Month: January 2013

Discussion questions of the week experiment ….Why or why not ???? If one catches fire well go into detail about it…

Proposed questions

Should Marijuana be legalized ?????
Are tattoos respectable now?? 
Are people who wear costumes and pose for pictures businessmen or annoyances ????
How sensitive is to sensitive ????
What do we do about the homeless ????
What is the perfect breast like ????


 May I have some propane please or pass the sarcasm I think its going to rain

by Royal Hopper

It was gray and balmy in the City of Sin this week. There were actually clouds in the sky and one Sin City denizen, perhaps confused by the cloud filled sky was heard to mumble “I am in Baltimore,” and then add something about 1974 and dancing the night away as he murmured the words to a Bee Gees singing song along with the Nirvana song that was actually playing on the loudspeaker nearby like he really was in Baltimore in 1974.

If your certain of a thing and happy about it and no one else cares does reality matter ???? _ not in the City of Sin apparently.
The man sniffed the air looking for all the world like a six foot tall unwashed bipedal poodle as the rare desert rain drenched the City of Sin and him and the imaginary Bee Gees to.
There were clouds in Sin City for heavens sake, lots of them.

More about the weather, Tattoos, Models and signs

I must be honest I was confused for awhile. I kept looking for the hula girls convinced that I had somehow been transported from the desert southwest to a tropical Island like Hawaii without my knowledge _ but no it was just boring old Las Vegas..
_ Boring old Las Vegas full of the usual suspects, locals snickering at the tourists while they adjusted their Elvis costumes and fluffed up their Popeye the sailor hats, “news stands advertising the services of local clothing optional entertainers and tourists from Minnesota enjoying the balmy late winter weather and ignoring the freezing rain and polite homeless people humming to themselves as they walked down the avenue.
It was apparently it was full of respectable women wearing tattoos.
One of the modified women stopped by a local casino and explained that this group of tattooed women meet periodically to work for charity and debunk the myth that all women covered with tats (modified women) are crazy, trashy or wild.
Damn …another deeply held childhood fantasy bites the dust.
Also what do tall lanky bikini models have to do with selling furniture. I don’t have a clue and I don’t think the people walking around the convention where the furniture sets were being displayed did either because very few of them looked at the furniture.

Later on in the week I saw a man sitting on the sidewalk in the rain with a sign painted in red letters pleading for help looking so sad it almost stopped traffic. The red magic marker letters on the sign had begun to run in the misty wet weather. It could have said. Please help _ hungry or Pause hop Hunger a new Neo Punk that I hear is very good. It was hard to tell with the rain continuing to blur the letters on his homemade sign.

One of my favorite homemade Sin City signs was one that read Gas or Propane.

I suppose the owner arrived in Sin City from Tennessee, South Dakota or some other benighted hinterland and discovered

I saw other Sin City Denizens pushing shopping carts so full of their meager possessions they git in each others way. One was so polite as to signal turns and lane changes as to warn fellow sidewalk travelers as he made their way down the Sin City sidewalks navigating his stainless steel homes on wheels…..Imagine a man pushing his cart up a steep sidewalk and being polite enough to signal other shopping carts on the sidewalk he was turning into their lane….

In closing I would like to tell a story about brain suckers

Once my daughter got in trouble at school when she played the brain sucker joke on another kid at school. Apparently the young man in question thought she was serious when she said she was going to suck his brains out through her fingers and she was “asked” to apologize to the young man. (Future Sarah Palin voter maybe)
At the time she was in second grade. Do you ever get the feeling the world never really left second grade _ that what it needs is a sense of humor, a freakin time out, a bottle of happy pills and a grade A psychiatrist. Doctor Phil where are you????
My daughter was confused by the incident to her pretending to suck someone brain out through your fingertips was just to silly to be taken seriously. It was just performance art, a harmless joke a G-rated Halloween prank foe heavens sake.
My daughter was confused but apologized as she was asked.
Some weeks in the City of Sin are like my daughter’s elementary school of those many years ago. It is like an elementary school only with hookers, big hatted tourists from Montana, miles of overpriced restaurants and guys named Gus asking for your spare change, slot machines, 24 hour gambling and enough alcohol to drown Atlantis _ again.

Ahhh well. Driving down LV BLVD in Sin City on a balmy Monday you spot a man with a long beard dressed in red with his hand literally out for hours. Down the road a man stands by those infamous Sin City news stands as if he is refilling them …for two hours he just stares at different machines. Occasionally he turns around to hand one of the flyers to a passerby as if to say this is a good one check it out and goes back to stare at his work.

Such is life in the City of Sin
Rock On Fellow Sinners
And keep on Rockin’
Until your under the rock

by

When are you to weird to be yourself

or Being who you are in the City of Sin

By Royal Hopper

Is it when you are so into your own inner voice you argue with yourself ???
Is it when a dude in his 60s mistakes you for a woman when you are begging for money and admit in bold print you’re too stupid to be a thief.

The sign this man was hold read…To dumb to steal and
to ugly to prostitute…I miss my camera but yes this
photo is by Royal

Driving down a Sin City street this week I saw a homeless man twirling the homemade sign he had fashioned to attract donations and waving at passersby standing in the middle of the intersection.
The sign read and I kid you not: To Dumb to steal and to ugly to Prostitute… To weird to be yourself ????hmmmmmm

You gotta admire the amount of humility and honesty it took to make much less display that sign on a Las Vegas street………..and at least the guy had a decent pan handling work ethic and had developed a certain twirling skill with the sign he so boldly displayed but you know.

Just up the road another financially challenged individual rested in between desperate pleas for assistance by laying down on the median in the middle of the road to nap until the changing of the traffic and groups of rush hour commuters once more drove past his work station. At times his the sign he carried shouting his plight to the world shaded his face from the sun.
When your tired your tired I guess even if there is no convenient bed for you to rest your head on. To weird to be yourself or just tired and hung over.

Nearby a man sat on the sidewalk near a Las Vegas Boulevard street corner his dark shaggy head of hair and wild shaggy beard bobbing periodically as he snapped his head down to his chest and back up again. Was he tired and nodding off in between asking invisible strangers for beer money or was he having an argument with himself and was so pissed at himself that he was shaking his head as he cursed at himself.

I took this with my cell…I miss my camera – was he resting or just whatever – by Royal

Nearby a financially challenged individual, his long white beard actually blowing in the wind as he stood on the street corner who looked like nothing had bothered him in decades looked bothered. When you are scary enough to worry the scary guy you have accomplished something. To weird to be yourself.

All these guys maybe should have thought about not being themselves for awhile but hold on a minute for the pieste resistance

Musical interlude
Ziggy played guitar jamming good with With and Gillie and the Spiders from Mars……
Rebel Rebel ,…you’ve torn your dress …rebel rebel your face is a mess

Something that I saw in my Sin City travels this week made me think one of the infamous Ziggy Stardust one of singer David Bowie stranger stage personalities and I was just going over a bunch of old David Bowie songs in my head trying to figure out which one inspired a local hotel guest to boldly display his bleach blonde Ziggie Stardust mullet, lipstick and T-Rex fashion statement. This gentleman who will remain nameless for obvious reasons asked for assistance in a domestic dispute he was having with his boyfriend.

Another Sin City show off displaying his inner Bowie for all to see. (Those of you who don’t remember David Bowie’s Ziggie Stardust persona et al look it up on You Tube) To Ziggy Stardust weird to be yourself ?????:?

These two City of Sin Residents were probably not discussing this topic. I took this one with my real camera before it was violated and ceased to work.

           Is their a time when your to weird to be yourself ????What do you think 

          All in all the best behaved people in the City of Sin were the guys with the guns. A group of cowboy action shooter quietly rode in and out of town with their six shooters and Winchesters in tow. Such is life in the City of Sin …

Rock On Fellow Sinners and remember only you really know if you are to weird to be yourself

Jogging Report: In jogging news …with the weather starting to warm up the real runners are becoming fewer and the look at me I am pretty people are beginning to filter back to the City of Sin.

by

Sin City silliness and My People Leave town

By Royal Hopper

Looking for stuff in the gray areas outside the City of Sin _ Photo by Royal

As someone who once owned three leisure suits and several pairs of bell bottoms I know a great deal about the Nerd and Geek subcultures..(snort..snort ….snort….) As someone who was once told by a good looking woman that he was hot and replied no actually its quite cool in here …I know a great deal about the Nerd and Geek subculture.

It is in light of that I would like to correct a serious, serious mistakes. Last week I told you about how the City of Sin was invaded by Nerds of the Consumer Electronics Show.

Nerds ( my people) check out the City of Sin on a gray chilly Day _ Photo Royal

This was a mistake. The majority of the brainy hedonist invading the City of Sin were not in fact Nerds. They were Geeks. A serious mistake that a someone very familiar with both Nerd and Geek culture I should have been aware of. (Ducking the flurry of hand sized consumer electronics being thrown at me).

A note to all visitors to the City of Sin. Walking down Las Vegas Boulevard with your convention tags hanging around your neck doesn’t make you look cool or keep you from looking like a Nerd just because several hundred people or even several thousand people are doing the same thing.

A Sin City Street early in the morning

A Sin City Street early in the morning

Imagine the group of CES (Consumer Electronics conventioneers I saw striding down the Boulevard this week thought they were really cool. They were good sized guys (why are you giggling) on and as they strode down The Strip with their convention Ids blowing wind and their trendy thrift shop attire drawing attention from several people in the area and thought these are the cool people, the pretty people… the hip people.

Then I overhead a piece of a conversation the men were having with each other. One of them was telling the others about the history of the building they were passing and the other actually appeared interested.

“My people,” I thought as the group of Geeks and Nerdswalked past me. I watched them leave secure in the knowledge that I had been with a woman several times and had a teenaged daughter to prove it. (snort …snort…snort) I wanted to warn them stay away from the girls named after forest animals, months of the year or high cholesterol foods or deserts like Bambi April May Sorbet but I fear they didn’t listen.

 

Further down the strip a large group of men decided they had nothing to do all sat down in one spot, a man stood alone taking photographs are clearly wanting to be seen doing it.

In one section of the strip a man lectured a group of other tourists at least one of whom was Australian judging by his accent and didn’t understand a word. In anothera gray haired grandma sported a pink tight fitting leather jacket, Go Go boots and a go to hell handbag and somehow managed to pull it off.

Treasure Island. I worked there for awhile before they had
such a snazzy sign —Photo by Roy 

 

This  is a conversation I overhead this week in a City of Sin hallway.

There were two voices and they were audible through a wooden door 15 feet away in a place I will not reveal.
“It’s just inevitable we would get tired of it. I’m not saying I am but …there it is …” said a male voice.
Some of the words were muffled but that was the gist of it. Then the voice added. “I enjoy the sh** out of hopping into bed and feeling your breasts rub up against me…” the voice then said. I gotta be honest with you I don’t want to know but I thought you would enjoy that tidbit.

Such is life in the City of Sin

Rock On Fellow Sinners

Bell bottoms are to coming back in style…they are damn it

Jogger Report:
I’m not sure I understand why people jogging down the boulevard when it is freezing cold wear shorts but hey…

GEDSC DIGITAL CAMERA

Kiss my butt

by

Questions of the week and Invasion of the Nerds

..A picture poser poses for pictures on Las Vegas Boulevard Monday – Photo Royal

By Royal Hopper 

 This week hordes of tech savvy hedonists pushed up their pocket protectors adjusted their glasses gulped down their $6 lattes and headed to the City of Sin joining thousands of other hedonists braving what passes for winter in southern Nevada.

 Questions appeared to be the order of the week in the City of Sin.
One particular gentleman visiting the City of Sin during this frozen week in Sin City was determined to find the answer to a question that was wracking his ethanol soaked brain.
Where the bus to Los Angeles? “ he asked .

He asked that burning question nodding his head squinting at me through a haze of Jack Daniels and sleep deprivation and then shook his head like he understood and wandered off to find his bus.
He repeated this process several times over a period of an hour or so perhaps unaware that he was asking the same person the same question. Each time wandered off in the same direction and came back to ask that same burning question.
When he came back the last time he appeared to recognize me …I mean the person he had been talking too, and asked me to repeat the directions I had given him.
He shook his head in agreement perhaps mumbling oh good its you gain those other two guys were idiots.

A cowboy takes in the sights on the LV boulevard
Monday and is confused ???? – Photo by Royal

 

What do you say when you see a gaudily dressed woman wearing a short skirt on a cold winter’s day heavily made up throw something at a man who shies away not only from her aim but the glances of passersby?
You may call it domestic disagreement or a little to much to drink on last night’s dinner date. I call it a labor dispute. Princess as I will call the young woman was assaulting a physical strong looking guy and was clearly pissed about something.
She followed him down the Boulevard throwing random objects at him and giving him a look that scared even this Sin City veteran a little. 

I’m guessing the young woman in question was a pro and the gentleman in question was her uuhhh uhhhhhh Boss or procurer shall we say. It was clear she was not happy with her working conditions or pay and followed him around the corner continuing to throw things at him until they disappeared out of sight.

A few moments later she came around the corner and stood hands on hips at the front of one local casino still fuming about something for several minutes before shaking it off and turning back to the boulevard and then looking indoors as if to decide where she was going to work the next shift and then Princess yawned and went back inside.

 Early in the afternoon a drive down Las Vegas boulevard headed south reveals many things. As you head south two men sit near a corner of one ancient casino with no apparent purpose. A little further down the road the person posing as Bumblebee continued his afternoon poses, near feather clad “Chorus Girls” posing for onlookers and yet further a cowboy stares out at the infamous Boulevard clearly confused by the sights and sounds of Sin City’s neon jungle and the costumes worn by its denizens.
Further down the road a couple faces off in front of the Miracle Mile shopping center in Planet Hollywood obviously pissed at each other. The man wears the trademark side curls or Peyot that is often worn by Chasidic Jews (spelling ???I Googled it ) and in other places the couple might have drawn some attention but not in the City of Sin.

Las Vegas Boulevard

 Here only the shutterbug former small town reporter stuck in traffic on the way home from his job in a Sin City casino who missed his turn off notices the couple screaming at each other.

A man holds a sign another takes his expensive tie off and puts it in his pocket another man sifts through a garbage can for a still steaming cup of coffee and a generous tourist surrenders hers to a less fortunate man walking past hers without being asked.

Such is life in the City of Sin
Rock on Fellow Sinners
Til next time

The Song Remains the Same in the City of Sin

Happy 2013 From the City of SIN

New Years Eve, as I exited the Las Vegas Interstate I routinely take to work officially leaving the pleasantly boring confines of the suburbs on my way to spend the day at a Las Vegas casino I saw what looked like a ghost.

Actually I saw a forlorn man holding a sign to my left and an SUV behind me.
The man stood stock still and straight as a plank seemingly frozen in place like a scarecrow in dirty, gray well worn sweats. He stood at attention with his six inch piece of hand cut piece of cardboard blaring a message of desperation my middle aged eyes could not make out without putting on the reading glasses in my pocket. The image was so powerful I was going to take a picture and post it with this blog when the light changed and the demands of traffic, everyday life and employment overrode the demands of art and statement.

One of Sin City’s sign holding denizens from a photo taken in late December. Not the person I saw this week….Photo by Royal

Further down the road I spied a nice looking couple dressed to the nines in holiday silliness paper hats, expensive jewelry and all. Sometimes you can tell its an act…Sometimes you can tell there is no true desperation, but this guy looked like the shadow of reaper himself. If it was act he should really get an agent and start showing up for casting calls in Hollywood because man he looked like a ghost in the making.
No punch line just an observation and my only mildly activist statement for this first day of the New Year.

The Song Remains the Same in the City of Sin

by Royal Hopper 
As I stood on Las Vegas boulevard in the cold waiting for the countdown to the New Year to start, I looked around at the sea of party hats, costumes, blinking neon glasses on the closed off boulevard waiting what amounts to a huge street party gathering for New Years Eve in the City of Sin.

There was also some guy from Germany who thanked everybody he saw for the good time he had in the City of Sin, ( I didn’t want to know what that meant and still don’t.) I paused to think. No not really its was just freaking cold and my mind started to wander and think about the week and the year.

An improving economy put a small dent in the unemployment rate here in Sin City not a big one, in fact it was a tiny one and home foreclosures went down a little. Home prices went up a little and the fashion sense of the area’s homeless improved considerably.
This week in the week leading up to the New Year I finally saw something in Vegas I had never seen before. I saw a man striding down Las Vegas boulevard with a carpet on his back.
I mean to say he was wearing a carpet like a pancho, like a big blanket draped over his shoulder trying to keep warm I suppose or perhaps modeling the latest in used area carpets for joggers on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Two men, perhaps Thrift Store employees arrange a thrift store sign on a Sin City street in late December_ Photo by Royal

Still it has been a rough year for the City of Sin.

We were invaded time and time again by cowboys, drill teams of pool playing malt liquor fans, and punk rock grannies.
Roller Derby girls. hordes of mullet wearing, gray-haired hippies named Frank and hordes of younger Hipper hedonists who made fun of them while they pushed up their Faux hawks, adjusted their $300 sun glasses and gave their kids a quarter to play the nearest slot machines were among the waves of invaders.
It is a rule in the City of Sin that many. Many of its visitors are lost in time and space and meaning and 2012 was no exception. Many mullet wearing Sin City Denizens were sighted wearing that decades bright colors and others seem to have forgotten The Ramones and The Clash disbanded years ago.
They wore real brightly colored Mohawks in the absence of any evidence that anybody much under the age of 45 would do anything but giggle at them. The guy in the Led
We saw a a Diamond David Lee Roth wannabe bringing the 80s alive and New Years Eve a guy with a Zepplin T-shit with the gray almost white pony tail continued this questionable tradition.
There were at least five Elvis sightings the night of the New Year so don’t expect this tradition to discontinue anytime soon.

Incidentally what do you tell a hotel guest who smokes so many Doobies ( 70s slang for Ganja, Chronic, Grass, etc etc) that their pot smoking neighbor complains about the smoke. Do you a.) kick him out of the hotel, b.) lecture him about courtesy to his neighbors in a non smoking section of the hotel or cal the police and let them handle it. The proper City of Sin answer is none of the above…You check to see if he has space on his credit card for a surcharge that he eventually agrees to pay.

One of Las Vegas infamous yellow news stands- Photo by Royal

 Being rolled is not a good thing

Being rolled in Las Vegas is not a good thing.  It doesn’t mean you had a roll in the hay or are rolling in dough. It means you took a girl to your room and she said something like “honey why don’t you take a shower and I’ll wait here for you. and you believed her .

Of course when you got out of the shower she was gone with your money, your Id and your ID by the way and your car keys and  eventually your car. It is an old Vegas story that has been going on for years and years and years. Here’s a clue boys and girls and yes it does sometimes happen to girls too. You are not all that. You are not so irresistible that the Pros just want to cuddle up to you because your so hot or you look like the favorite poodle. If they get a chance, the denizens of Sin City will rip you off.

People had fun this week. They stole carpets to sleep in, they stole money from each other and stared at dancers butts while their wives and husbands were

getting tickets to the late show. People in wheelchairs toting oxygen bottles were pushed to slot machines by family members and very little of consequence changed in the life of the City of Sin.

Rock on fellow Sinners and
And may your 2013 be peaceful, prosperous and plentiful

  

Jogger report:
There weren’t many joggers this week. As the temps got colder the fair weather runners moved indoors to watch reruns of Lord of the Rings and all but the most serious of fitness freaks stayed away.

A few links from my email about this year

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/12/28/168216488/episode-426-the-rest-of-the-story-2012-edition?sc=nl&cc=pmb-20121229

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/12/28/168216488/episode-426-the-rest-of-the-story-2012-edition?sc=nl&cc=pmb-20121229

https://www.thisispersonal.org/top-five-best-and-worst-moments-womens-reproductive-health-2012?no_overlay=1

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/01/01/168345158/2012-in-review-50-wonderful-things-from-the-year-in-pop-culture?sc=nl&cc=msb-20130101