Jeez, Louise: You tell people how you love the sanctified concoction of a good breakfast burrito just as much as the next guy, and thus how you would go to each end of this Valley to find one, and everyone thinks you're a food critic.
It's exactly what happened when "My Search for the Breakfast Burrito of My Dreams" ran in the April 13-19 edition of the Weekly. Right from the very Thursday it was published, several readers—including fellow food enthusiasts and restaurant owners with breakfast burritos to sell—contacted the Weekly's offices to add in their two cents. And boy were they adamant! You got it wrong, man, they said. Go to Doña Maria's Tamale Shop on South Las Vegas Boulevard if you really want a breakfast burrito that'll blow your mind. Or: Come to El Steak Burrito, on North Spring Mountain Road, and we'll show you a true delight. A lady named Tina even offered an invitation to visit her home to get a taste of her infallible dish straight off the stove. But in the end, one venue was plugged more than any other, and that was Egg Works on Flamingo and Fort Apache roads. One reader wrote in: "How could you be so stupid? Anyone who's anyone knows that Egg Works has the ultimate breakfast burrito!"
Jeez, Louise. This town and its sensitivities.
Count Them All Yourself, Did You, Stan?
We can only assume Assembly District 7 contender Stan Vaughan, a Democrat, has been putting a lot of miles on the campaign mobile getting to the bottom of America's problems. Writing about illegal immigration, Stan tell us in a recent e-mailing, "We have a crisis on our hands as recent investigations on the subject by myself have turned up [that] we currently have, including the children of illegal immigrants, 36 million illegal immigrants in the United States" (italics ours). Now, that's some investigating! We can see why he was too busy to click over to the website for the nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies, whose analysis of Census data concludes that there are about 36 million total immigrants—including legals. But they're probably too busy analyzing data to, you know, investigate.
Tom Hanks Revealed As a Closet Dancing Queen!
The next Broadway—and Vegas—hit headed for multiplexes, says a report in Daily Variety, is the ABBA-fest Mamma Mia, a staple on both the Great White Way and the south end of the Strip, at Mandalay Bay. Set to produce is Tom Hanks, who'll work alongside Abba-ists Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Anderson on the film, the latest in a number of Vegas shows with cinematic ties. The musical version of Hairspray, now at the Luxor, will go big-screen with John Travolta in the lead, assuming Harvey Fierstein's role. Meanwhile, two shows on the way to Sin City have movie interpretations behind them—Phantom of the Opera (arriving in June) and The Producers (expected in late summer).
As for Hanks, he surely hopes he'll rack up a winner as a producer on Mamma Mia, given that his upcoming on-screen project, The Da Vinci Code, is getting bad buzz. Gee, might it even threaten to become his ... Waterloo?
Laws? What?
And yet another reason to be grateful you don't live in Washoe County:
During the drafting of the Nevada Democrats' platform on April 23, the Review-Journal reported, one of Washoe's delegates, Ed Goodrich, chided his fellow party members while they debated immigration for forgetting the ironclad foundation of America.
"This country is built on laws," he said.
Even his own peers laughed at him.
Cell Phone Nation
We've all experienced it: sitting on a public pot, trying to take care of business, only to have your concentration shattered by your stall's next-door neighbor, exploding without shame into conversation on his cell phone. And if you haven't, there's a good chance you will, for a survey released last week by Let's Talk, a mobile research company, states that nearly four out of 10 people have no qualms with bathroom chatter. It's one of several social norms that has been altered by the 2 billion-plus cell phones in use today.
Of those changes, the survey indicates, talking in elevators, restaurants and theaters has even become somewhat acceptable. But perhaps the greatest sign of the cell phone's cultural impact is its effect on love: 44 percent of Americans have found ways to court mates through text messages, and 15 percent said they have and will interrupt the melody of lovemaking to answer their ringing phones.