While Las Vegas Sleeps…

Diego Barbera, an editor for Jack Magazine, which is a bit like Maxim or Stuff for Italy, asked me to write a Las Vegas piece for their magazine, which apparently has hundreds of thousands in circulation every month. I was pretty excited about that and the deadline was today. I got it in and everything. They’re a really friendly, easy-going bunch over there in Italy, if Diego is representative. I’m looking forward to seeing the magazine when it comes out… can’t wait!

Thanks Diego! You guys come visit Vegas sometime and I’ll show you how we do it out here Las Vegas style…

Tags: Jack Magazine, writing

It’s never lost on me; it never gets old. The place I call home has to have the most fantastic weather of any major city on earth.

I grew up in South Texas. Since most of my family and a ton of friends are there, it’s home to me(okay, not my new home,but it still gets credit,) and there are elements of the weather there that I do miss. Okay, there is one: thunderstorms. I really miss that awesome, violent, beautiful Southern thunderstorm weather. It scares some people, particularly kids. When I was a kid it made me wish it would never be over. I loved it. I’ve always found it relaxing, invigorating. Apart from the storms and rain, it gets hot in Texas, but not hot like it is here. It will get up in the 95-101 degree range, but the humidity outside will be around 90% and you can’t breathe. It’s like having someone sit on your chest or sitting in a sauna. You walk outside to go somewhere and feel like you need a bath before you get in your car and get the air conditioning going.

In Las Vegas, it gets hot. It gets famously hot - people think “Las Vegas” and they think “it gets really hot there.” It’s true that it gets hot here, but the truly hot weather lasts about six to eight weeks, in July and August. When it’s hot here, it’s dry as a bone. It can be 109 degrees and you are getting dressed to go out and you feel fine. The only way I’d wear long sleeves in Texas July or August is if I had a wedding or something to attend. Out here it’s just not a problem - and I really hate feeling like my clothes are sticking to me - drives me crazy.

I’ve said it before, regarding the heat in Las Vegas: there’s something unique about it. It feels therapeutic; it feels quite spa-like. I actually really enjoy being outside in it in the middle of summer. In fact, I’m really looking forward to some seriously hot weather in the coming months.

Right now, though, Las Vegas is just amazing. It’s warm in the daytime. Today was the hottest that it has been and though it was “99 degrees” it just doesn’t feel like what you think “99 degrees” feels like. Yeah, I know - it’s a “dry heat.” It just doesn’t feel like real heat to me at all. As the day begins to pass and the shadows grow long, the sky here starts to turn all sorts of beautiful colors - yellow, orange, purple - and when the sun ducks down behind the Spring Mountains, whatever warm edge the atmosphere has just disappears.

It is so nice in the evenings. It’s been in the 68-72 degree range at night. You just want to sit outside, sipping a coffee, talking with friends about anything.. just so long as you don’t have to go inside. That’s exactly what I did yesterday evening - pretty uneventful for a Saturday, but just about perfect.

Yep, I love it here. The weather is one of one thousand reasons.

Tags: cheap Las Vegas, Nevada politics, Southern Nevada, summer

It only took the feds 21 years, but they’ve finally gotten at least one plea of guilty in the killings of two Chicago Outfit mafia members. These guys were made famous, albeit with names changed, in the hit movie “Casino” by Martin Scorsese.

Tony “the ant” Spilotro is the real name of the character played by Joe Pesci in the film. He and his brother (Michael Spilotro in real life) were both beaten to death and buried in a field in Indiana, if you recall from watching the movie - that event in the film was factual.

I’ve read the book “Casino” by Nicholas Pileggi and it is a work of non-fiction, changing no names and telling the story in its entirety. It’s an intriguing story from a fascinating time in our city’s history, complete with colorful characters such as a mafia attorney who grew up to be a Las Vegas mayor (Oscar Goodman, our current mayor who represented Tony Spilotro years ago.) It was about a time so storied that Las Vegas, in some ways, still profits from its mythos. I highly recommend the book (as well as “Wiseguy,” the non-fiction book “Goodfellas” was based on, also by Pileggi) for a real world, factual account of some of the stories that contributed to the Las Vegas legend.

More information on the guilty plea for the murders can be found in this article at the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Tags: classic Vegas, Entertainment, mafia, Nevada politics, news, Southern Nevada, Stardust Hotel

I realize that vengeance is not a emotional drive one should attempt to exude upon inanimate objects. Okay, well, this object isn’t 100% completely inanimate to start with, and to be honest, I think it might have developed enough artificial intelligence to make this battle, nay, war, personal.

I eat my last meal of the day at odd hours. Sometimes midnightish, sometimes 3 or 4am… Las Vegas has tons and tons of restaurants but the good ones tend to close by 11pm or so, maybe midnight on the weekends. One place that I enjoy eating at fairly regularly is Grand Luxe Cafe, which is inside the Venetian. They have a pretty wide selection of menu items, all of above-average quality and they are open 24 hours a day, at least the one in the hotel, there, happens to be. Even the more limited late night menu is pretty good and I get this amazing salad probably 3 times a week on average.

When I go in there, regardless of the time of day or night, I have - for a couple of years now - engaged in a little custom of going to this one slot machine in the middle row between Grand Lux and the restrooms right across the way. It’s a quarter machine, no biggy, that accepts either one of two credits per spin and has a maximum payout of either 800 or 1600 credits. I’m going to start calling this machine Squeaky. Why? The thing is so tight you can almost hear it squeaking. So every time I leave Grand Lux, I walk over, put in what is now a compulsory $20 and start jamming through it, fifty cents at a time, until I either hit the jackpot or lose it. This is all so much to the dismay of many friends who watch this behavior in awe, wondering if I even realize just how pathetically bad this one machine is. They repeatedly demand I try “this one over here” or “that one there…” They don’t get it.

I know it’s tight. I mean, of all the virginally tight machines in the Las Vegas Strip, I seem to have found the single most tight slot machine of them all. And by “virginally” I mean to say that I am convinced that this slot machine is yet to “go all the way” and pay out one single jackpot ever. Le sigh….

So on it goes… Me and Ol’ Squeaky. Every time. I put in the $20; it takes it in less than 5 minutes. I’ve never even hit three bars. Tonight it toyed with me. It gave me two of the jackpot symbols in a row before giving me a sad blank on the end. Oh, it knows. It knows what it is doing. And this means war.

So in order to seek some personal solace through sharing my pain and perhaps enjoying a bit of sad camaraderie, I shall from time to time post the ongoing saga of Christopher and Ol’ Squeaky here on While Las Vegas Sleeps…

Tags: Entertainment, gambling, gaming, Grand Lux Cafe, Southern Nevada, Venetian