Mickey, Mini, the Hulk and the Captain ….Photo by Royal

The Art of Being Confused in the City of Sin

By Royal Hopper

What The ?????

Question: How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? Lets find out.

I know what you are thinking. I know the thoughts that are crossing your mind right now. They are probably like the kind of like the thoughts in the mind of the drunk trying to stagger across Las Vegas Boulevard in the middle of the day only to look up and see a car bearing down on him as he stumbled your thinking W.T.F. which stands for Wonderful Totally Fine or Wonderful Teutonic Fox. No I’m sure it does.. You see WTF what the ****..ohh never mind. Anyway on to the Tootsie Pop.

There are a lot of commonly occurring mental conditions here in the City of Sin with one of the most prevalent being cognitive dissonance called in Sin City parlance the What The F***  ( What do you want from me? My Mom might read this.)

WTF 1 Giant Neon Funk Rock Chick

People or places that do not match up to stereotypes or do match up in unexpected ways can cause serious cognitive dissonance  It just means that the reality you are confronted with your established mental image.
Kind of like the time I saw a cute pair of legs pair of shapely legs in bright neon leotards coming around the corner and prepared to be wowed by female femaleness ( I looked it up it is a word)

Now what do you think I said or thought when I saw this pair of shapely legs in bright neon leotards coming around the corner and then stepped back as the legs and their owner stepped around the corner with her I miss 80s Funk Rock, Rick James was a God  posse trailing closely behind her. You guessed I said or rather thought WTF. This chick, (and I’m giving her, him, they or whatever the benefit of the doubt because there was a lot)  was 6 foot 9 inches at least not counting the sic inch platform shoes she stole from her grandmothers disco will never die wardrobe closet.
He, she, they smiled at me which was the polite thing to do and I am not to proud to admit this really spooked me a little.

WTF 2. The Cute Cable Guy Couple
These days seeing two guys holding hands is no big deal unless you live in Tehran. …and is certainly not completely unusual in the city of Sin.

Im not sure what your mental image of two guys holding hands is but when you see two 450 pounds plaid clad bohunks who look more like Larry the Cable Guy than RuPaul or Liberace it does cause your mental WTF meter to go off like a hurricane.
Guys who look like they could wrestle grizzly bears and eat 20 Big Macs for breakfast are not generally who you picture walking hand in hand through a Sin City casino. Am I wrong about that ?
They didn’t seem to care what anybody thought about it because I’m guessing they were both close to a quarter ton and outweighed everyone around them,  including the two body builders carrying their young children through the casino in cutie pie back packs,  by at least 200 pounds.
Las Vegas boulevard is not the place you expect to see street preachers standing at attention with their arms upraised in a bright red suit but he was there all week just down the street from the fountain show at the Belagio. He stood there just down the sidewalk from the guy selling bottled water or rather re-bottled water and across the street from the man dressed in orange from head to toe.

This week one Sin City denizen seemed to determined to win an argument with herself. This person told onlookers she was solving a murder that had occurred and wanted to know where she could go to broadcast her findings and then continued to berate the invisible friend that seemed to doubt her theories.

A man who staggered across the street into traffic was surprised when he was actually hit by a car, a man sold tap water to tourist watching a fountain show and other posed with Mickey Mouse, The Incredible Hulk and Captain America in front of fake Roman cityscapes, fake volcanoes, fake pirate lagoons while women wearing feathers and a large weight lifter dressed like a toddler tease and flirt with them.

Such is Life in the City of Sin
Rock On Fellow Sinners

Later