1.) The Strip. No matter how loaded, loud and obnoxious you are, there's always someone more loaded, loud and obnoxious nearby.
2.) The possibility, however remote, that Jack-FM will boast "We play what we want," and not immediately air "My Life" by Billy Joel. (1)
3.) That you're among the world's most fortunate: Half of the world's population lives on less than $2 a day. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
4.) Teachers: Still teaching.
5.) Jon Ralston: Still Face to Facing.
6.) Harry Reid: Still franking. (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, Page 462, definition 3c.) (2)
7.) Women with common sense (City Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian, who voted against the Billy Walters sweetheart deal) and guts (city environmental officer Lori Wohletz, who public criticized said deal on fiscal and environmental grounds).
8.) That the Excalibur reportedly plans to adultify, and may somehow actually succeed, Disney castle notwithstanding. Hmm.
9.) The Henderson Interchange: finally done!
10.) That so far, "Henderson Spaghetti Bowl"—or any pasta-deriviative designation—hasn't gained widespread currency as a name for the Henderson Interchange. Ditto Fiesta Bowl.
11.) Coulda been you hanging off the power-outed Stratosphere the other night, sport.
12.) Persistence: Las Vegas Marathon. It took years to get it on the Strip. Casinos and county officials didn't like the idea of shutting down a portion of Las Vegas Boulevard for any length of time for a bunch of runners. But backers kept working at it, kept working at it, kept working at it—the way the long distance runner will—and finally, the Las Vegas Marathon will be run right down the Strip on December 4th. The results? Another successful public relations event for our fair city, as the top runners in the world, who have ignored the race when it was out on the side of I-15, are scheduled to race: Kenyan Titus Munji, the seventh-ranked marathoner in the world, plus winners of the Boston and New York marathons, and 12,000 other runners.
13.) Persistence: The fight for Yucca Mountain. Still no waste.
14.) Persistence: Christina von Sturm and family. Ross Goodman can't have their Downtown property without a fight.
15.) The Arts District, despite the petty squabbling, fragile unity and a dumb official name—18b sounds like a clause in a contract. Try saying it: "Hey, meet me at 18b." You cannot.
16.) The simple joy of acquiring unnaturally cheap city land for your golf course, then, with the help of influential friends, flipping it to a lucrative residential project. Don't you love that?
17.) Review-Journal reporter Henry Brean: Someone is alive in the wreckage!
18.) Merle Haggard (December 1-2, Boulder Station), yes; Gwen Stefani (December 3, Aladdin Theatre), eh. (She's hot, but he's a legend, and what the f--k is "Hollaback Girl" about, anyway?)
19.) Good: There is actually someone in Las Vegas named Harris Ferris. (3) Bad: He's leaving. (4)
20.) House of Blues and The Joint and the Aladdin Theatre and the Cooler and the Double Down—because there's no such thing as too much rock.
21.) That Oscar Goodman, who wants to clip the thumbs off of graffitists, isn't going after prostitution. (5)
22.) The Double Down Saloon, yes; the bacon martini, no way in hell. (6)
23.) Celine (we can't believe we're saying this) Dion (ack, we said it!). But she has big, Canadian pipes and is at Caesars almost every night, so no matter when you get a hankerin' to see her, you're in luck.
24.) The simple joy of the caviar service at Michael Mina in Bellagio.
25.) Thirty-nine candidates for the school superintendent job.
26.) That there are 39 people with serious guts.
27.) Speaking of guts: hot dogs. These tubular meat byproduct standards have endured, and conquered, a recent period of malign highlighted by a group of oddballs who feign enjoyment of soy, which we know to be one-fifth as tasty as the mysterious grindings of beef and pork that fill up the classic American hot dog. Note the success of fantastic culinary outposts such as Mr. Hot Dog and d'Mustard Hot Dogs. We write this with a d'Mustard Fenway Frank in hand, mustard and relish dripping down the wrist. It's an act of faith, eating a hot dog—who the hell knows what's in it? It's a philosophical statement: We're a meat-eating people, and frankly, we show admirable efficiency in sweeping up the various animal parts that don't make appealing menu centerpieces like the prime rib or the pork roast—maybe the toes and tails?— and grinding them up, squeezing them into skins and slathering them with ketchup for consumption. That's admirable productivity. And, mark this as the Eighth Wonder of the World, they're absolutely delicious. Welcome back, wieners.
28.) Our governor is better than 45 other U.S. governors, amazingly enough. Just ask Time.
29.) Our mayor is better than thousands of other mayors, all governors, most world leaders and a few deities. Just ask him.
30.) This story in the R-J last week: "Citing an adequate number of interim psychiatric care beds, the Clark County Commission lifted a declaration of emergency Tuesday. County and state dollars have funded enough temporary beds for mentally ill patients to keep emergency rooms from being overburdened until a new state facility opens in Las Vegas next year, officials said." Imagine that: enough beds! For now!
31.) The "girlcott" of Abercrombie & Fitch's T-shirt, "Why Do I Need Brains When I've Got These?"
32.) Brains.
33.) These.
34.) The simple joy of midnight huevos rancheros at Fausto's Tex-Mex Grill.
35.) Kurt Busch, yes; reckless driving and a bad attitude off the track, no. (Exception: rush hour on 215.)
36.) The Nevada Cancer Institute.
37.) The fine art in the Nevada Cancer Institute.
38.) Libby Lumpkin: Las Vegas Art Museum broadens its ambitions. (7)
39.) That Northern Nevada is so willing to give up its groundwater to support this beautiful city. It's nice to have understanding neighbors! OK, so they're going to fight it with all the legal power they can muster. Do we have gall or what?
40.) Gall. This city would be nothing without it. (8)
41.) That turkeys aren't associated with avian flu. Are they?
42.) Twenty-three chess clubs at local high schools.
43.) High-speed Internet: Remember dial-up? Hahaha. Conversation, circa 2015: "Why, when I was your age, we had to plug into the telephone line ..." "Sure, Gramps, whatever."
44.) BlackBerries. Finally, a device that lets you e-mail while you drive. (9)
45.) Lesbians. Just because.
46.) The possibility, however remote, that those "Most Dangerous Cities" surveys will take into account our good qualities (list available upon request, SASE) and improve our ranking. (10)
47.) Penny slots. Isn't' it nice that casinos are willing to cater to anyone, no matter how poor or cheap?
48.) The simple joy of saying something dumb to a reporter ("This doesn't make me think anything") and seeing your name in the paper the next day (Wanda Butler, on a proposed mural at the Sahara West Library). (11)
49.) Bad: Bush's ratings. Good: Bush's bad ratings. (12)
50.) Vegas. You probably missed the two-part PBS series on the evolution of Vegas last week, because there's a thousand other things to do here other than watch PBS. But you don't even have to understand the astonishing history of this place to be grateful for it. For the high-minded, it's a study in human nature, a sociological gold mine, a quixotic city of the future, it's even a place one can hate and yet, pervasively, choose to stay in and bathe in one's own dismay—with cocktails!
FOOTNOTES |
1.) "Play That Funky Music, White Boy" is acceptable, however.
2.) You're sick of hearing about Harry Reid, every publication from here to Baghdad has written about him, we all know the quaint Searchlight life story ad nauseam; but this skinny little gray-headed man is shrewd, an unlikely powerhouse, and he's ours. Who would've thought that in 2005, the senator from Nevada—Nevada! the ignorable plot of desert and derelicts!—would be the biggest thorn in the side of an administration that's busy gumming up the world. Put a superhero cape on that seemingly prosaic little man.
3.) He's executive director of Nevada Ballet Theatre.
4.) He's leaving to head the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre.
5.) "Castration anxiety" in the male results from the boy's fear that the father will intervene in his relationship with his mother by cutting off his penis. —Freud: On Narcissism.
6.) You know that aftertaste when you eat bacon and drink kerosene? This is like that, only kerosenier.
7.) After years of unlived-up-to potential, with only intermittently good guidance, the Las Vegas Art Museum has brought in someone with serious intellectual firepower. If only Lumpkin could figure out how to move the museum a few miles closer to the Strip.
8.) Las Vegas without gall: Phoenix.
9.) The Las Vegas Weekly in no way endorses the terrible practice of sending e-mail while you drive, except possibly while responding to urgent communiques about "hot MILF action."
10.) In the latest "Most Dangerous Cities" rankings, compiled by Morgan-Quito Press, Las Vegas ranks as seventh most dangerous. It was eighth last year.
11.) Las Vegas Review-Journal, November 18, Page 4B.
12.) With apologies to those holding a contrary opinion. Not really abject apologies, mind you; more like the mild sorry we'd feel for failing to hold the door for you.