June 8, 2011
dear clusterflock
Vegas.
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comments:
- Joel Bernstein: I know right?
- Rick Neece: Being nice is a dainty way to put it.
- Rick Neece: Hey Cristopher? Who cried “uncle” first, at the end of your ten-year stand-off? To quote my...
- Michael Smith: Ours is the kitchen.
- Amy Mabli: That’s what happens when you give the dogs the bed.
- Deron Bauman: Sweet Jesus.
- Michael Smith: Don’t we all.
- Pam: I have a story coming out soon in a ‘little mag’, Chicago Quarterly Review. An old friend recently...
- Pam: And I thought, somedays, that my work was meaningless…
- Pam: I remember Eggleston at the Art Institute in Chicago a couple years ago. He was elegantly dressed in a dark suit...
- Christopher Walken: Hey Clusterflockers, Realize y’all are hurting. I’ve been a really close friend of my...
- Marco: This works pretty well in mobile, more so in iOS
- Michael Smith: It was not the intent of management to imply all sissies are “namby pamby”. Management was...
- Rick Neece: I take umbrage with the term “namby pamby.” Some sissies are fierce.
- Carole Corlew: Shelia. Happy no big deal day. I would start your very own post but this phone is in semi rebellion.
May I vote more than once?
Yes. VIVA LAS VEGAS!
Not for me.
Neon. Yes.
I’m pretty sure our Beavis & Butthead marathon should be in Vegas.
Oh my god!
I’m serious.
Hey, I know some good Vegas venues for a Beavis & Butthead marathon. I’m thinking that none of the Strip hotels has the proper ambience. But on and just off of Paradise there are some extended-stay establishments that feel right to me.
Also, I am serious about loving Vegas. I really do.
Cindy, I know.
Cindy? Deron? You get the feeling we’re in, like, a minority?
That’s okay.
Yeah. I’m cool with it.
I thought we might be, but really I think it’s a state of mind, an approach. Cindy might need to teach a class. Or you or Amanda could. I’ve never talked to her about Vegas, but I assume she would understand.
I’ve been meaning to write a post recommending the show we saw in Vegas a few weeks ago.
One of the most fucking amazing things I’ve ever seen.
What I would want to try and convey is what I think of as the Vegas Paradox — how if you’re sensitive to the various layers, it strikes you that Las Vegas is the most honest city in America, the place where you can cut through all of the bullshit. Therein lies the Vegas Paradox.
I would be delighted to elucidate in an informal classroom setting. Preferably in Vegas.
Joel! Holy _____! “Part raucous beer garden, part surreal playground.” And in that big space in front of Caesars.
(How do you know a true Vegas lover? We know that it is “Caesars Palace” and not “Caesar’s Palace.”)
That description doesn’t really do it justice.
So. Joel. Vegas. Are you a lover or a hater?
In some ways, I like the idea of Vegas.
That’s a start, Michael! You might even like the, um, reality if you were with me and Deron and Cindy. And maybe Amanda. And Joel.
I’d like any reality were I with you, Deron, Cindy, Amanda & Joel, I’m sure.
Unless we were tasting durian – I’m happy to have missed that experience.
I’m on the fence.
I see what you’re saying, but I’m not sure I agree. Part of it is that I don’t really like gambling, and they long ago replaced the fun mechanical slot machines with boring computerized ones, and every shopping area was basically composed of the same dozen boring stores selling overpriced handbags. The parts of Vegas I liked the most were the parts that were the most fake.
At one point, my wife bought a 48 fl oz margarita in a plastic cup shaped like the carafe of a blender, for about a dollar an ounce.
The ‘real’ parts just felt seedy. And not seedy in the fun ironic way, but the sad, tired seedy. Have you ever been to Wisconsin Dells? It reminded me of that.
So I had a fun couple of days, ate good food and didn’t lose much money overall. It was a fun place to visit. Not sure how I’d feel about going back.
Joel, RE: fake Vegas, one of the few things I admire about Vegas is that none of it is fake. They have a mini statue of liberty and a mini New York and a mini Eiffel tower, but it’s all Vegas.
Oh, I don’t gamble, Joel, which is part of why it is so funny that I love Vegas. Jon used to gamble a little, and he was doing pretty well on one trip until that night he lost $1200 at the roulette table.
That was also the night we met The Man Who Knew Fassbinder.
Never a dull moment.
Although I have been back to Vegas a few times since, my heavy-duty Vegas days were back in the mid-nineties. In fact, my first Vegas hotel experience (1994?) was of the Desert Inn, which was imploded by Steve Wynn about a month after 9/11. The Desert Inn (the version in which I stayed) is the place where Howard Hughes and his entourage inhabited an entire floor. And when Frank Sinatra died (in 1998), we were staying at the Desert Inn. We woke up on May 15 and looked out our window to see the marquee devoted to the Chairman of the Board.
Since then, many of my favorite places have also been imploded. The New Frontier. The Stardust. But it comes with the territory. If I’m going to be a Vegas lover, I can’t cling to tradition.
Michael is starting to get it. It’s all Vegas.
I need the time and freedom of an all-day seminar to convey what I mean by the honesty of Las Vegas.
Yes, please!
Best experienced in Vegas. Oh! Oh, oh, oh! I just remembered another Vegas story, and oddly enough (or perhaps not), it also involves Fassbinder. Like the night in Vegas when Jon lost at roulette and we met the man who knew Fassbinder. What I’m now remembering was in Chicago — the German emigré housecleaner who wanted me to go to Las Vegas with her. Who wore pair-o-dice earrings. And laughed about my poster of Fassbinder’s Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte (Beware of a Holy WHore).
I like Vegas a lot. We’re going in July. I can’t even wait. I’ve never gambled, and don’t plan on ever gambling.
It’s like reality TV shows, you have to think past the story they’re telling you and see the other narrative.
Yes! And that other narrative in Las Vegas is sad and beautiful.
I think I need Sheila’s day-long seminar to see the beautiful
July is perfect. I love it. Going to Las Vegas in the hottest of the hot.
I have so many Las Vegas stories. Hilarious and glorious. And sad and beautiful.
To see the beautiful, look at Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, or Norman Rockwell, then look at a bunch of black and white street photography from the 50s and 60s, then go stand out in the desert for an hour.
I will offer the seminar only in Vegas.
That’s another thing, the heat.
I feel like going outside in July would require an air-conditioned hazmat suit.
Perfect, Deron.
The heat is essential. Alternating with the artificial chill.
Nobody said it was an easy thing, learning to love Las Vegas.
But once you pass through the membrane between Las Vegas and your resistance, everything is easy.
Oh. I saw The Big Lebowski on first release in Las Vegas. Also eXistenZ.
Insist upon Simone joining us in Vegas.
So when are we going to Vegas?
Let’s plan it. I’m serious as a stroke.
Cindy, that is so funny. That is so close to what my friend Richard said to the late mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington. Richard had been named a Young Chicago Achiever or something like that, and the mayor came to visit him in this space I remember well. In a building that housed the central Chicago Public Library before the new building was erected.
And the mayor asked Richard if there was anything he could do for him.
And Richard said, “Mr. Mayor, we could use some more archival shelving for this area you see back here.”
And Mayor Washington asked, “Are you serious?”
And Richard said, “Mr. Mayor, I’m serious as cancer.”
And the mayor laughed and laughed.
Michael, I bet the Iz would love Vegas. And I bet that’s one thing that scares you.
I want Iggy Pop to play Vegas. In a satiny dress.
The Iz has been to Vegas. She was smallish.
Oh, I think I remember. But I bet she does not. Also, I bet she looked fabulous. Fabulous shades.
Mr. Boudreaux did Vegas. He loved it. I have photos somewhere. While I was trying to regain my equilibrium in the lazy river, Mr. B. was obsessively taking rides on things with names like Insanity (?) and joking around with fake Elvises.
I haven’t even read the comments, but:
I hate Vegas.
But I’ll go if there are people I love (last time I was there was for a funeral).
I’ll go if the Iowan’s hotel points system can get me into a place with a lazy river.
Sign me up. A lot.
I want us to drive there.
All right, when are we doing this. Because I’m in.
Next year?
I want to do it sooner.
Clusterflockstock 3.5?
Yup.
August?
Will it be hot enough?
That was a joke. But, yes.
I think it should hot as fucking blazes.
We can make this happen.
I’m only going if Simone is going. I want Simone in Vegas.
I want Winslow.
We are driving to Houston. And he is coming with us. And that’s it.
Okay.
Can we stop at the Rothko Chapel before heading out?
Yep. Then we pick up Smith.
Sheila, we pick you up in Tucumcari.
You sure are planning a crazy route.
Road trip!
Oh good. I need a ride.
I’m not sure, but I think you could probably pick up Maefo and Kelsey on your way to get me.
You guys can swing by Portland for Luke and me, right?
We’ll grab them after Sheila. Then Luke and Joel.
Road trip is a science.
I’ll be standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.
Y’all think we’re kidding.
We need a tour bus.
We should chip in, buy an old school bus. Kind of an Electric Kool Aid Acid Test thing. Sell the film rights.
I wonder who owns the Partridge Family bus now.
…and that night her mom said that the two of them and the now dead guy were the only 3 people who ever really lived in Las Vegas.
Everybody else just arrived,
ate their complimentary shrimp cocktail,
and left.