The Kerry Visit, In Quotes
"Is there a Democrat in the house? I said, Is there a Democrat in the house?"
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Assemblyman Richard Perkins, invoking the spirit of Run-DMC.
"I'm voting for you, Mom, yeeaggghhh."
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Shelley Berkley's son, invoking the spirit of Howard Dean
"He calls himself a compassionate conservative … he's more like an extremist reactionary."
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Sen. Dina Titus, invoking the spirit of antonyms
"That's a great idear."
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John Kerry, invoking the spirit of Chingy (famous for a rap titled "Right Thurr")
The One-Minute Literary Critic: The First Rule of a Chuck Palahniuk Reading Is that You Don't Talk About a Chuck Palahniuk Reading. Oops!
Last Friday, Editor Scott Dickensheets was among the overflow crowd packing the Flamingo Library to hear the Fight Club author read from his work: Black leather? Everywhere! Hairstyles touting their owners' rejection of the mainstream's stifling something or other? In abundance! Studied existenital hipsterism? There couldn't have been a soul left in the Virgin Megastore's indie-rock aisle. In other words, precisely the crowd you'd expect to show up for an author of transgressive fiction, and, more to the point, for an author who's sold his transgressive fiction to the movies. And Palahniuk didn't disappoint. He began with the absorbing short story that eventually grew into Fight Club, read a funny nonfiction piece about taking acid and eating a fur jacket, and closed with a rollicking rendition of "Guts," a hilarious and disgusting short story about masturbation, Vaselined carrots, wax, more masturbation and, well, guts. (You can read it in the new Playboy.) The story had reportedly caused 39 people to pass out at previous readings, and while the only person to lose consciousness this time did so because of what was said to be an epileptic fit, Palahniuk was happy to round off the total to 40. In a way, though, it's too bad "Guts" got such advance play for its scatology. It's likely that many were so braced for the stomach-churn that they missed the heart-wrench (the emotional crux that comes right after the hero chews through his colon). If you did catch that moment, though, you left the reading exhilarated, moved and praying that "Guts" never becomes a movie.
McCarran: Airport or Hell's Waiting Room?
3 minutes: Time a traveler recently spent in the Southwest Airlines check-in line and then security line at Los Angeles International Airport.
7 minutes: Time same traveler recently spent in the Southwest Airlines check-in line and then security line at Chicago Midway Airport.
20 minutes: Time spent in the Southwest Airlines check-in line and then security line at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
90 minutes: Time recently spent in the Southwest Airlines check-in line and then security line at McCarran International Airport, surrounded by hundreds of ticket-holders who, upon entering the security line, seemed resigned to miss their flight. Which many of them did.
15 minutes: Time recently spent in line at the Southwest customer service counter in hopes of getting a spot on the next flight, after missing the originally booked flight thanks to long lines and security issues.
Hal Rothman Watch
"Vegas is a canvas for American neurosis," said Hal Rothman, a UNLV history professor. "It's a place where we paint our hopes, dreams, fears and apprehensions. ... It's the city of excess. What could be more of an excess than killing yourself?"
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From the Los Angeles Times
Would You Like Some Fresh Sex With Your Salad? How's Your Naked Hooker Soup? Your A--hole Pimp Marketer Main Course Will Be Right Up
Who says Vegas doesn't have class? It was a lovely Valentine's dinner at Mon Ami Gabi; fragile stemware was clinking and steamed scallop appetizers had just arrived and the table behind the floor-to-ceiling glass offered an excellent view of Bellagio's fountains, which were just beginning their show. Then: A giant GIRLS-2-U mobile billboard pulled up and blocked all view of everything except brightly lit skanky ass and a telephone number and the promise of DIRECT TO YOUR ROOM IN 30 MINUTES. Worse, it appeared to be either a) stuck in traffic or b) particularly interested in the clientele at Paris, because it sat there through most of the appetizers. And it may have been leading the annual prostitution parade down the Prostition-Is-Illegal-Here Strip, because on its bumper were at least two more mobile hooker billboards, one with giant boobs and ESCORTS emblazoned across the top, the other probably said something like GET LAID HERE or CHEAP SEX NOW. Gray Matters can' t remember the rest of the details, because the meal arrived, and the company was wonderful, and you can't let a little thing like in-your-face marketing of rampant, unpoliced, officially nonexistent prostitution get in the way of a little old-fashioned romance.