A guy sitting on a rock. Don’t ask me why I don’t know _ Photo by Royal Hopper

March Madness and Stuff

by Royal Hopper

A woman pauses in the middle of a phone conversation surrounded by angry intoxicated men who don’t know each other. She curses like a drunken Yankee sailor momentarily look up at the object of her wrath on a video screen more than 100 feet across and 50 feet tall, one of several on the massive video display in the huge cavernous Sin City sports book.

Kind of self explanatory _ Royal Hopper

“&*^%ing Middle Tennessee,” she said uttering a stream of curses under her breath that would have made an old Vegas wise guy blush like 15-year- old prom date.
Once upon a time in the desert thousdands of people gathered in a town dedicated to decadence to drink, bet more than they could afford on games and teams they know nothing about and curse and scream at each other and at the results of their betting.
The Middle of March in called MarchMadness for a reason. There is no more essentially Vegas event than this orgy of betting drinking cursing and regret centered around the NCAA basketball championships. Consider the players are amateurs _ college students who do not get paid for their efforts.

A man at the U Haul _ Royal Hopper

In the City of Sin millions of dollars are bet in a single day at a single book. One gentleman was escorted to a taxi by hotel security with a handful of betting tickets in his hand the visible top two for more $7,000. He was a working man by the look of his clothes and was drunk enough that it took some convincing to assure him he was in fact in Las Vegas and not Boston as he originally thought.
There is something primally attractive to the people of this country about the phony decadence offered by weeks of betting money most of them cannot afford on amateur basketball.
In other events like the Super Bowel where million dollar atheletes get paid a years salary for one game are just an excuse to get drunk for a day scream at the screen like a child _ forget you are a grown up with bills and things to do for a few hours. Every country has a version of this controlled decadencem _ The World Cup, The International Rugby and Criket Championsips and so on …..

Comeback soon to by Royal Hopper

March Madness is something bizzarely American and difficult to explain to someone who has never been in a Sin City sports book when 64 of the nations unpaid college basketball teams play their hearts out for a trophy …..so strangers can bet their life savings on the games.
One wonders what the alien archeologists whp dig up our civilization for study a thousand years from now will think about this. Will they giggle and go back to their starships on their way to the weekly elightenment or will they stop by the space casino and make a parley bet on the spaceship races….
That is life in modern times and life in the City of Sin
Take Care Sinners

Took this from a corner in my subdivision about 100 feet from my house _ photo by Royal Hopper

This was taken at a beach in northern California. Sue me I like birds _ Photo by Royal Hopper