal
A grown man walks into a respectable bar and drop his pants in front of dozens of stunned patrons including two buddies and a table full of children and be surprised when someone wants to kick his ass. A man in a hotel room gets so angry at a picture hanging on the wall that he punches it with all his might and ends up bleeding all over the carpet needing medical attention. People who barely know each other got married. Prostitutes rolled guests and on at least one occasion the guest rolled the prostitutes.

An old couple walking their dogs _ Photo by Royal

Such is life in the City of Sin
As long as heart matters
As long as neon shines
As long as Elvis plays a second show

Rock on Fellow Sinners

Jogger report: This week Las Vegas Boulevard was closed off for a marathon. I didn’t watch because even watching people run that much makes me tired.