Heart felt condolences to the families who lost loved ones in this week’s shootout on the Las Vegas Strip. Innocents perished in the hail of bullets an explosion of twisted metal and the glow of the rage of the flame. As usual the City of Sin barely missed a beat.

..Is that what it is — Photo by Royal Hopper

By Royal Hopper

I am going to say something at the end of this first rant and it may surprise. People can be themselves here even for brief periods of time and that’s okay sometimes even cool in a very dorky kind of way. That being said I can begin this week’s blog by say..OMFG

Picture this you at a Sin City casino and a group of people dressed like winged witches, anthropomorphic ponies and heavy metal fairies gather at one end of a large recreational area and start to dance in a huge circle.
Move further down this Las Vegas gathering and imagine a 30-year-old man in with purple bat wings and multicolored tights looking like either a very macho ballet dancer or a very lame superhero with gender identity issues and facial hair.
Imagine a 6 foot 4 inch tall 350 pound version of the Burger King logo walking around with a red spike glued onto his forehead, a guy with a tiger tail attached to his butt, groups of guys with top hats and long cartoon like long coats and OH MY FREAKING GOD a full grown person in a light orange two legged pony suit. There were groups of adult men wearing pony ears and top hats and some of them were in their 60s, a purple wizard strolling down the middle of a Sin City casino and one attractive young woman wearing a bikini covered with ??????
It takes a lot for a Sin City veteran to stop and say OMG. If you live and work in this city you see a lot in short period of time but I got to tell you all the Pony people did it for this Sin City Veteran this week.

Come on I dare ya’ – Photo by Royal

What do you say to a dude, who has the self esteem required to walk into a Sin City casino wearing horse ears and long cape and carrying a huge purse with a pastel pony nestled inside and do it without looking back to see if anybody is staring.
I must be honest fellow Sinners I muttered Oh My Freaking God a couple of times when I thought as what looked like an Queen concert stage hand ( saw them in 82 at the Summit with Billy Squire opening… awesome concert) or a character from an old Flash Gordon movie with pony ears standing guard at the entry point to one gathering.
The few little kids in the area looked on with amazement as their Saturday afternoon cartoon heroes sauntered by desperate in need of a shave, a bath and a freedom from their mother’s basement.

Maybe but you know what they looked like they were having fun and this is Las Vegas and when I had to tell a group of them they couldn’t play in costume it was only because to the best of my knowledge you cant wear masks while you are in a casino in the City of Sin.
Whether your thing is comic books, roller derby, shooting pool, collecting

stamps or dressing like a Pony you will find a place to gather and fellow travelers here in the City of Sin. Oh what the hell does it matter if you don’t hurt anybody.
In other news while some people from the real world were having un fights and pretending to be ponies several Sin City Denizens decided they would sit down on the ground. Last weeks shoeless sitter on the grass at local fast food restaurant returned and was joined by several other fast food lawn sitters several of whom curled up in a ball and went to sleep. They were soon joined by a group of people who looked like they would need convincing that Jerry Garcia had gone the way of Macedonian Dodo bird years ago. Perhaps they were prepping for a convention of their own. because here in Sin City we accept everyone.
Oh we’ll take your money. Sometimes we will laugh at you at you for your uniqueness sometimes we will enforce ancient rules about masks so you don’t get to play Lucky 7s dressed as a horse but it’s not personal. 
We may give you a drink on your way to an AA meeting but we wont reject you and if you got cash and behave a little bit you can express in the city of Sin.

As Sin City finest were still on the boulevard scrambling to untangle the mess of twisted iron and murder people still gambled. They still clutched pictures of naked women, took pictures of fake volcanoes with expensive cameras. They still dressed like cartoon characters and held signs asking for money and wore shorts to a pricey restaurant because they could.
Such is life in the City of Sin.

Rock On Fellow Sinners
And keep on rockin’

PS. Most people come to Vegas to gamble, drink, have sex and do other things naked people do (although gambling naked is kind of looked down on)

I photoshopped this and dropped it back into the post hope you like it

For years people from far away have come to a little town in southern Nevada to roll dice, make money, meet women and get stinking drunk often in that order a for just as long they have come here to draw blood or were simply inspired to do it.

History records that “Long Haired” Sam Brown killed 15 men in the Nevada mining camps before he himself ran into the reaper in 1861.

It wasn’t the first time outsiders have killed each other in the City of Sin and it probably wont be the last but it certainly is the most brazen in awhile and it started with a fight in an unnamed strip hotel….a fight. Seriously get a drink, get a chick, get some smoke or a massage or whatever your poison is and get the hell out of our city.

Life here is a fragile as anywhere, but the city herself is a tough biatch, a battle hardened street urchin that survived the machinations of its gangster and outlaw founders and it will survive this. The city mourns, it revenges if it can and then it moves on. Life is fragile but the City of Sin is not.

Once again I say Rock On Fellow Sinners
And keep on Rockin’

By Royal Hopper

An afternoon drive down Las Vegas Boulevard- Photo Royal Hopper

This week in the City of Sin. I was on my way home one day driving down the boulevard in back of a tourist from somewhere indoor toilets are a fun new thing (don’t ask) I saw a man with a yellow sign strolling down the sidewalk of Sin City’s most famous street.

The sign said and I kid you not…“Kick Me in the Nuts,” I am not making this up. It topped off a long week of slow agonizing weirdness that saw the return of the warm weather weirdoes like the miniature Michael Jackson who strolled down the boulevard one day.
Looking nothing like the late King of Pop this Michael and being a good foot shorter this Michael Jackson look alike who has been spotted on “The Strip” many times before was singing his heart. He was singing out loud regardless of the fact that no one was within earshot. Perhaps he was asking Michael Jackson and from intensity of conversation he was having with himself maybe he got an answer from the great beyond. He did not seem to care what anyone thought and if he was talking on a blackberry the person at the other end was getting an earful of Pop at high volume to be sure.

This is not the Michael Jackson lookalike just a working
man had a call he had to take even while giving away
free gas -Photo by Royal

Now to the topic at hand.

I had something happen this week I have never thought possible. An older woman made off with my reading glasses while my head was turned. I had just finished helping her with something and when I looked up she was nowhere to found. This chick was fast.

You would think a Sin City Veteran like me wouldn’t be surprised by a little bit of perhaps unintentional larceny but I have to tell you I was taken aback by Grandma’s purloining of my Walgreens reading glasses _ and did L mention they are broken.

A-N-T-I-D-I-S-E-S-T-A-B-L-I-S-H-M-E-N-T-A-R-I-A-N-I-S-M

“Ha ha quadruple word score I win,” were the fiercest words heard at one Las Vegas convention. Scrabblers (it is too a word) from all around the country came to Las Vegas to test their word spinning skills at the country’s least rowdy Sin City convention.

The master word smiths stared at each other across the tables like warriors across the field of battle. Well not really most of the time they never looked away from the board. One young lady did glare at her opponent for a minute and he glared back pointing at the Webster’s dictionary near his hand. She huffed a challenge at him at placed a carefully worded triple word score.
It was the nerdiest most pleasant Sin City convention I have ever observed.

Even the junior league basketball convention and the Rubix Cube championships had some controversy and some raised voices and a few drinks here and there. The Comic Book Convention attendees were down right animated at times compared to the Scrabblers.

I mean watching a guy dressed like a Storm Trooper yelling at pretend teen bopper super heroes to keep order in a line of people waiting to price this year’s supply of Xena the Warrior Princess reprints was really exciting….No not really.

Sin City Sidewalk waiters do what Sin City sidewalk waiters do _ they wait-Photo by Royal

Continuing the drive down the boulevard you see a lady with a rainbow skirt. Further down a crowd gathered around a street musician playing an electric fiddle. In other parts of the Sin City Sidewalks color coordinated BFFs flirt with a man in a selling maps, a crowd of ner do wells hands full of open containers of alcohol scatter as a Sin City Cop drives by perhaps unaware no body here really cares, least of all cops tasked with keeping Sin City Sinners on the side of order and law. A cop here cares if you have an Open Bud Light with Sin City mayhem all around him. Seriously.

Spiderman was there and so was Thor and Iron Man also posed for pictures on a Sin City Street decked out in his best armor and a show girl bedecked in red feather costume seven feet across strutted her stuff on the boulevard.

Such is Life in the City of Sin..
Rock On Fellow Sinners
And keep on Rockin

Who comes to Las Vegas to be the best speller

By Royal Hopper

It was super bowl weekend this week in the City of Sin. People were drunk, obnoxious, belligerent and weird. _ and had out lived their usefulness and overstayed their welcome several days before the big event.

In other words it was a normal holiday weekend in the City if Sin.
Some people in 49ers Jerseys walked around looking angry. Those in Raven’s jerseys looked happy and those in Cleveland Browns jerseys looked a little silly…and lost and confused. While others sporting New York Giants were nearly inconsolable when they found the Giants were not even in the big game.

One of my favorite parts of The Strip Photographically speaking- Royal

Some wearing Grateful Dead Ts confessed they had no idea what all the excitement was about but were trying to go along with the spirit of the day everybody else was shouting and screaming. It seemed like the thing to do.
In response to last weeks experimental question of the week there were a few answers. At the end of this missive I will post some of the answers and let you guess which question it was the answer to. Now onto to more important matters.

A little advice to the man who rode down Las Vegas boulevard waving the flags of third world countries, blowing a whistle and waving flags and shouting at wind about his concern about oppressed peoples of the world.
This is Las Vegas dude if your not naked or dressed like a space alien you don’t get much attention much or many high fives. In LA people might say “What is that nut up to? Somebody tackle his sick behind before he gets hit or causes some problem….
In the City of Sin people momentarily look up from reading Sin City business folders full of ads of various of Sin City Excitements and see a crazy guy with flags and a bell and a whistle waving flags and shouting stuff about oppressed peoples of the world ….” and they would pause all of three seconds to ask what he charges to pose for photographs…or maybe ‘Hey look the Luxor has a new show called oppressed peoples of the world.

A tale of two signs- Photo by Royal

What do you think a man who stands by a magazine stand full of free adverts of naked young women dressed in dark clothes and a hat and cliché don’t look at my mustache is up to ????

Is he making plans for the evening ????trying to connect with his favorite girl with the farm animal moniker ..
Picture this. This sneaky guy looks around carefully looking to see if anybody is looking to see him snagging flyers with pictures of naked women on the front and when he is sure no one is looking he snags three as no one in the City of Sin pretends to care. The only thing is the free flyers he snagged were did not contain pics of naked women and were fairly respectable by Sin City standards. He grabbed a copy of City Life, a magazine about gambling and one with assorted Sin City locations listed on its plain unadorned pages.

He pocketed the magazines and trotted onto a waiting bus. Is that sick or what? Is it wrong to sit quietly in your rented room in the City of Sin with a handful of reading material and dark colored clothing that doesn’t attract any attention. Should we call the FBI or what….

Next question??? What do you say to a man who is so drunk he doesn’t remember he checked out three days ago. Get out ??????

Now this is a bad day- Royal

This is the one of the answers…..
Well…do the people in costumes bother you? Generally, I use the Hallmark commercial rule. If you cry during Hallmark commercials, you’re probably too sensitive. (I totally cry at Hallmark commercials. In fact, I even cried during Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey). When you cry over a stop-motion animated character, you are waaaaaaay too sensitive.

What was the question????

There were two other answers that caught my eye. One said hers were just about the right size and the other that pertness and firmness were important…again what was the question ????