"Las Vegas is the last place in America where someone with little or no skills can live a good, middle-class life."
Responding to several casino Norovirus outbreaks in the past 13 months, the Clark County Health District is replacing laundered cloth towels with disposable cleaning cloths. As an added touch, the new wipers are colorcoded—to appease your inner patriot.
As in other cash-strapped states eyeing slot machines, Maryland's interest has sparked ideological dissent—pro-gamers trumpeting the loads of new revenue, the anticasino lobby lamenting social repercussions (bankruptcy crime).
But unlike other states, Maryland has a long gambling history, dating to 1791, when the Legislature approved lottery grants, peaking in the '50s, when 5,000 machines operated in parlors with Vegasy names (Stardust, Desert Inn) and ending with then-Gov. J. Millard Tawes' legislative ban in 1968. According to the Baltimore Citypaper's Stephen Janis, Maryland's Sin Strip, a 2-mile stretch of U.S. 301 from Waldorf to the Potomac River Bridge, once out-Vegased Vegas.
Four counties generated $24 million in 1961. By comparison, Nevada's highest-grossing casino, the Harrah's Club in Lake Tahoe, generated $20 million. And in 1963, Maryland had three times as many federally licensed gambling devices as Nevada.
On a freeway exit in Reno last weekend, a Richard Ziser campaign sign popped up from the snow, jarring drivers the way a slasher film does when the villain won't die. Despite the weather, it was still bright blue and energetic and loaded with all things bigoted. Ziser's sign was, however, behind a rack of Reno News & Reviews that boasted a giant picture of Sen. Harry Reid, senate minority leader. Whew.
Seems the college hoops folks at ESPN think that Lon Kruger, the successful-college-turned-horrible-professional-coach-turned-UNLV-head-coach is the right man to return the Rebels to respectability, if not prominence. What's got the ESPN-ers hopeful? Kruger's pedigree (three different teams to the NCAA tournament), good returning talent (point guard Jerel Blassingame and forward Odartey Blankson) and an early recruiting class ranked among the top 10 in the country.
A Brighter Tomorrow: Fulfilling the Promise of a Nuclear Future
"Why is he named Tupac? If his mother really loved him, he'd at least be Twelve-pac."
OK, now we're really pissed.
Wal-Mart has finally produced the proverbial straw that breaks the cheap-plastic back of any chintzy camel doodads it might hawk in its home-decor section.
Driving past the corner of Tropicana Avenue and Jones Boulevard, we noticed a banner slapped on the window of the exquisitely quirky Antique Sampler Shoppes annnouncing boffo sales before it was about to lose its lease to ... guess who?
To paraphrase Yosemite Sam ... RACKIN-FRACKIN' NO-GOOD-$!%&*! VARMINTS!
Come early January, the sprawling antiques paradise will have to amscray to accommodate Vegas' desperate need for another cornucopia of mass-produced crap.
Sure, it's happening everywhere, but this one really smarts—a bastion of interesting, offbeat items, many with rich history and aesthetic individuality, knocked off by the assembly-line merchandise and bottom-line obsessions of The Beast That Ate America.