Could it be that our real existences can frighten us deeper than what imaginations may conjure?
Atmospheric movies and artful live stagecraft can make flesh crawl. Or even startle audiences out of their skins. Continue reading Monstrosities
Category Archives: Lost Wages
Some Found a Land of Dust and Disappointment
In Las Vegas, it’s easy to differentiate pensioners who retired from the main industry apart from those who flocked here thinking the city would be golden in their Golden Years. That also goes for locals who spent their lives here making livings in the region’s other professions.
Gray hairs who had spent lives bolstering our nation’s one-time industrial prominence and former service personnel who spent careers in the military predominate the second category.
A third bunch grew up in Las Vegas. They stayed, found careers here outside the neon, the noise, the notoriety. Through everyday satisfactions they were contented. Continue reading Some Found a Land of Dust and Disappointment
Brightened Horizon
Heard one of the sweetest sounds ever when I returned from work. The complex’ custodian was power-washing the courtyard pavement. Continue reading Brightened Horizon
Reemergence Maybe
Perhaps this last weekend of May 2022 is the one that finally returns the visiting hordes who once flooded Las Vegas. After all, Memorial Day, or as it should’ve remained, Decoration Day, is seen as the unofficial start of summer.
According to hopeful leisure industry analysts, Americans are busting with all sorts of pent-up desire to getaway. Two years of Covid conditions have made us stir crazy. Where better to let everything hang out and fly the freakiest freak flags than Las Vegas? A city where even if strangers knew your name, they’d be too involved in their own personal deviances to notice others.
Anyone working directly in the hospitality industry or its adjuncts is counting on such participants who contribute to Las Vegas’ “What happens here, stays here” tall tales.
No matter what sort of happy faces the tourist bureau sketches, the numbers just haven’t been there. It’s fine that conventions and spectacles have returned to the city, yet post-Covid attendance has been generally woeful. Continue reading Reemergence Maybe
Let Us Broil
In the Mojave Desert, residents are on the cusp of our least wonderful time of year. Indeed, if Andy Williams had to sing about this season those lyrics would get stuck in his throat.
Summer. Already in mid-May Las Vegans can expect triple digit temperatures. As the month elides into June it becomes hotter with July and August turning everyday into a constant blow torch of torrid.
Throughout summer, I thank American breweries for 30 packs! Continue reading Let Us Broil
No Rainbow. No Pot of Gold.
California is not sending it best people across the Mojave Desert into Nevada. Not visitors, necessarily, but those hopefuls intending to relocate.
For the most part, Californians flocking from the Golden State to settle in the Mojave aren’t the most sterling. Once here a sad portion of them tarnish the Silver State. Continue reading No Rainbow. No Pot of Gold.
Samples of His Seraglio
A Las Vegas acquaintance sought to pry some odd information from me. He asked the male equivalent for boudoir pictures. Until he’d wondered aloud, who knew one existed? Continue reading Samples of His Seraglio
The Spear Carriers
Chewing the fat with long-time Las Vegas residents never tires. By that I don’t mean retirees who’ve descended here from elsewhere. Those people invariably have nothing interesting or worthwhile conversationally to add. Just complaints about today and regrets regarding opportunities deferred then dismissed through lengthy delay.
There’s only so much wistfulness one should hear until it starts burdening the present. Besides, once here and once monotony sets in too many of them become pill-poppin’ day drunks. Continue reading The Spear Carriers
Away from the Range
At the beginning of December, the National Finals Rodeo returned to Las Vegas after a year’s absence. In 2020, Covid conditions pushed it to Texas. The Lone Star State offered less stringent health conditions than Nevada.
It still does. Continue reading Away from the Range
Gone Shadows
Autumn stretches a lighter hand across the Mojave than she does upon the Northeast.
Although the desert days shorten and the shadows lengthen as well deepen earlier, the chill which accompanies these shifts lack the same heralding of great changes which will occur in New York.
Except in the dispatch that follows. Continue reading Gone Shadows