By John Katsilometes
The title of today’s blog is “How to Buy a Vegas Home in Five Easy Steps.”
That will be the title unless I think of more than five steps. But for now, five steps:
Step 1 -- Enter Into the Home-Buying Process With Someone Who Has Friends Moving Out of Las Vegas: The lovely Kate is such a person. Not the moving-out-of-Vegas person, but she has friends who both live in a house and are leaving Vegas. They are heading to Indiana, where they will of course buy one of those little pink houses that John Mellencamp sings about. A few months ago they mentioned to Kate (during a party that involved the showcasing and selling of cosmetics, the details of which are not important here) that they were looking to sell their home in the northwest. Giddy from rouge application, Kate said, “We are interested!” So that connection proved crucial to the purchasing of this home, and we all got some firming eye cream at cost.
Step 2 -- Make Sure Someone in Your Family Knows How to Borrow Money: This would be Bob. He lives in Chicago. He is Kate’s brother-in-law, a budding martial-arts expert, and a sweet and meaty Bears fan. He is a mortgage expert by trade and he is helping us get the best deal possible for this house. He is also a something of a birder, this Bob, forever talking about the S Crow or some such nonsense. But he knows quite a bit about the home-loan process. This helps prospective buyers such as myself, who, aside from hundreds of spins around the Monopoly board, has never purchased homes or property (but who has visited jail a few times, even recently).
Step 3 -- Find a Left-Fielder Who Can Also Help You Borrow Money: In our case this is Ralph. He’s the left-fielder and sometimes second baseman (when Who is resting) on the King Tut’s softball squad of Doc Romeo’s men’s D-plus Thursday night league. Ralph, along with Bob, are teaming on the loan. I do hope Ralph can connect with Bob better than he does with his throws to the cut-off man. What worries me is that Ralph now knows all of my pertinent financial information (including my salary, Social Security number and job history), but I’m fairly certain he'll forget this data as surely as he forgets how many outs there are when he’s running the bases.
Step 4 -- Select a Home That Was Built: Not to play it coy here, but our home was built in 1978, when home builders took time to make sure a house was constructed properly. At least, that’s what the home inspector told us, which leads us to …
Step 5 – Find a Home Inspector With OCS, or who is Anal-Retentive, or Just Really Loves His Job: Ours spent more than three hours combing the home (and would’ve combed the dog if he’d been there for another half-hour) and finding every little nick, fissure and abnormality in the 1,700-square-foot structure. When we met him after his exhaustive once-over, he presented us with a big binder (which he had printed on equipment he brought with him to the assignment) full of photos and arrows pointing to photos, suggestions and potential trouble spots. Without him, we might not have known that the roof was due to be replaced and worked that into the deal. He also searched my name on the Las Vegas Sun Web site and found a bunch of columns I’d recently written. He pointed out flaws there, too, something about dangling participles.
Our target date to move into this place is July 20, provided everything goes as planned – and if we can coerce Ralphie from the batting cages.
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We’re seeing the Clint Holmes “Just Another Man” closing performance tonight at UNLV and will report back with a snap judgment (which is the best kind of judgment, eh?). There was a lot of pressure on Mr. Holmes on Saturday afternoon, with 120 or so film critics in the house, part of the American Theatre Critics Association conference. Wonder if they found enough to critique during their weekend stay here.
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The Golden Rainbow “Ribbon of Life” benefit show was more spectacular but less funny than a year ago (when the cast of “Dragapella,” on its way out of Vegas, put on a great 15-minute sing-and-rip set). For me, the best number was “We Hope Wynn Gets It,” a number fronted by John O’Hurley in the role of Steve Wynn. The premise was that Wynn was attempting to find a replacement for O’Hurley when he (O’Hurley) leaves “Monty Python’s Spamalot” in September. A series of impressionists (Jerry Seinfeld, Britney Spears and David Hasselhoff among them) tried out. When a faux-Toni Braxton appeared, O’Hurley said she would not work out because, “The role requires more than three notes.” He also spun around and pierced a “Le Reve” replica with his clipboard.
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Look for at least two of the more prominent galleries in the Arts District to pull out in the next few months, regardless of what happens with Michigan outfit REI’s plan to overrun two blocks of the district with its $9.5 billion development proposal (which is to include a 22,000-seat basketball arena, thousands of hotel rooms and Fudgsicles for everyone!). There are simply better offers elsewhere for most of the gallery proprietors in that area, and some are just fed up with the politics to stick around.
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Vegas moment: A few Vegas classic hits-oldies stations (OK, not a few, but certainly KKLZ) should borrow the play list used by Trader Joe’s. The Stones, Badfinger, Sam & Dave and the Beatles were pumped into the store on Decatur Boulevard this afternoon. I was actually dancing to “Paint it Black” in the produce section.
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On our menus: The Maserati omelet at the Peppermill on the Strip (known as the Italian omelet in most restaurants), loaded with sausage, Jack and American cheeses, mushrooms and a meat sauce with Italian cheeses sprinkled with parmesan cheese, goes for $11.95. Spark plugs are extra (ba-dum-bum).
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Release me: This paragraph was pulled from a manifesto sent from my man Wayne Allyn Root, who is pushing toward the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination:
“How typical of the American media. They specialize in creating ‘overnight sensations.’ Now they have instantly anointed Michael Bloomberg the next President of the United States.” They have? I must have missed that. Too much C-Span, I guess.
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Plate in my head: This is either a Pink Floyd fan or PR rep, DRK SDE, on a black Saturn Vue.
Fabulous Las Vegas appears daily (well, almost) at this Web site. John Katsilometes can be reached at 990-7720, 812-9812 or at [email protected]